This paper applies insights from behavioral economics and nudge theory to foster sustainable and responsible investment. SRI provides an opportunity to express and promote ethical values via choice of financial instruments. While policy-makers have tried to encourage greater participation in SRI, the majority of retail investors retain a conventional approach to investment. I develop a conceptual framework to improve the effectiveness of SRI policy-making. The first part of the framework comprises a transmission mechanism which emphasizes the role of SRI as (...) a driver for sustainable development. The second part is a model of the individual decision for or against SRI. The framework suggests that low SRI demand is a case of behavioral market failure, and that nudging is a suitable tool for dismantling behavioral barriers to SRI. A specific example of smart choice architecture is used to illustrate the framework’s potential in the design of an SRI nudge. Assuming the nudge stands up to the rigors of empirical testing, it may well provide a feasible alternative for policy-makers. (shrink)

We examine the conditions under which we can keep simplicity or categoricity after adding a Skolem function to the theory.

It is our concern that European Union Directive 2010/63/EU with its current project evaluation of animal research in the form of a harm-benefit analysis may lead to an erosion of the credibility of research. The HBA assesses whether the inflicted harm on animals is outweighed by potential prospective benefits. Recent literature on prospective benefit analysis prioritizes "societal benefits" that have a foreseeable, positive impact on humans, animals, or the environment over benefit in the form of knowledge. In this study, we (...) will argue that whether practical benefits are realized is (a) impossible to predict and (b) exceeds the scope and responsibility of researchers. Furthermore, we believe that the emphasis on practical benefits has the drawback of driving researchers into speculation on the societal benefit of their research and, therefore, into promising too much, thereby leading to a loss of trust and credibility. Thus, the concepts of benefit and benefit assessment in the HBA require a re-evaluation in a spirit that embraces the value of knowledge in our society. The generation of scientific knowledge has been utilised to great benefit for humans, animals, and the environment. The HBA, as it currently stands, tends to turn this idea upside down and implies that research is of value only if the resulting findings bring about immediate societal benefit. (shrink)

Der Begriff ›Tierversuch‹ kann in einem engen und in einem weiten Sinne verwendet werden. Im weiten Sinne kann man unter ›Tierversuch‹ jede wissenschaftliche oder experimentelle Verwendung von Tieren verstehen. Im engeren Sinn, der auch dem Tierversuchsrecht der Europäischen Union oder dem deutschen Tierschutz-Gesetz zugrunde liegt, bezeichnet der Begriff ›Tierversuch‹ solche wissenschaftlichen Verfahren mit lebenden Tieren, die mit Schmerzen, Belastungen oder Schäden der Tiere verbunden sein können. Artikel 3 der einschlägigen Richtlinie 2010/63/EU beispielsweise definiert den Tierversuch als »jede invasive oder nicht (...) invasive Verwendung eines Tieres zu Versuchszwecken oder anderen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken mit bekanntem oder unbekanntem Ausgang, oder zu Ausbildungszwecken, die bei dem Tier Schmerzen, Leiden, Ängste oder dauerhafte Schäden in einem Ausmaß verursachen kann, das dem eines Kanüleneinstichs gemäß guter tierärztlicher Praxis gleichkommt oder darüber hinaus geht«. Der Geltungsbereich der Richtlinie umfasst neben lebenden, nichtmenschlichen Wirbeltieren auch selbständig Nahrung aufnehmende Larven, Säugetierföten ab dem letzten Drittel ihrer normalen Entwicklung und lebende Kopffüßer. Ähnliche Bestimmungen finden sich auch im deutschen Tierschutz-Gesetz. (shrink)

From the analysis of the local and provincial elected people in the province of East-Flanders during the period 1946-1991 one can conclude that there are barriers for women, lower social classes and certain age categories preventing them from moving up the local and provincial political! elites.Clear differences between local and provincial elected people are present when comparing professional backgrounds with the composition of the total working population in East-Flanders. Workers are neither on the local, nor on the provincial level very (...) numerous. However the large absence with the provincial elected people bhs to be emphazised. Secondly farmers, intellectual and free professions, employees, self-employed and employers are on both levels constantly overrepresented. However the overrepresentation of farmers can mainly be situated on the local level until the mergers of 1976. For intellectual and free professions, till the mid-sixties the overrepresentation can mainly be situated on the provincial level, from then onwards on the local level. The employees' overrepresentation has always been most important on the provincial level white the self-employed and employers are mainly overrepresented on the local level from 1970 onwards. Finally till about 1970 teaching personnel was underrepresented on both levels white from then onwards there is an overrepresentation. (shrink)

From the analysis of the social background of the local elected people in Flanders during the period 1946-1988 one can conclude that there are barriers for women, lower social classes and certain age categories preventing them from moving up the local political elite. The democratization process of the Flemish local political elite bas not yet made much progress. It appears from the fact that men are more numerous in political fonctions, that the distribution among the various professional categories strongly deviates (...) from the general social stratification and from the conclusion that certain age categories are clearly dominant. It is however clear that the composition of the elites neverfully reflect society as a whole. On the other hand, the important fact is that the differences cannot be reduced to smaller variances which inevitably go together with any representative system. (shrink)

We define a generalized notion of rank for stable theories without dense forking chains, and use it to derive that every type is domination-equivalent to a finite product of regular types. We apply this to show that in a small theory admitting finite coding, no realisation of a nonforking extension of some strong type can be algebraic over some realisation of a forking extension.

A preeminent scholar of American studies explores the American literary and philosophical traditions, and the connections between them, by investigating, first, Emerson's thought and its influence on American writing and, second, the pluralistic and radical ways in which American modernists engaged the world.

We construct a type p with preweight ω with respect to itself in a theory with few types. A type with this property must be present in a stable theory with finitely many (but more than one) countable models. The construction is a modification of Hrushovski's important pseudoplane construction.

The “One Health” initiative promises to combine different health-related issues concerning humans and animals in an overarching concept and in related practices to the benefit of both humans and animals. Far from dismissing One Health, this paper nevertheless argues that different veterinary interventions are determined by social practices and connected expectations and are, thus, hardly compliant with only one single conceptualization of health, as the One Health concept suggests. One Health relies on a naturalistic understanding of health focusing on similar (...) bodies that show a similar etiology. However, logics, normativity, and practices exhibit differences when it comes to combatting infectious diseases, maintaining productivity of livestock animals or preventing companion animals from suffering. Therefore, drawing from Charles Rosenberg’s groundbreaking texts on framing disease, we suggest to conceive of health as dispersed in different frames. Thus, this paper proposes to interpret health as complex and multi-layered concept. We distinguish and introduce an objectivist, a functional, and a sentientistic frame of health. Instead of reducing the differential veterinary practices to one paradigmatic understanding, health is seen as a model case of Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance. Different and distinct perspectives on veterinary medicine show sufficient overlapping that allows for a common conceptualization, but there is not one single underlying logic suitable to understand and ethically reflect all veterinary interventions. This differentiability promises to reduce moral stress in veterinary professionals since it allows the interpretation of various, seemingly contradicting practices as dependent on multi-layered and socially determined scopes of responsibility. (shrink)

During the Third Reich, state‐sponsored violence was linked to scientific research on many levels. Prisoners were used as involuntary subjects for medical experiments, and body parts from victims were used in anatomy and neuropathology on a massive scale. In many cases, such specimens remained in scientific collections and were used until long after the war. International bioethics, for a long time, had little to say on the issue. Since the late 1980s, with a renewed interest in the Holocaust and other (...) Nazi crimes, a consensus has increasingly taken hold that research on human tissues and body parts from the Nazi era is inadmissible, and that such specimens should be removed from scientific collections and buried. The question of what to do with scientific data obtained from these sources has not received adequate attention, however, and remains unsolved. This paper traces the history of debates about the ethical implications of using human tissue or body parts from the Nazi period for scientific purposes, primarily in the fields of anatomy and neuropathology. It also examines how this issue, from after the war until today, influenced the establishment of legal and bioethical norms on the use of human remains from morally tainted sources, with a particular emphasis on Germany and Austria. It is argued that the use of such specimens and of data derived from them is unethical not only because of potential harms to posthumous rights of the victims, but also because such use constitutes a moral harm to society at large. (shrink)

Tierschutz neu denken: Würde – nicht nur Leid vermeiden.

We show that every reduct of a stable. CM-trivial theory of finite U-rank is CM-trivial.

For each k > 0 we construct an algebraic structure over which the polynomial hierarchy collapses at level k. We also find an algebraic structure over which the polynomial hierarchy does not collapse.

Systemic risks are risks produced through interconnected non-wrongful actions of individuals, in the sense that an individual's action is a negligible cause of the risk. Due to scale effects of interaction, their consequences can be serious but they are also difficult to predict and assess via a risk assessment. Since we can have good reason to engage in the interconnected activities giving rise to systemic risk, we incur a concurrent collective responsibility to ensure that the risks are fairly distributed and (...) well regulated. James argues that fairness in this context requires taking reasonably available precautions ensuring for each risk-bearer a favourable ratio of expected benefits over expected losses. In sections 2 and 3 we argue that such a conception of fairness applies but only on the condition that the systemic risks created are irreversible risks and that the general background conditions of justice are imperfectly fair. When risks are reversible, compensatory justice can correct for unfairness in risk imposition. Where risks are irreversible, compensatory justice necessarily fails, giving rise to a collective responsibility to regulate fairly ex ante. Additionally, where background conditions of justice are fully fair and the systemic risk is well understood, risk bearers can be said to have consented to the systemic risk. If they are not fair, we argue that the primary political obligation should lie in fixing the fairness of the backgrounds of justice. A related reason for addressing the general background conditions of fairness is that James’ account of fairness in systemic risk imposition encounters a baseline problem. If expected risks and benefits are calculated again an unfair historic background condition, systemic risk imposition would not be fully fair. Section 4 shows why differences in evidentiary uncertainty as to probability and levels of harm and effective responses require a normatively appropriate response in the form of additional precautions. We show that the evidentiary standards set for risk-based cost-benefit analysis have a connection with deontology because they express a postulate of equal treatment in formal terms. Systemic risks can have different possible degrees of epistemological certainty due to factors of social and natural origin, such as more available research funding or higher degrees of complexity for some systemic risks but not others. These differences have to be mitigated by taking even greater precautions in difficult-to-research systemic risks. (shrink)

0-categorical o-minimal structures were completely described by Pillay and Steinhorn 565–592), and are essentially built up from copies of the rationals as an ordered set by ‘cutting and copying’. Here we investigate the possible structures which an 0-categorical weakly o-minimal set may carry, and find that there are some rather more interesting examples. We show that even here the possibilities are limited. We subdivide our study into the following principal cases: the structure is 1-indiscernible, in which case all possibilities are (...) classified up to binary structure; the structure is 2-indiscernible, classified up to ternary structure; the structure is 3-indiscernible, in which case we show that it is k-indiscernible for every finite k. We also make some remarks about the possible structures of higher arities which an 0-categorical weakly o-minimal structure may carry. (shrink)

Die Idee einer klaren Einteilung in Wesen mit bzw. ohne moralischen Status spielt in der Tierethik eine zentrale Rolle und ist entscheidend für die Grundfrage der Tierethik »Was darf man mit Tieren tun?«, d. h. die Frage nach dem moralisch richtigen Umgang mit Tieren. Das Konzept des moralischen Status und sein Verständnis ist ein wichtiges Fundament, wenn es darum geht zu klären, ob und welche moralische Verantwortung wir gegenüber Tieren haben.Der moralische Status wird aufgrund von Eigenschaften zu- oder abgesprochen, die (...) als moralisch relevant erachtet werden. Während gemeinhin anerkannt wird, dass Menschen diese Eigenschaften besitzen und deshalb Schutz um ihrer selbst willen erfahren sollen, ist keineswegs ausgemacht, dass Tiere die als relevant betrachteten Eigenschaften haben und somit in den Kreis der moralischen Gemeinschaft aufgenommen werden können. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that fairness in trade calls for relaxing existing WTO rules to include a greater liberalisation of labour migration. After having addressed several objections to global egalitarianism, it will argue, first, that the world’s rich and the world’s poor participate in a same multilateral trading system whose point is primarily to reduce trade barriers, and hence to establish global economic competitions, in order to raise their standards of living; second, that these competitions are subject to requirements (...) of formal and substantive fairness; and, third, that the substantive fairness of the competitions that are taking place in the field of trade in goods is likely to require a greater liberalisation of labour migration, especially low-skilled labour from developing countries. (shrink)