The object of this paper is to explore the intersection of two issues. The first concerns the role that feasibility considerations play in constraining normative claims – claims, say, about what we (individually and collectively) ought to do and to be. The second concerns whether normative claims are to be understood as applying only to actions in their own right or also non-derivatively to attitudes. In particular, we argue that actions and attitudes may be subject to different feasibility (...) constraints – and hence that how we conceive of the role of feasibility in an account of normativity will depend in part on how we conceive of the role of actions and attitudes in normative theorising. (shrink)

Robert Card criticises our proposal for managing some conscientious objections in medicine. Unfortunately, he severely mischaracterises the nature of our proposal, its scope and its implications. He also overlooks the fact that our proposal is a compromise designed for a particular political context. We correct Card’s mischaracterisations, explain why we believe compromise is necessary and explain how we think proposed compromises should be evaluated.

Doing the best we can in the world as it is requires that appropriate account be taken of The object of this essay is to examine what amounts to feasibilitydesirability considerations.feasibilitycoming in degrees objects that the advisee controls feasibility ofought-implies-can” principle, a point of departure that frames feasibility considerations in a dismissive or otherwise inadequate way.

I present and argue for a novel function-based account of feasibility - what I call the "Fitting Deliberation Account" - according to which whether an (individual or collective) action counts as feasible is a matter of whether it possesses those features that are required to make it a fitting object of practical reason or deliberation about what to do.

David Axelsen has recently introduced a novel critique of the motivational argument against cosmopolitanism : even if it were the case that lack of motivation could serve as a normative constraint, people’s anti-cosmopolitan motivations cannot be seen as constraints on cosmopolitan duties as they are generated and reinforced by the state. This article argues that Axelsen 's argument misrepresents the nationalist motivational argument against cosmopolitanism : the nationalist motivational argument is best interpreted as an argument about normative feasibility rather (...) than as an argument about the technical feasibility. Nationalists ' objection to cosmopolitanism arises not from the impossibility of cosmopolitan motivation, but from the moral costs of achieving and sustaining it. Given this interpretation, this article argues that Axelsen fails to demonstrate that nationalists would have to accept cosmopolitan conclusions from their own premises. (shrink)

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to test the feasibility of telepsychology support for patients with severe cardiorespiratory disease and their caregivers. A secondary objective was to explore pre-post relationships between patients' and caregivers' clinical measures.MethodsA telehealth program incorporating telepsychology support, i.e., an “on-demand” phone service with a psychologist, was provided to consecutive cardiorespiratory patients at discharge from inpatient rehabilitation and to their caregivers. At the start and end of the 1-year program, participants were interviewed “face-to-face,” and their anxiety/depression (...) level, patients' quality of life, and caregivers' family strain and needs were assessed: we analyzed the correlations and evaluated customer satisfaction.ResultsOf 80 eligible individuals, 40 took part in this study: 22 patients and 18 caregivers. Eleven requested tele-psychological support, resulting in 51 consultations focused on anxiety, difficulty in patient management, worry about the patient's emotional state, and need for emotional support; 3 participants underwent a tailored psychotherapy program. All participants expressed high satisfaction with the service. At enrolment, anxiety was less evident in patients than in caregivers, while depressive symptoms were more evident, and correlated with MRF-28 and MQOL. Caregivers' FSQ showed a “strongly recommended” need for support; at enrolment, high levels of anxiety/depression were correlated with high FSQ ; depressive symptoms correlated negatively with age and positively with emotional needs ; anxiety was positively correlated with education level. At follow-up, patients' perception of support tended to increase, while caregivers' strain tended to decline. At enrolment, caregivers' anxiety/depression and strain correlated with patients' quality of life. At follow-up, caregivers' strain correlated with patients' quality of life and cognitive performance.ConclusionTelepsychology support associated with a telehealth service is feasible and satisfying for both participants and psychological management. A suitable support program can benefit both patients and caregivers, particularly those at higher risk of depressive symptoms and anxiety. (shrink)

Recent methodological debates regarding the place of feasibility considerations in normative political theory are hindered for want of a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier. To address this shortfall, I present an analysis of feasibility that generalizes the economic concept of a production possibility frontier and then develop a rigorous model of the feasibility frontier using the familiar possible worlds technology. I then show that this model has significant methodological implications for political philosophy. On the Target (...) View, a political ideal presents a long-term goal for morally progressive reform efforts and, thus, serves as an important reference point for our specification of normative political principles. I use the model to show that we can- not reasonably expect that adopting political ideals as long-term reform objectives will guide us toward the realization of morally optimal feasible states of affairs. I conclude by proposing that political philosophers turn their attention to the analysis of actual social failures rather than political ideals. (shrink)

The familiar complaint that some ambitious proposal is infeasible naturally invites the following response: Once upon a time, the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of women seemed infeasible, yet these things were actually achieved. Presumably, then, many of those things that seem infeasible in our own time may well be achieved too and, thus, turn out to have been perfectly feasible after all. The Appeal to History, as we call it, is a bad argument. It is not true that (...) if some desirable state of affairs was actually achieved, then it was feasible that it was achieved. “Actual” does not imply “feasible,” as we put it. Here is our objection. “Feasible” implies “not counterfactually fluky.” But “actual” does not imply “not counterfactually fluky.” So, “actual” does not imply “feasible.” While something like the Flukiness Objection is sometimes hinted at in the context of the related literature on abilities, it has not been developed in any detail, and both premises are inadequately motivated. We offer a novel articulation of the Flukiness Objection that is both more precise and better motivated. Our conclusions have important implications, not only for the admissible use of history in normative argument, but also by potentially circumscribing the normative claims that are applicable to us. (shrink)

Political philosophy offers a range of utopian proposals, from open borders to global egalitarianism. Some object that these proposals ought to be constrained by what is feasible, while others insist that what justice demands does not depend on what we can bring about. Currently, this debate is mired in disputes over the fundamental nature of justice and the ultimate purpose of political philosophy. I take a different approach, proposing that we should consider which facts could fill out a feasibility (...) requirement. This search for the facts requires requires looking to the social sciences, but I argue that it turns out that the social sciences will not provide us with findings that rule out, nor even count against, the kinds of proposals that political philosophers actually make, whether ideal or non-ideal. At the least, to deny this requires adopting deeply controversial commitments within the philosophy of social science. Thus, I conclude that a feasibility requirement has little practical use for political philosophers. Disputes over that requirement ought to be replaced by other, more fruitful ways for political philosophers to address both the findings of social science and the debates over non-ideal theory or political realism. (shrink)

I contend that to be politically feasible a global climate treaty must satisfy the International Paretian principle (IP). I begin by defending IP as a principle of instrumental rationality that reflects the fact of extremely limited altruism vis-à-vis foreigners. I then address two objections to my thesis. One holds that an IP treaty is either economically infeasible or, contrary to its proponents’ claim, does not require side payments from poor states to rich ones. The other holds poor states will reject (...) any climate treaty that requires such side payments because it ignores or exacerbates their unjust treatment by rich states. (shrink)

A common objection to a proposal or theory in political philosophy is that it is not feasible to realise what it calls for. This is commonly taken to be sufficient to reject a proposal or theory: feasibility, on this common view, operates as a straightforward constraint on moral and political theory, whatever is not feasible is simply ruled out. This paper seeks to understand what we mean when we say that some proposal or outcome is or is not (...) feasible. It will argue that no single binary definition can be given. Rather, there is a whole range of possible specifications of the term ‘feasible’, each of which selects a range of facts of the world to hold fixed. No single one of these possible specifications, though, is obviously privileged as giving the appropriate understanding of ‘feasibility’ tout court. The upshot of my account of feasibility, then, will be that the common view of feasibility as a straightforward constraint cannot be maintained: in order to reject a moral theory, it will not be sufficient simply to say that it is not feasible. (shrink)

ObjectiveThere have been increased efforts to implement medical ethics curricula at the student and resident levels; however, practising physicians are often left unconsidered. Therefore, we sought to pilot an ethics and professionalism curriculum for faculty in obstetrics and gynaecology to remedy gaps in the formal, informal and hidden curriculum in medical education.MethodsAn ethics curriculum was developed for faculty within the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at a tertiary care, academic hospital. During the one-time, 4-hour, mandatory in-person session, the participants voluntarily (...) completed the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, Handoff Clinical Evaluation Exercise, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and overall course evaluation. Patient satisfaction survey scores in both the hospital and ambulatory settings were compared before and after the curriculum.ResultsTwenty-eight faculty members attended the curriculum. Overall, respondents reported less burnout and performed at the same level or better in terms of patient handoff than the original studies validating the instruments. Faculty rated the professionalism behaviours as well as teaching of professionalism much lower at our institution than the validation study. There was no change in patient satisfaction after the curriculum. However, overall, the course was well received as meeting its objectives, being beneficial and providing new tools to assess professionalism.ConclusionThis pilot study suggests that an ethics curriculum can be developed for practising physicians that is mindful of pragmatic concerns while still meeting its objectives. Further study is needed regarding long term and objective improvements in ethics knowledge, impact on the education of trainees and improvement in the care of patients as a result of a formal curriculum for faculty. (shrink)

It is argued that the primary aim of institutional management is to protect the moral integrity of health professionals without significantly compromising other important values and interests. Institutional policies are recommended as a means to promote fair, consistent, and transparent management of conscience-based refusals. It is further recommended that those policies include the following four requirements: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s/surrogate’s timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based (...) refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on colleagues, supervisors, department heads, other administrators, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. Formal review may not be required in all cases, but when it is appropriate, several recommendations are offered about standards and the review process. A key recommendation is that when reviewing an objector’s reasons, contrary to what some have proposed, it is not appropriate to adopt an adversarial approach modelled on military review boards’ assessments of requests for conscientious objector status. According to the approach recommended, the primary function of reviews of objectors’ reasons is to engage them in a process of reflecting on the nature and depth of their objections, with the objective of facilitating moral clarity on the part of objectors rather than enabling department heads, supervisors, or ethics committees to determine whether conscientious objections are sufficiently genuine. (shrink)

Aesthetic Formalism has fallen on hard times. At best it receives unsympathetic discussion and swift rejection. At worst it is the object of abuse and derision. But I think that there is something to be said for it. In this paper, I shall try to find and secure the truth in formalism. I shall not try to defend formalism against all of the objections to it.1 Instead I shall articulate a moderate formalist view that draws on aesthetic0nonaesthetic determination and Kant’s (...) distinction between free and dependent beauty. I shall examine four central art forms—painting, sculpture, lit-. (shrink)

Background: Pre-licensure ethics nursing education does not adequately prepare and instill confidence in nurses to address ethical issues, and yet ethics education provides nurses with greater confidence to take moral action, which can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. Objectives: To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a nursing ethics education program that included simulated case-based ethics competencies as a form of evaluation. The program aimed at building nurses’ ethical knowledge and confidence to respond to ethical challenges in (...) practice. Research design: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational, single-cohort feasibility study using an investigator-developed survey and intervention field data. Participants and research context: Registered nurses were recruited from an academic quaternary-care medical center and 9 small- to mid-sized regional hospitals within one health system in the Midwest United States. Ethical considerations: IRB approval was obtained. Participants could complete the educational program regardless of research process participation. Findings: Of 20 participants, 19 (95%) provided post-program surveys and 18 completed competencies. Median (IQR) scores with quartiles for scheduling, timing, and length of sessions were all 10.0 [9.0, 10.0], and participants perceived that the content was interesting, increased knowledge and confidence in ethics, increased skills in providing ethical care, and would recommend the program to colleagues. Of factors, an increase in ethics knowledge had the highest “always agree” (17, 89.5%) response. Most participants reported that ethics competencies were appropriate 9.0 [9.0, 10.0] and sufficiently challenging 10.0 [9.0, 10.0]. Discussion: The education program developed nurses’ ethics knowledge and confidence. The single-cohort feasibility design provided early-stage intervention outcomes; however, a larger randomized controlled trial would substantiate program value. Conclusion: This novel ethics education program was highly feasible and acceptable to hospital-based nurses who reported increased knowledge and confidence in providing ethical care. Simulated case-based ethics competencies were an appropriate evaluation method. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

The literature on conscientious objection in medicine presents two key problems that remain unresolved: Which conscientious objections in medicine are justified, if it is not feasible for individual medical practitioners to conclusively demonstrate the genuineness or reasonableness of their objections? How does one respect both medical practitioners’ claims of conscience and patients’ interests, without leaving practitioners complicit in perceived or actual wrongdoing? My aim in this paper is to offer a new framework for conscientious objections in medicine, which, by (...) bringing medical professionals’ conscientious objection into the public realm, solves the justification and complicity problems. In particular, I will argue that: an “Uber Conscientious Objection in Medicine Committee” —which includes representatives from the medical community and from other professions, as well as from various religions and from the patient population—should assess various well-known conscientious objections in medicine in terms of public reason and decide which conscientious objections should be permitted, without hearing out individual conscientious objectors; medical practitioners should advertise their conscientious objections, ahead of time, in an online database that would be easily accessible to the public, without being required, in most cases, to refer patients to non-objecting practitioners. (shrink)

The aim here is to implement intelligence in an engineered processing substrate – a machine mind, as it were. This solution is clearly related to work in artificial intelligence (AI) and shares many of its analytical requirements and synthesis goals, but the objective is unambiguously to make individual human minds independent of a single substrate. Brain–machine interfaces require adaptations for communication to be possible, emphasizing either the machine or the brain. Brain emulation on general‐purpose computers is convenient, because model functions (...) can be modified easily. Ultimately, a mature emulation demands a suitable computing substrate. Theoretical debates occasionally focus on the question of determinism and computation in the Von Neumann sense. ARPANET (the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) useful for university projects and for the military, but it was not immediately obvious what sort of civilian applications would thrive on such a computer network. (shrink)

In Ethiopia, conscientious objection (CO) to abortion provision is not allowed due to government regulations. We here report findings from a qualitative interview study of 30 healthcare professionals from different professions working with abortion in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. CO is practised despite the regulations forbidding it. Most informants appeared to be unfamiliar with the prohibition or else did not accord it weight in their moral reasoning. Proponents of institutionalization/toleration of CO claimed that accommodation was often feasible in a hospital (...) setting because colleagues could take over. Opponents pointed to threats to patient access in rural settings especially. Both proponents and opponents invoked tenets of professional ethics, viz., the right not to be coerced into actions one deems unacceptable, or the duty to provide care, respectively. More societal and professional discussion of the ethics and regulation of CO, and a clearer link between legal regulation and ethical guidance for professionals, are called for. (shrink)

Background There is a need for clearer guidance for pharmacists regarding their responsibilities when selling complementary medicines. A recently published ethical framework provides guidance regarding the specific responsibilities that pharmacists need to meet in order to fulfil their professional obligations and make a positive contribution to health outcomes when selling complementary medicines. Objective Evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of a new ethical framework for the sale of complementary medicines in community pharmacy. Methods Australian community pharmacists were invited to participate (...) in online focus groups and interviews. Participants were recruited via multiple methods, including social media and the professional networks of pharmacy groups. Participants were provided the ethical framework prior to the discussion. Discussions were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. Results Seventeen community pharmacists participated in the study. There was good representation among participants in terms of gender, years of practice, pharmacy location and script volume. Participants differed in how proactive they were in relation to selling and providing advice on complementary medicines, how they interpreted evidence in relation to complementary medicines, and how they navigated their practice within the retail environment of community pharmacy. The majority of participants found the framework was acceptable for practice and was feasible for implementation with targeted support. Participants identified two important areas for targeted support in implementing the framework: improved access to evidence-based information resources on complementary medicines and independent evidence-based education and training on complementary medicine for pharmacists and pharmacy support staff. Conclusion The ethical framework addresses an important gap in providing specific professional guidance to pharmacists when selling complementary medicines. The results of the study suggest that the framework may be acceptable to community pharmacists and be feasible to implement with targeted support. (shrink)

William L. Rowe’s argument against divine freedom has drawn considerable attention from theist philosophers. One reply to Rowe’s argument that has emerged in the recent literature appeals to modified accounts of libertarian freedom which have the result that God may be free even if he necessarily actualizes the best possible world. Though in many ways attractive, this approach appears to lead to the damning consequence of modal collapse i.e., that the actual world is the only possible world. But appearances can (...) be deceiving, and in this paper I argue that the threat of modal collapse dissolves when we consider Alvin Plantinga’s critique of the purportedly Leibnizian notion that God can actualize any possible world, and incorporate the implications of this critique into the divine freedom debate. Developing a suggestion by Edward R. Wierenga, I argue first that the modal collapse objection fails within a Molinist context, and then I extend the discussion beyond that context to show that the objection also fails on the assumption that Molinism is false. (shrink)

This study focuses on the important epistemological question of the objectivity of scientific knowledge by comparing the analyses and theories developed in the two different schools of hermeneutics and pragmatism. To justify the feasibility of the comparison, we proceed from the observation that, albeit in different ways, authors such as Gadamer and Peirce revolutionize the idea of experience and its theoretical scientific relevance issuing in a new conception of cognitive truth bearing fruits to the problem of objectivity. This comparison (...) is intertwined with the critical resumption of Betti’s theoretical scientific research, which is useful for illustrating the articulation of this problem and the scope of the operations implemented in the context of contemporary hermeneutics and for probing the problem of scientific objectivity beyond the fields of the historical and social sciences. This possibility can be glimpsed by absorbing Betti’s approach to the problem of humanities into a theory of knowledge where a position of critical realism is associated with an interpretative component in hermeneutic and pragmatic keys. (shrink)

Mind uploading—the transference of mind from a biological brain to a computer— offers the alluring possibility of immortality. This paper provides a novel challenge to mind uploading, focusing on the distinction between abstract objects and concrete individuals. Uploads are abstract objects, while currently, persons are concrete indi- viduals. This presents a dilemma: if the mind is concrete, uploading it to a computer is impossible. Alternatively, if mind uploading is feasible, the resulting abstract upload cannot be numerically identical to the original (...) person. Furthermore, by dif- ferentiating survival from persistence, this paper argues that concrete persons might survive as abstract uploads, but only in a highly restricted sense, without preserving their numerical identity. Despite these philosophical hurdles, practical reasons for considering mind uploading as life nears its end still need to be acknowledged. (shrink)

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those of Matthew Calarco and other scholars, I (...) aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO. (shrink)

When making substituted judgments for incapacitated patients, surrogates often struggle to guess what the patient would want if they had capacity. Surrogates may also agonize over having the (sole) responsibility of making such a determination. To address such concerns, a Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) has been proposed that would use an algorithm to infer the treatment preferences of individual patients from population-level data about the known preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics. However, critics have suggested that even if such (...) a PPP were more accurate, on average, than human surrogates in identifying patient preferences, the proposed algorithm would nevertheless fail to respect the patient’s (former) autonomy since it draws on the ‘wrong’ kind of data: namely, data that are not specific to the individual patient and which therefore may not reflect their actual values, or their reasons for having the preferences they do. Taking such criticisms on board, we here propose a new approach: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). The P4 is based on recent advances in machine learning, which allow technologies including large language models to be more cheaply and efficiently ‘fine-tuned’ on person-specific data. The P4, unlike the PPP, would be able to infer an individual patient’s preferences from material (e.g., prior treatment decisions) that is in fact specific to them. Thus, we argue, in addition to being potentially more accurate at the individual level than the previously proposed PPP, the predictions of a P4 would also more directly reflect each patient’s own reasons and values. In this article, we review recent discoveries in artificial intelligence research that suggest a P4 is technically feasible, and argue that, if it is developed and appropriately deployed, it should assuage some of the main autonomy-based concerns of critics of the original PPP. We then consider various objections to our proposal and offer some tentative replies. (shrink)

1. A recent writer, who would have it that Biblical history is not so much an impartial or purely factual account of events as a series of edifying proclamations, protests that the objective writing of history is never feasible, since the historian who testifies to some event invariably reflects his own particular standpoint; the further away he is from the event, and the more personally interested he and his generation are in the issue, the more subjective his account is apt (...) to be. This attempt to gather dogmatic figs off skeptical thistles rests upon the mistaken idea that what is called historical knowledge is a residual awareness of once present doings, growing ever fainter and more garbled as the transmission lengthens. Actually it is an acquired awareness of past doings. The historian’s task is not the clerkly compilation of pieces of tradition, i.e., reminiscences of outstanding events handed down orally, and excerpts from memoirs, i.e., an author’s written recollections of his own actions and experiences, of people whom he met, and of affairs to which he was close, if not a party. The historian treats tradition and memoirs not as history but as evidence of history, evidence being anything lying to hand from which the past can be reconstructed. Historiography was set on the path of a systematic and critical study when Herodotus of Halicarnassus made bold to scout some traditional tale and ended his own account of the affair with the words “These, then, are the facts as they appear to me.” If the historian could only serve up, spiced or unspiced, reports that had reached him, his fare would indeed be suspect, and even the agreement of historians would not wash away the taint of fabrication, but, as Napoleon Buonaparte suggested, would merely render history a fable convenue. The past which the critical historian unfolds, however, is what he has come to think for himself really happened. (shrink)

We conducted a study to review the consenting process in a vaginal Microbicide feasibility study conducted in Mazabuka, Zambia. Participants were drawn from those participating in the microbicide study. A questionnaire and focus group discussion were used to collect information on participants understanding of study aims, risks and benefits. Altogether, 200 participants took part in this study. The results of the study showed that while all participants signed or endorsed their thumbprints to the consent forms, full informed consent was (...) not attained from most of the participants since 77% of the participants had numerous questions about the study and 34% did not know who to get in touch with concerning the study. Study objectives were not fully understood by over 61% of the participants. Sixty four percent of the participants were not sure of the risks of taking part in the microbicide study. A significant number thought the study was all about determining their HIV status. Some participants were concerned that their partners were not on the trial as they were convinced that being on the study meant that that they had a lifetime protection from HIV infection. The process of obtaining consent was inadequate as various phases of the study were not fully understood. We recommend the need for researchers to reinforce the consenting process in all studies and more so when studies are conducted in low literacy populations. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the analysis of the feasibility of global justice developed by Pablo Gilabert in his recent book From Global Poverty to Global Equality: A Philosophical Exploration. Gilabert makes many valuable contributions to this topic and I agree with most of his analysis. However, I identify a distinction between strategic justification and moral justification that Gilabert neglects. I show how this distinction is useful in addressing objections to the feasibility of global justice. I also claim (...) that Gilabert makes some problematic assumptions concerning the way in which global justice is morally demanding. (shrink)

Pablo Gilabert and Holly Lawford-Smith have, both in collaboration and individually, provided a compelling account of feasibility, which states that feasibility is both ‘binary’ and ‘scalar’, and both ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’. This two-dimensional analysis, however, has been the subject of four major criticisms: it has been argued that it rests upon a false distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ constraints, that it ignores the importance of intentional action, and that diachronic feasibility is incoherent and insensitive to the existence (...) of epistemic limitations. In this paper, I will argue that such objections do not undermine the persuasiveness of Gilabert and Lawford-Smith’s analysis. Nevertheless, I will contend that the latter is susceptible to two other challenges. First, it mistakenly appeals to morality, and, second, it lacks an analysis of ability. I will maintain, however, that such criticisms can be addressed and that a revised version of the account should be adopted. (shrink)

This work attempts to address some basic feasibility concerns in the global taxation policy proposal. In recent years, moral-political philosophizing has extensively advan-ced the idea of transnational justice through volumes of scholarly literature. In moving the discussions beyond an ideational level and projecting it onto a practical realm, mo-ral-political thinkers have proposed a global taxation policy, the proceeds of the imple-mentation of which are meant to cater for the global poor. This proposal is morally laudable, given that it would (...) substantially benefit the global needy. Nonetheless, the proposal raises some basic feasibility concerns, such as the moral and legal justifiability of the proposal; the nature of the object to be globally taxed and how it is to be globally taxed; the nature of the globalist institution to implement the proposal; the legitimacy challenge of the globalist institution, and the challenge of practical implementation of the proposal by the institution. If the proposal is to succeed, the critical issues ought to be constructively addressed. Given that institutionalism necessarily emerges in the fea-sibility concerns, an institutionalist approach is advanced in this work to constructively address them. (shrink)

Historically, conscientious objection has been associated with military service. Currently, however, it does not occur exclusively in response to compulsory military service. With increasing frequency, health care professionals, including those who practice in institutional settings such as hospitals and long-term care facilities, conscientiously object to providing specific medical services. This chapter provides a framework for managing conscientious objection within institutional settings. Criteria are provided for determining when refusals to provide medical services are conscientious objections. Reasons are offered for (...) accommodating conscientious objectors and for denying or limiting accommodation. A reasonable accommodation approach, which consists in five requirements, is explained and defended: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s/surrogate’s timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on other clinicians, supervisors, department heads, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. (5) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if it will not enable invidious discrimination. (shrink)

Background: The COVID-19 crisis has had a considerable mental health impact on healthcare workers. High levels of psychological distress are expected to have a significant impact on healthcare systems, warranting the need for evidence-based psychological interventions targeting stress and fostering resilience in this population. Online cognitive behavioral therapy has proved to be effective in targeting stress and promoting resilience. However, online CBT programs targeting stress in healthcare workers are lacking.Objective: The aim of our study is to evaluate the feasibility (...) and acceptability of an internet-based CBT intervention, the My Health Too program we developed during the first COVID-19 epidemic peak in France.Methods: We recruited 10 participants among Alsace region hospital staff during the first peak of the pandemic in France. They were given 1 week to test the website and were then asked to answer an internet survey and a semi-structured phone interview.Results: We conducted a thematic analysis of the content from the phone interviews. Major themes were identified, discussed and coded: the technical aspects, the content of the website and its impact on participants’ emotions and everyday life. Overall, the participants reported finding the website easy to use and interactive. They described the resources as easy to understand, readily usable, and useful in inducing calm and in helping them practice self-compassion.Conclusion: Our results suggest that the My Health Too online CBT program is highly feasible and acceptable to healthcare workers during the highly stressful times of the pandemic peak. The feedback provided helped to improve the program whose efficacy is to be tested. (shrink)

Humans routinely modify their walking speed to adapt to functional goals and physical demands. However, damage to the central nervous system often results in abnormal modulation of walking speed and increased risk of falls. There is considerable interest in treatment modalities that can provide safe and salient training opportunities, feedback about walking performance, and that may augment less reliable sensory feedback within the CNS after injury or disease. Fully immersive virtual reality technologies show benefits in boosting training-related gains in walking (...) performance; however, they lack views of the real world that may limit functional carryover. Augmented reality and mixed reality head-mount displays provide partially immersive environments to extend the virtual reality benefits of interacting with virtual objects but within an unobstructed view of the real world. Despite this potential advantage, the feasibility of using MR-HMD visual feedback to promote goal-directed changes in overground walking speed remains unclear. Thus, we developed and evaluated a novel mixed reality application using the Microsoft HoloLens MR-HMD that provided real-time walking speed targets and augmented visual feedback during overground walking. We tested the application in a group of adults not living with disability and examined if they could use the targets and visual feedback to walk at 85%, 100%, and 115% of each individual’s self-selected speed. We examined whether individuals were able to meet each target gait speed and explored differences in accuracy across repeated trials and at the different speeds. Additionally, given the importance of task-specificity to therapeutic interventions, we examined if walking speed adjustment strategies were consistent with those observed during usual overground walking, and if walking with the MR-HMD resulted in increased variability in gait parameters. Overall, participants matched their overground walking speed to the target speed of the MR-HMD visual feedback conditions. The percent inaccuracy was approximately 5% across all speed matching conditions and remained consistent across walking trials after the first overall walking trial. Walking with the MR-HMD did not result in more variability in walking speed, however, we observed more variability in stride length and time when walking with feedback from the MR-HMD compared to walking without feedback. The findings offer support for mixed reality-based visual feedback as a method to provoke goal-specific changes in overground walking behavior. Further studies are necessary to determine the clinical safety and efficacy of this MR-HMD technology to provide extrinsic sensory feedback in combination with traditional treatments in rehabilitation. (shrink)

Background Conscientious objection is a person’s refusal to fulfill a legal duty due to their ethical values, religious beliefs, or ideological affiliations. In nursing, it refers to a nurse’s refusal to perform an action or participate in a particular situation based on their conscience. Conscientious objection has become a highly contested topic in recent years. Research objectives This study had four objectives: (1) eliciting information on how Turkish nurses perceive conscientious objection, (2) revealing whether their moral beliefs (...) affect the care they provide, (3) determining their experiences with conscientious objection, and (4) identifying existing or potential issues of conscientious objection. Research design This qualitative study collected data through semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Participants The sample consisted of 21 nurses. Ethical considerations The study was approved by an ethics committee. Confidentiality and anonymity were guaranteed. Participation was voluntary. Findings The analysis revealed four themes: (1) universal values of nursing (professional values), (2) experiences with conscientious objection (refusing to provide care/not providing care), (3) possible effects of conscientious objection (positive and negative), and (4) scope of conscientious objection (grounded and groundless). Conclusion Participants did not want to provide care due to (1) patient characteristics or (2) their own religious and moral beliefs. Participants stated that conscientious objection should be limited in the case of moral dilemmas and accepted only if the healthcare team agreed on it. Further research is warranted to define conscientious objection and determine its possible effects, feasibility, and scope in Turkey. (shrink)

Reform of the funding of hospitals and other health services has been one of the most important health policy initiatives undertaken by governments in recent years. A number of countries have adopted the casemix approach to payment, or are currently exploring the feasibility of its introduction. Under casemix arrangements hospitals are funded on the basis of the numbers and types of patients they treat. This paper analyses, and finds inadequate, various objections to casemix funding, including those which appeal to (...) considerations of ethics and equity. (shrink)

The ‘limits of markets’ debate broadly concerns the question of when it is (im)permissible to have a market in some good. Markets can be of tremendous benefit to society, but many have felt that certain goods should not be for sale (e.g., sex, kidneys, bombs). Their sale is argued to be corrupting, exploitative, or to express a form of disrespect. InMarkets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski have recently argued to the contrary: For any good, as long as it (...) is permissible to give it for free, then it is permissible to give it for money. Their thesis has led to a number of engaging objections, and I leverage recent work on the nature of feasibility within political philosophy to offer a new challenge.I argue that feasibility offers a constraint on which markets can be permissibly implemented. Though it may be possible to create a morally acceptable version of an otherwise repugnant market, some of these markets may be infeasible, and so we are not permitted to implement them. After laying out this challenge, I consider several replies. They concern the relevance of feasibility, and whether any markets really are infeasible. This provides an opportunity to explore the dangers of pursuing the infeasible and with markets generally. I conclude by considering what might lead us to pursue these markets despite their infeasibility, or how knowledge of infeasibility may prove useful regardless. (shrink)

The market relationships are being contested. This can be seen in the increasing number of alternative social experiments in the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ which propose to think out the present market relationships in a different way, in particular in establishing exchange value and in facilitating access to trade. These practical alternatives are supported by trends in academic circles that over the past three decades have opposed neoliberal capitalism and individualism in today's commercialised society. Calling for greater solidarity and social (...) justice in economic relationships, in particular, partisans of social and solidarity economics, identifying with these trends, demand new forms of exchange. The objective of this article is to re-examine these demands. What exactly do the SSE mean by ‘solidarity’ and ‘solidarity-based economy'? We would like to trace the contours of this theoretical and political project and to assess the practicability of the proposed alternative to neoliberal capitalism. (shrink)

Thousands of people will suffer and die this year because we do not donate enough substances of human origin, including blood plasma. To solve this, some recommend that we allow commercial organizations to assist in collecting these and that we permit donor compensation as a tool to encourage donations. Many object to these proposals, including for semiotic or expressive reasons. But insofar as these objections rely on meanings and these meanings are social constructs, we can revise the meaning of these (...) practices to avoid commodification. Revision may work in principle, but in practice some complain that changing meanings may be too difficult or practically infeasible. This essay attempts to show that this is not so in a wide range of cases and uses the case of commercial compensated blood plasma collection as an illustration. Getting people to conceive of this practice not as payment for blood plasma but as compensation for the time, effort, and inconvenience associated with the giving of plasma is practically feasible and preferable to prohibition. (shrink)

Abstract. In this article we developed scientific and applied foundations of commercialization of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects, on the example of exhausted mines. It is determined that the category of “anthropogenic object” can be considered in a narrow-applied sense, as specific anthropogenic objects to ensure the target needs, and in a broad theoretical sense, meaning everything that is created and changed by human influence, that is the objects of both artificial and natural origin. It was determined that problems (...) of commercialization of the natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects are most often considered by researchers for specific objects, without having complex methodological coverage from the point of view of combining environmental, technical, economic and managerial components. When studying the substantiation of the scientific base, the authors confirmed the feasibility of the commercialization of natural-resource potential of anthropogenic objects on the example of a number of theoretical scientific studies in reclamation, reconstruction, recreation, remediation, restoration of biological productivity and economic value of land disturbed by economic activity. The considered examples of exhausted mines in the 21st century in the USA, Canada, Germany, Romania, and Poland indicate a wide range of opportunities for their commercialization. The study of the potential for commercialization of exhausted mines in the post-Soviet countries testified to the underused reserves for the commercialization of their nature-resource potential and their high potential for further development. The authors proposed the identification of anthropogenic objects on the basic livelihood spheres of society. There were identified the main system (natural, biological, technical, economic, social, managerial) and structural (subjects, trends, threats, risks, problems, challenges) factors of diagnosing the state of an anthropogenic object. A set of measures has been developed for commercialization of an anthropogenic object in functional and production activities, product policy, financial and investment spheres, pricing and sales policies, promotion, management and determination of property rights. Recommendations were provided on optimizing the management decision-making process based on a set of positivistic development principles, methods, and management functions. The study allows international organizations, state and local authorities, territorial communities, owners and potential investors to see new opportunities and make mutually beneficial decisions on the rational use of the nature-resource potential of anthropogenic objects. (shrink)

During long-term refugee displacements, it is common for the refugees’ country of origin to be called on to recognize a right of return. A long-standing tradition of philosophical theorizing is sceptical of such a right. Howard Adelman and Elazar Barkan are contemporary proponents of this view. They argue that, in many cases, it is not feasible for entire refugee populations to return home, and so the notion of a right of return is no right at all. We can call Adelman (...) and Barkan’s view the feasibility objection. Many defenders of rights will deny that empirical facts such as the kind to which Adelman and Barkan appeal are relevant to determining whether a moral entitlement amounts to a right. In contrast, I offer a response to the feasibility objection that does admit the relevance of facts. In my view, considerations of feasibility do matter when determining what rights human beings possess. Nevertheless, the feasibility objection is undone by its failure to acknowledge a distinction between two different kinds of feasibility constraints. ‘Hard’ constraints include logical, nomological and biological considerations. ‘Soft’ constraints include political, cultural and institutional factors. A necessary condition of a moral entitlement achieving the status of a right, I argue, is that it be feasible in the hard sense. Crucially, however, a right need not always be feasible in the soft sense. Refugees can have rights that it is not currently possible to implement politically. (shrink)

In order to study the intelligent collection system of moving object trajectory data under cloud computing, information useful to passengers and taxi drivers is collected from massive trajectory data. This paper uses cloud computing technology, through clustering algorithm and density-based DBSCAN algorithm combined with Map Reduce programming model and design trajectory clustering algorithm. The results show that based on the 8-day data of 15,000 taxis in Shenzhen, the characteristic time period is determined. The passenger hot spot area is obtained by (...) clustering the passenger load points in each time period, which verifies the feasibility of the passenger load point recommendation application based on trajectory clustering. Therefore, in the absence of holidays, the number of passenger hotspots tends to be stable. It is reliable to perform cluster analysis. The recommended application has been demonstrated through experiments, and the implementation results show the rationality of the recommended application design and the feasibility of practice. (shrink)

We argue, in the spirit of some of Jean-Yves Jaffray's work, that explicitly incorporating the information, however imprecise, available to the decision maker is relevant, feasible, and fruitful. In particular, we show that it can lead us to know whether the decision maker has wrong beliefs and whether it matters or not, that it makes it possible to better model and analyze how the decision maker takes into account new information, even when this information is not an event and finally (...) that it is crucial when attempting to identify and measure the decision maker's attitude toward imprecise information. (shrink)

This special issue of HEC Forum includes articles on a wide range of specific topics that make significant contributions to conscientious objection scholarship. In this commentary, it is not feasible to provide a comprehensive analysis of each of the articles; and I have not attempted to do so. Instead, for each article, I have selected specific issues and arguments on which to comment.

Based on the concept of “passengers self-help hubbing,” we build a flight schedule optimization model where maximizing the number of feasible flight connections, indicating transfer opportunities, as one objective and minimizing total slot displacements as the other objective. At the same time, the “Demand Smoothing Model” is introduced into the flight schedule optimization model to reduce the queuing delays for arrival and departure flights. We take into account all aircraft itineraries, the difficulty level of schedule coordination, and the maximum displacement (...) of any single flight acceptable to airlines when optimizing flight schedule. Given an original schedule, the model produces a feasible modified schedule that obeys the slot limits specified for an airport without canceling any flights, increases transfer opportunities, and improves on-time performance for hub airports while reducing interference with airline scheduling preferences. The model was verified with the operating data of the Urumqi international airport, and the results show that minor adjustments to flight schedules can increase the transfer opportunities of the airport and significantly reduce flight queuing delays. (shrink)

The problem of combinatorial optimization is considered in relation to the choice of the location of the location of power supplies when solving the problem of the development of urban distribution networks of power supply. Two methods have been developed for placing power supplies and assigning consumers to them to solve this problem. The first developed method consists in placing power supplies of the same standard sizes, and the second - of different standard sizes. The fundamental difference between the created (...) methods and the existing ones is that the proposed methods take into account all the material of the problem and have specialized methods for coding possible solutions, modified operators of crossing and selection. The proposed methods effectively solve the problem of low inheritance, topological unfeasibility of the found solutions, as a result of which the execution time is significantly reduced and the accuracy of calculations is increased. In the developed methods, the lack of taking into account the restrictions on the placement of new power supplies is realized, which made it possible to solve the problem of applying the methods for a narrow range of problems. A comparative analysis of the results obtained by placing power supplies of the same standard sizes and known methods was carried out, and it was found that the developed method works faster than the known methods. It is shown that the proposed approach ensures stable convergence of the search process by an acceptable number of steps without artificial limitation of the search space and the use of additional expert information on the feasibility of possible solutions. The results obtained allow us to propose effective methods to improve the quality of decisions made on the choice of the location of power supply facilities in the design of urban electrical. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of recent political and economic theory is that, in spite of a period of extended economic difficulty, there has been a growing consensus concerning the virtues of the market economy. In particular, there has been a trend in socialist theory to argue that not only are socialism and the market not incompatible, but that some version of market socialism is the only feasible, practicable, and ethically and politically desirable form of socialism. Notable proponents of this view (...) with whom this paper will be particularly concerned are Selucky, Nove and Hodgson. I will not, in this paper, address the question of whether the market and socialism are necessarily incompatible. Neither will I examine the whole gamut of political and ethical issues surrounding the relation of the market to democracy, freedom, individual rights, and so on – not because they are unimportant, but because they require more extended attention than I could give here. My concern will rather be with some of the economic arguments to which defenders of market socialism have appealed. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to explore the intersection of two issues – both of them of considerable interest in their own right. The first concerns the role that feasibility considerations play in constraining normative claims – claims, say, about what we (individually and collectively) ought to do and to be. This issue has particular relevance for the confrontation of moral philosophy with economics (and social science more generally). The second issue concerns whether normative claims are to be (...) understood as applying only to actions in their own right or (also) non-derivatively to attitudes. Both these issues are ones on which different theorists have taken quite different stands, though we think there is more to be said about them. The point of juxtaposing them lies in the thought that actions and attitudes may be subject to different feasibility constraints – and hence that how we conceive of the role of feasibility in an account of normativity will depend in part on how we conceive of the role of actions and attitudes in normative theorising. (shrink)

This paper investigates feasible ways of destroying artworks, assuming they are abstract objects, or works of a particular art-form, where the works of at least this art-form are assumed to be abstracta. If artworks are eternal, mind-independent abstracta, and hence discovered, rather than created, then they cannot be destroyed, but merely forgotten. For more moderate conceptions of artworks as abstract objects, however, there might be logical space for artwork destruction. Artworks as abstracta have been likened to impure sets (i.e., sets (...) of concrete things, as opposed to pure sets, i.e., sets of nothing but other sets) that have a beginning in time, namely when their members come into being, and an end in time, namely when their members cease to exist. Alternatively, artworks as abstracta have been thought of as types that are created with their first token. Artwork destruction is harder on this account: merely destroying every token might not yet destroy the type. To what extent such similes can be spelt out and made plausible as an ontology of artworks, and what options there are on the different accounts for artwork destruction, is explored in this paper. (shrink)

John Rawls's claim to have demonstrated the superiority of his own two principles of justice to the principle of utility has generated fairly extensive critical discussion. However, this discussion has almost completely disregarded those of Rawls's arguments that are concerned with practicability, despite the significance accorded to them by Rawls himself. This article addresses the three most important of Rawls's objections against the practicability of utilitarianism: that utilitarianism would generate too much disagreement to be politically workable, that a utilitarian society (...) would be vulnerable to social instability, and that publicly adopting the principle of utility as the ultimate criterion of right and wrong would undermine the self-respect of some citizens. It is argued that Rawls's objections are either exaggerated or mistaken, and that this may have an impact on the assessment of `justice as fairness' as well as the utilitarian doctrine. Key Words: justice as fairness • feasibility • disagreement • stability • self-respect. (shrink)

Objective This work disentangles moral tolerance from moral relativism and reveals their distinct personological meanings. Both constructs have long been of interest to moral philosophers, moral psychologists, and everyday people, and they may play prominent roles in the feasibility of modern diverse societies. However, they have been criticized as devaluing morality and as producing overly permissive societies. Moreover, although they lack necessary conceptual implications for each other, they are easily (and often) conflated. -/- Method Three studies included nine samples (...) (total N > 3,200, 40%–50% female, Mage = 38–40, 83% white). Participants completed (online) new measures of moral tolerance and moral relativism, along with measures of 40 additional constructs. -/- Results Results reveal robust psychometric quality of the new measures (the Moral Relativism Scale and the Moral Tolerance Scale), demonstrate that the constructs are empirically overlapping but separable, and highlight their distinct personological networks. Moral relativism was associated with liberal political views and a lowered valuing/enacting of moral values. Moral tolerance was weakly associated with liberal political views but was strongly related to a broad range of both liberal and conservative moral values. -/- Conclusion This work yields new tools for investigating moral character, and it reveals the differential meaning of two important moral constructs. (shrink)