So‐called nudge policies utilize insights from behavioral science to achieve policy outcomes. Nudge policies try to improve people's decisions by changing the ways options are presented to them, rather than changing the options themselves or incentivizing or coercing people. Nudging has been met with great enthusiasm but also fierce criticism. This paper provides an overview of the debate on the ethics of nudging to date. After outlining arguments in favor of nudging, we first discuss different objections that all revolve around (...) the worry that nudging vitiates personal autonomy. We split up this worry into different dimensions of autonomy, such as freedom of choice, volitional autonomy, rational agency, and freedom as nondomination. We next discuss worries that nudging is manipulative, violates human dignity, and prevents more important structural reform. Throughout, we will present responses that proponents of nudging can muster. On the whole, we conclude that the objections fail to establish that the nudge program as a whole should be rejected. At the same time, they give us important guidance when moving towards an ethical assessment of nudges on a case‐by‐case basis. Towards the end, we provide some possible ways forward in debates around the ethics of nudging. (shrink)

Withholding or withdrawing life-saving ventilators can become necessary when resources are insufficient. In the USA, such rationing has unique social justice dimensions. Structural elements of dominant allocation frameworks simultaneously advantage white communities, and disadvantage Black communities—who already experience a disproportionate burden of COVID-19-related job losses, hospitalisations and mortality. Using the example of New Jersey’s Crisis Standard of Care policy, we describe how dominant rationing guidance compounds for many Black patients prior unfair structural disadvantage, chiefly due to the way creatinine and (...) life expectancy are typically considered.We outline six possible policy options towards a more just approach: improving diversity in decision processes, adjusting creatinine scores, replacing creatinine, dropping creatinine, finding alternative measures, adding equity weights and rejecting the dominant model altogether. We also contrast these options with making no changes, which is not a neutral default, but in separate need of justification, despite a prominent claim that it is simply based on ‘objective medical knowledge’. In the regrettable absence of fair federal guidance, hospital and state-level policymakers should reflect on which of these, or further options, seem feasible and justifiable.Irrespective of which approach is taken, all guidance should be supplemented with a monitoring and reporting requirement on possible disparate impacts. The hope that we will be able to continue to avoid rationing ventilators must not stand in the way of revising guidance in a way that better promotes health equity and racial justice, both to be prepared, and given the significant expressive value of ventilator guidance. (shrink)

Proponents of the reasoning view analyze normative reasons as premises of good reasoning and explain the normativity of reasons by appeal to their role as premises of good reasoning. The aim of this paper is to cast doubt on the reasoning view by providing counterexamples to the proposed analysis of reasons, counterexamples in which premises of good reasoning towards φ‐ing are not reasons to φ.

The Covid‐19 pandemic needs to be considered from two perspectives simultaneously. First, there are questions about which policies are most effective and fair in the here and now, as the pandemic unfolds. These polices concern, for example, who should receive priority in being tested, how to implement contact tracing, or how to decide who should get ventilators or vaccines when not all can. Second, it is imperative to anticipate the medium‐ and longer‐term consequences that these policies have. The case of (...) vaccine rationing is particularly instructive. Ethical, epidemiological, and economic reasons demand that rationing approaches give priority to groups who have been structurally and historically disadvantaged, even if this means that overall life years gained may be lower. (shrink)

Broome takes the debate on rationality to be concerned with the ordinary use of 'rational'. I argue that this is at best misleading. For the object of current theories of rationality is determined by a specific use of 'rational' that is intimately connected to blame and praise. I call the property it refers to 'rationalityRESP'. This focus on rationalityRESP, I argue, has two significant implications for Broome's critique of theories of rationality as reasons-responsiveness. First, rationalityRESP is plausibly conceived of as (...) a kind of reasons-responsiveness. Secondly, Broome's dispute with internalists about normativity as well as his dispute with externalists about rationality both hinge on questions regarding the concept of responsibility. I conclude that philosophers should integrate discussions about responsibility in their debates about rationality. (shrink)

Eva Schmidt argues that facts about incoherent beliefs can be non-evidential epistemic reasons to suspend judgment. In this commentary, I argue that incoherence-based reasons to suspend are epistemically superfluous: if the subjects in Schmidt’s cases ought to suspend judgment, then they should do so merely on the basis of their evidential reasons. This suggests a more general strategy to reduce the apparent normativity of coherence to the normativity of evidence. I conclude with some remarks on the independent interest (...) that reasons-first epistemology might have within an evidentialist framework. (shrink)

I present an explanatory argument for the reasons-first view: It is superior to knowledge-first views in particular in that it can both explain the specific epistemic role of perception and account for the shape and extent of epistemic justification.

Implementing equity principles in resource allocation is challenging. In one approach, some US states implemented race-based prioritisation of COVID-19 vaccines in response to vast racial inequities in COVID-19 outcomes, while others used place-based allocation. In a nationally representative survey of n=2067 US residents, fielded in mid-April 2021, we explored the public acceptability of race-based prioritisation compared with place-based prioritisation, by offering vaccines to harder hit zip codes before residents of other zip codes. We found that in general, a majority of (...) respondents supported the place-based approach, and a substantial proportion supported the race-based plan. Support was higher among Democrats compared with Republicans. All US residents became eligible for vaccines on 19 April 2021 but as of this writing, equitable uptake of vaccines remains urgent not only for first doses for adults but also for boosters and for children. Our findings also provide a benchmark for future pandemic planning that racial and social justice in vaccine allocation are salient considerations for the public. The findings may furthermore be of interest to policy makers designing vaccine allocation frameworks in countries with comparable health disparities across social, ethnic and racial groups, and more broadly, for those exploring ways of promoting equity in resource allocation outside of a pandemic setting. (shrink)

The link between leadership and mental health at the workplace is well established by prior research. However, most of the studies have addressed this relationship from a single-source perspective. The aim of this study was to examine how supervisor and employee ratings of health-oriented leadership correspond to each other and which sources are predictive for employee mental health. We assessed data within 99 teams containing 713 employees in 11 different companies in Southern Germany. Supervisors and their staff completed questionnaires on (...) the supervisors’ health-oriented staff-care dimensions awareness, value of health and health behavior and current mental distress. Hierarchical linear models revealed that supervisors’ self-ratings were significantly related to their employees’ ratings only on the health behavior dimension, but not on the health awareness and value of health dimensions. Also, supervisors rated themselves significantly higher on HoL compared to their employees. Employee ratings of HoL significantly predicted their own level of mental distress, whereas supervisor ratings of HoL did not predict employees’ mental distress at the team level. Supervisors’ self-ratings of HoL did not influence the relationship between employee ratings of HoL and their mental distress on an individual level. These results highlight the complex relationship between multisource assessments of HoL and employee mental health, emphasizing the importance of subjective perception for mental health. Future studies should investigate under which conditions supervisor and employee ratings correspond to each other and are predictive for mental health at the workplace. (shrink)

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe disturbances in a subject’s sense of identity. Persons with BPD suffer from recurrent feelings of emptiness, a lack of self-feeling, and painful incoherence, especially regarding their own desires, how they see and feel about others, their life goals, or the roles to which they commit themselves. Over the past decade or so, clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists have turned to philosophical conceptions of selfhood to better understand the borderline-specific ruptures in the sense (...) of identity, which are frequently associated with severe affective instability and turbulence in interpersonal relationships. Fuchs (2007) has suggested that these disturbances in self-experience can best be described and explained by using notions—widely discussed in philosophy and psychology—ofnarrativityandnarrative identity. On such a narrative view, key features of BPD present significant modifications of proto-narrative structures and inhibit the development of a narrative identity, resulting in a disturbed sense of identity. Although the role of narrativity in BPD has been acknowledged by many researchers, some have voiced dissatisfaction with what they take to be limitations of a narrativistic understanding of the disorders of identity characterizing BPD, and have proposed alternative, allegedly non-narrativistic, accounts. In this paper, we critically examine an example of the latter, viz. Gold and Kyratsous’ (2017) account ofthe person as an intrapersonal team reasoner. We defend a narrativistic understanding of BPD identity disorder against their objections. To this end, we propose a broader, and more finely-differentiated, concept of narrativity. On this account, four aspects of narrativity are distinguished, the disordering of which can affect those with BPD. As it turns out, our account implies that even Gold and Kyratsous—in order to ground their approach—must either make use of these aspects or propose an as-yet unarticulated alternative. This casts doubt upon whether their approach is non-narrativistic after all. (shrink)

Although Peirce frequently insisted that continuity was a core component of his philosophical thought, his conception of it evolved considerably during his lifetime, culminating in a theory grounded primarily in topical geometry. Two manuscripts, one of which has never before been published, reveal that his formulation of this approach was both earlier and more thorough than most scholars seem to have realized. Combining these and other relevant texts with the better-known passages highlights a key ontological distinction: a collection is bottom-up, (...) such that the parts are real and the whole is an ens rationis, while a continuum is top-down, such that the whole is real and the parts are entia rationis. Accordingly, five properties are jointly necessary and sufficient for Peirce’s topical continuum: rationality, divisibility, homogeneity, contiguity, and inexhaustibility. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but the name that he preferred for his overall system of thought was ‘‘synechism’’ because the principle of continuity was its central thesis. He considered time to be the paradigmatic example and often wrote about its various aspects while discussing other topics. This essay draws from many of those widely scattered texts to formulate a distinctively Peircean philosophy of time, incorporating extensive quotations into a comprehensive and coherent synthesis. Time (...) is not an existential subject with past, present, and future as its incompatible predicates, but rather a real law enabling things to possess contrary qualities at its different determinations, and Peirce identifies four classes of such states based on when and how they are realized. Because time is continuous, it is not composed of instants, and even the present is an indefinite lapse during which we are directly aware of constant change. The accomplished past is perpetually growing as the possibilities and conditional necessities of the future are actualized at the present, and the entire universe evolves from being utterly indeterminate toward being absolutely determinate. Nevertheless, time must return into itself even if events are limited to only a portion of it, a paradox that is resolved with the aid of projective geometry. Temporal synechism thus touches on a broad spectrum of philosophical issues including mathematics, phenomenology, logic, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Der Band bietet einen systematischen Überblick über das Verhältnis von Literatur und Philosophie. Philosophische, literarische und literaturwissenschaftliche Ansätze kommen gleichberechtigt zu Wort. Die Beiträge loten die Bedeutung von Literatur aus und präsentieren gattungstheoretische Überlegungen zu literarischen Formen der Philosophie. Studien über philosophierende Literatur und philosophische Reflexionen über Literatur beschließen den Band.

This paper deals primarily with theDoctrine of Method(DM) of Kant’sDoctrine of Virtue. First, I present an overview of theDM(1.1) and an explanation of how it is possible to teach virtue (1.2). Second, I address the following issues: Why is aDMnecessary at all (2.1)? How does theDMrelate to what Kant calls casuistry (2.2)? I will argue that wide duties have two essential characteristics: They command the right kind of moral motivation in terms of a moral maxim, and they allow for latitude. (...) The fact that wide duties command the right kind of motivation leads to theDM; the latitude of wide duties, however, leads to casuistry. To unfold this interpretation, it must also be shown that both imperfect and perfect duties are wide duties. (shrink)

During gestation, fetomaternal exchange occurs in the villous tree (labyrinth) of the placenta. Development of this structure depends on tightly coordinated cellular processes of branching morphogenesis and differentiation of specialized trophoblast cells. The basal chorionic trophoblast (BCT) cell layer that localizes next to the chorioallantoic interface is of critical importance for labyrinth morphogenesis in rodents. Gcm1‐positive cell clusters within this layer initiate branching morphogenesis thereby guiding allantoic fetal blood vessels towards maternal blood sinuses. Later these cells differentiate and contribute to (...) the syncytiotrophoblast of the fetomaternal barrier. Additional cells within the BCT layer sustain continued morphogenesis, possibly through a repopulating progenitor population. Several mouse mutants highlight the importance of a structurally intact BCT epithelium, and a growing number of studies addresses its patterning and epithelial architecture. Here, we review and discuss emerging concepts in labyrinth development focussing on the biology of the BCT cell layer. (shrink)

The World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki is one of the most important and influential international research ethics documents. Launched in 1964, when ethical guidance for research was scarce, the Declaration comprised eleven basic principles and provisions on clinical research. The document has since evolved to a complex set of principles, norms, and directions for action of varying degrees of specificity, ranging from specific rules to broad aspirational statements. It has been revised six times in an effort to maintain its (...) influence. While all revisions were the result of vigorous debate, the 2000 revision and two subsequent notes of clarification spurred particular controversy surrounding the use of placebo in clinical research and the standard of care and post-trial obligations in research in developing countries. Several institutions opted to cite earlier versions of the Declaration, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently removed all reference to the Declaration in its approval requirements for drugs and biological products that are studied outside the United States. (shrink)

Whereas in the first half of the 20th century, proclamation was the focal point of pastoral care in Germany, the 1970s witnessed an embracing of the American pastoral care movement. From then on, pastoral care was increasingly understood as accompanying patients whilst adopting the spiritual dimension. Nowadays, Christian chaplains are encountering an increasing number of patients from different religious communities. Various models have been proposed to help Protestant chaplains find an authentic form of pastoral care suitable for all religions. Until (...) a clear position is assumed with regard to Christianity's demands of absolutism, however, none of these approaches can be satisfactory. (shrink)

The mechanistic approach in the cognitive and biological sciences emphasizes that scientific explanations succeed by analyzing the mechanisms underlying phenomena across multiple levels. In this paper, we propose a formal strategy to establish such multi-level mechanistic models, which are foundational to mechanistic explanations. Our objectives are twofold: First, we introduce the novel "mLCA" (multi-Level Coincidence Analysis) script, which transforms binary data tables from tests on mechanistic systems into mechanistic models consistent with those tables. Second, we provide several philosophical insights derived (...) from the outcomes generated by this script and its underlying algorithm. Using illustrative examples, we defend the following claims: 1. Inference methods for generating mechanistic models generally require information on how causal factors are assigned to different levels within data tables generated by multi-level structures. 2. The mLCA script successfully produces appropriate mechanistic models from binary data tables, demonstrating the practical application of the philosophical mechanistic approach in the sciences. 3. The number of solutions generated by mLCA increases significantly as the number of relevant factors grows, reflecting adaptations in causal inference methods to meet the demands of multi-level mechanistic modeling. 4. Any further reduction of solutions, if possible, involves pragmatic considerations, a point that carries profound implications for the broader ambitions of the mechanistic approach. By addressing these points, our paper contributes both to the development of practical algorithmic tools and to a deeper philosophical understanding of multi-level mechanistic modeling. (shrink)

Die „Bürden des Urteilens anzuerkennen und ihre Konsequenzen zu akzeptieren“ (Rawls 1998, 120 Anm.) stellt für Rawls, neben der Bereitschaft zur fairen Kooperation, eine der zwei grundlegenden Tugenden des öffentlichen Vernunftgebrauchs dar. Die Bürden des Urteilens oder der Urteilskraft repräsentieren die epistemischen Voraussetzungen eines vernünftigen Pluralismus. Sie sollen erklären, warum ein Pluralismus von Überzeugungen nicht nur wahrscheinlich, sondern geradezu erwartbar und unvermeidlich ist.

Jacobson finds two distinct meanings of “dignity” in the literature on dignity and health: intrinsic human dignity and social dignity constituted through interactions with caregivers. Especially the latter has been central in empirical health research and warrants further exploration. This article focuses on the social dignity of people marginalized by mental illness, substance abuse and comparable conditions in extramural settings. 35 studies published between 2007 and 2017 have addressed this issue, most of them identifying norms for social dignity: civilized interactions, (...) non-stigmatizing treatment, treatment as unique individuals, being taken seriously, maintaining a positive identity, experiencing independence, relating to others, and participating in daily life. We argue that these norms belong to ideal theory, whereas we agree with Robeyns and others that improving practice is better served by non-ideal theory. Towards this end, we derive from the literature four building blocks for a non-ideal theory of dignity: avoid violations of dignity rather than seeking to promote it; dignity is not a goal to be reached; it requires ongoing effort; promoting dignity is a balancing act; contradictory norms can make it impossible to realize; and dignity can be undermined by organizational and discursive constraints. (shrink)

I argue against the claim that it is trivial to state that Sidgwick used the method of wide reflective equilibrium. This claim is based on what could be called the Triviality Charge, which is pressed against the method of wide reflective equilibrium by Peter Singer. According to this charge, there is no alternative to using the method if it is interpreted as involving all relevant philosophical background arguments. The main argument against the Triviality Charge is that although the method of (...) wide reflective equilibrium is compatible with coherentism (understood as a form of weak foundationalism) as well as moderate foundationalism, it is not compatible with strong foundationalism. Hence, the claim that a philosopher uses the method of wide reflective equilibrium is informative. In particular, this is true with regard to Sidgwick. (shrink)