The presence of stigmatizing language in the electronic health record (EHR) has been used to measure implicit biases that underlie health inequities. The purpose of this study was to identify the presence of stigmatizing language in the clinical notes of pregnant people during the birth admission. We conducted a qualitative analysis on N = 1117 birth admission EHR notes from two urban hospitals in 2017. We identified stigmatizing language categories, such as Disapproval (39.3%), Questioning patient credibility (37.7%), Difficult patient (21.3%), (...) Stereotyping (1.6%), and Unilateral decisions (1.6%) in 61 notes (5.4%). We also defined a new stigmatizing language category indicating Power/privilege. This was present in 37 notes (3.3%) and signaled approval of social status, upholding a hierarchy of bias. The stigmatizing language was most frequently identified in birth admission triage notes (16%) and least frequently in social work initial assessments (13.7%). We found that clinicians from various disciplines recorded stigmatizing language in the medical records of birthing people. This language was used to question birthing people's credibility and convey disapproval of decision‐making abilities for themselves or their newborns. We reported a Power/privilege language bias in the inconsistent documentation of traits considered favorable for patient outcomes (e.g., employment status). Future work on stigmatizing language may inform tailored interventions to improve perinatal outcomes for all birthing people and their families. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved, and F. W. J. Schelling’s 1813 draft of Ages of the World (Die Weltalter). It shows that Die Weltalter, contrary to much recent scholarship, which often stresses the many ways Schelling anticipated the antimetaphysical trends of post-Hegelian thought, should be first approached as a genuine attempt tobe faithful to the event of first creation and time’s “indivisible remainders”. The paper will show that Schelling’s “indivisible remainders”, the forgotten and “disremembered” (...) of history, force his thought to the limits of Romantic and idealist reflection and toward the traumatic encounters of Beloved. Morrison’s depiction of the irrepressible longing for life and recognition amid the pain and ugliness of American slavery parallels Schelling’s efforts to understand the tremendous need for life and fellowship that first urged god toward creation, when primordial longing was overcome in a child and a god entered time. (shrink)

The finding that women are attracted to men older than themselves whereas men are attracted to relatively younger women has been explained by social psychologists in terms of economic exchange rooted in traditional sex-role norms. An alternative evolutionary model suggests that males and females follow different reproductive strategies, and predicts a more complex relationship between gender and age preferences. In particular, males' preferences for relatively younger females should be minimal during early mating years, but should become more pronounced as the (...) male gets older. Young females are expected to prefer somewhat older males during their early years and to change less as they age. We briefly review relevant theory and present results of six studies testing this prediction. Study 1 finds support for this gender-differentiated prediction in age preferences expressed in personal advertisements. Study 2 supports the prediction with marriage statistics from two U.S. cities. Study 3 examines the cross-generational robustness of the phenomenon, and finds the same pattern in marriage statistics from 1923. Study 4 replicates Study 1 using matrimonial advertisements from two European countries, and from India. Study 5 finds a consistent pattern in marriages recorded from 1913 through 1939 on a small island in the Philippines. Study 6 reveals the same pattern in singles advertisements placed by financially successful American women and men. We consider the limitations of previous normative and evolutionary explanations of age preferences and discuss the advantages of expanding previous models to include the life history perspective. (shrink)

The finding that women are attracted to men older than themselves whereas men are attracted to relatively younger women has been explained by social psychologists in terms of economic exchange rooted in traditional sex-role norms. An alternative evolutionary model suggests that males and females follow different reproductive strategies, and predicts a more complex relationship between gender and age preferences. In particular, males' preferences for relatively younger females should be minimal during early mating years, but should become more pronounced as the (...) male gets older. Young females are expected to prefer somewhat older males during their early years and to change less as they age. We briefly review relevant theory and present results of six studies testing this prediction. Study 1 finds support for this gender-differentiated prediction in age preferences expressed in personal advertisements. Study 2 supports the prediction with marriage statistics from two U.S. cities. Study 3 examines the cross-generational robustness of the phenomenon, and finds the same pattern in marriage statistics from 1923. Study 4 replicates Study 1 using matrimonial advertisements from two European countries, and from India. Study 5 finds a consistent pattern in marriages recorded from 1913 through 1939 on a small island in the Philippines. Study 6 reveals the same pattern in singles advertisements placed by financially successful American women and men. We consider the limitations of previous normative and evolutionary explanations of age preferences and discuss the advantages of expanding previous models to include the life history perspective. (shrink)

Recovery from eating disorders is known to be difficult. Individuals with eating disorders are generally poorly responsive to change: their eating behaviour is rigid, and they are often inflexible as regards their eating-related goals. This opens up questions about their agency in eating. Why do individuals with eating disorders not “just stop” performing problematic eating behaviour, despite the enormous burden this behaviour may inflict in their lives? In this article, we seek to answer this question by providing a clear view (...) of individuals’ own role in the development of and recovery from their eating disorders. Specifically, we adopt a situated perspective on agency to explain the poor responsiveness to change characteristic of these conditions. We suggest that in the pursuit of eating-related goals, individuals with eating disorders develop a project-like relation to eating, which not only pervasively changes the arrangement and content of their lives, but also their lives’ meaning. On this basis, we argue that the goal-inflexibility and rigidity of eating behaviour often ascribed to them might not be grounded in disorders or impairments of agency, but can in fact be understood in terms of their agency in eating. This is what we call the “life project account” of eating disorders. (shrink)

Suzumura consistency is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a weak-order extension. This paper provides some remarks on collective choice rules that generate Suzumura consistent social preferences. We examine the properties of such collective choice rules by introducing a procedural condition on collective choice rules. As applications of the procedural condition, we first investigate the decisive structure of a Paretian collective choice rule, and then consider the assignment of individual rights. In our analysis, the concept of semi-decisiveness (...) works effectively. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the implications of unanimity and anonymity for the Arrovian social choice theory when population is infinite. Contrary to the finite population case, various unanimity and anonymity axioms can be formulated. We show a tension between unanimity and anonymity by providing possibility and impossibility results. We also examine the case in which social preferences are allowed to be quasi-transitive.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 445-452, May 2022.

Population axiology includes two major arguments. The first is the repugnant conclusion, which was originally formulated by Derek Parfit to criticize total utilitarianism. The second is the sadistic conclusion. In this study, I demonstrate that no additively separable principle can avoid both repugnant and sadistic conclusions if individual moral values have no upper bound. This impossibility holds not only for utilitarian principles but also for any population principles that guarantee the separability of people’s well-being. I emphasize the importance of examining (...) non-separable principles in population ethics. (shrink)

This paper establishes a new impossibility result for welfaristic evaluations when the population varies. We consider a weak version of the repugnant conclusion instead of the commonly used version. It is shown that if a population principle satisfying two reasonable properties avoids the sadistic conclusion, then the weak repugnant conclusion must hold. We use a general variable-population setting where the identities of individuals can matter.

On March 16, 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organization said: “We have a simple message to all countries—test, test, test.” This seems like sound advice, but what if limiting the number of tests has a positive effect on infection control? Although this may rarely be the case, the possibility raises an important ethical question that is closely related to a central tension between deontological and consequentialist approaches to ethics. In this paper, we first argue that early during the (...) COVID-19 pandemic, Japan offers an interesting case because it experienced few deaths due to COVID while the number of tests was limited, suggesting that there may be cases in which low testing contributes to infection control indeed. After that, we examine deontological constraints on such a “low-testing” policy, focusing on issues related to a supposed “right to know,” which is a central issue in medical ethics in general. (shrink)

The implications of the repugnant conclusion for consequentialist theories, such as total utilitarianism, have been extensively discussed since the work of Derek Parfit. These discussions make the paradoxes of population ethics depend on welfarist conditions, like the dominance condition (or the Pareto Principle). Thus, one might think that the repugnant conclusion is not a practical problem for deontologists, who deny that we always ought to do what produces the most aggregate welfare. In this study, we offer two impossibility results using (...) what we call the limit aggregation property. This states that when welfaristic and non-welfaristic considerations conflict, there is a threshold number of persons such that the former can override the latter as long as more people than the threshold number can enjoy increases in well-being levels. We argue that this property should be accepted even by deontologists, insofar as they do not commit themselves to the implausible absolutist position that fails to assign any moral weight to aggregate welfare. Our results therefore state that any normative population theory that is not absolutist entails (a variant of) the repugnant conclusion or some other implausible conclusion. Therefore, the repugnant conclusion must be taken seriously even by non-absolutist deontologists, not just consequentialists. (shrink)

This essay discusses Wittgenstein’s suggestion that we may speak of a distinction between a word’s primary and secondary senses. Instead of seeing the distinction merely as an example of a puzzling language use, many commentators have attempted to work out the distinction in terms of a supplement to a general theory of sense that they presume Wittgenstein developed in his later writings. I don’t think it is fair to ascribe such systematic aspirations to Wittgenstein.Indeed, Wittgenstein speaks explicitly of the distinction (...) only at two junctures in his work; this suggests that the distinction in itself was not of great import to Wittgenstein. In my view, it is essential to see how the example resonates with other ideas and problems in his writings, for example, his discussions of rule-following in part one of the Investigations. By my lights, this has not been fully recognized in the standard literature. In discussing the distinction, I will argue for the importance of paying attention to a broader context than what is normally considered. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship among the weak Pareto principle, the strong Pareto principle, and positive responsiveness in the context of voting. First, it is shown that under a mild domain condition, if an anonymous and neutral collective choice rule (CCR) is complete and transitive, then the weak Pareto principle and the strong Pareto principle are equivalent. Next, it is shown that under another mild domain condition, if a neutral CCR is transitive, then the strong Pareto principle and positive responsiveness (...) are equivalent. By applying these results, we obtain a new characterization of the method of majority decision. (shrink)

In Part III of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Robert Nozick presents what he calls ‘the model of possible worlds’ (307) to examine the formal properties of utopia, defined as ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (298). The basic idea is that each person is given the power to create any possible world and its inhabitants by imagining them. Two definitions of stability have been proposed: (a) the non-circular definition according to which a world is stable if and only if (...) nobody can imagine a better world and (b) the circular definition according to which a world is stable if and only if nobody can imagine a better world that is also stable. In this paper, we prove four theorems (namely, the indeterminacy theorem, the stable dystopia theorem, the nobody’s utopia theorem and the redundancy theorem) that provide us with decisive reasons to reject the circular definition and opt for the non-circular definition of stability to analyse Nozick’s theory of utopia. (shrink)

Since Kenneth Arrow showed the general possibility theorem, a number of social choice theorists have provided alternative proofs of it. In a recent article, Geanakoplos (Econ Theory 26:211–215, 2005) has constructed a new proof of the theorem. The present article provides alternative proofs of various Arrovian impossibility results from the 1960s to the 1970s by utilizing Geanakoplos’s method. We prove semi-order impossibility theorems, the quasi-transitive veto theorem, the quasi-transitive dictatorship theorem, the triple acyclic veto theorem, and the impossibility theorem without (...) the Pareto principle. (shrink)

Evolutionary models of behavior often encounter resistance due to an apparent focus on themes of sex, selfishness, and gender differences. The target article might seem ripe for such criticism. However, life history theory suggests that these themes, and their counterparts, including cooperation, generosity, and gender similarities, represent two sides of the same coin – all are consequences of reproductive trade-offs made throughout development.

The simultaneous possession of conflicting beliefs is both possible and logical within current models of human cognition. Specifically, evidence of lateral inhibition and state-dependent memory suggests a means by which conflicting beliefs can coexist without requiring “mental exotica.” We suggest that paradoxical self-deception enables the self-deceiver to store important information for use at a later time.

Religious beliefs, including those about an afterlife and omniscient spiritual beings, vary across cultures. We theorize that such variations may be predictably linked to ecological variations, just as differences in mating strategies covary with resource distribution. Perhaps beliefs in a soul or afterlife are more common when resources are unpredictable, and life is brutal and short.

This paper discusses how Wittgenstein’s thinking informs recent conversations about art and aesthetic practice by examining his influence on the work of the noted modernist art critic, Michael Fried. Fried considers an excerpt from Wittgenstein’s Culture and Value, with a puzzling thought experiment, to help us see more clearly the Canadian artist Jeff Wall’s photographic vision and aesthetic. I consider Fried’s account of the photographic practice of Jeff Wall, especially his photograph Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation (1999).

This paper provides an alternative proof of the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem.

In this paper, the independence of irrelevant alternatives and the Pareto principle are simultaneously weakened in the Arrovian framework of social choice. Moreover, we also relax transitivity of social preferences. We show that impossibility remains under weaker versions of Arrow’s original conditions. Our results complement the recent work by Coban and Sanver (Soc Choice Welf 43(4):953–961, 2014).

Glucocorticoid hormones are effective in controlling inflammation, but the mechanisms that confer this action are largely unknown. Recent advances in this field have shown that both positive and negative regulation of gene expression are necessary for this process. The genes whose activity are modulated in the anti‐inflammatory process code for several cytokines, adhesion molecules and enzymes. Most of them do not carry a classical binding site for regulation by a glucocorticoid receptor, but have instead regulatory sequences for transcription factors such (...) as AP‐1 or NF‐κ. This makes them unusual targets for glucocorticoid action and emphasizes the need for novel regulatory mechanisms. Recent studies describe an important contribution by protein‐protein interactions, in which several domains of the receptor participate; these studies provide a better understanding of the action of the receptor and offer opportunities for the design of steroidal compounds that could function more effectively as anti‐inflammatory drugs. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the stability of the aggregation procedure of individual preferences. In particular, we propose the stability under the addition of social preference, which is a normative property of democratic collective decision making. We establish impossibility and possibility theorems for non-dictatorial aggregation procedures.

Diverse cultural norms governing economic behavior might emerge from a dynamic interaction of universal but flexible predispositions that get calibrated to biologically meaningful features of the local social and physical ecology. This impressive cross-cultural effort could better elucidate such gene-culture interactions by incorporating theory-driven experimental manipulations (e.g., comparing kin and non-kin exchanges), as well as analyses of mediating cognitive processes.

We consider four mechanisms by which apparent discontinuities in the distribution of antisociality could arise: (1) executive genes or hormonal systems, (2) multiplicative interactions of predisposing factors, (3) environmental tracking into a limited number of social roles, and (4) cross-generational gene—environment interactions. A more explicit consideration of complex self-organizing dynamic systems may help us understand the maintenance of antisocial subpopulations.

Einon's data support our original claims, although not a claim she seems to assume – of reciprocal attraction between elderly men and 20-year-old women. Implicit in her commentary is an assumption that genetic predispositions are omniscient fitness maximizers. Instead, evolutionary models assume selection-fashioned psychological mechanisms that, in the context of other mechanisms and pressures in past environments, had a positive effect on fitness relative to competing alternatives. The Over & Phillips data fit with our own data on homosexuals, and with (...) the assumption of independent modular mechanisms, rather than any existing sociocultural models. Einon also incorrectly assumes that evolutionary models have overemphasized male choice to the exclusion of female choice. (shrink)

Would we lie to ourselves? We don't need to. Rather than a single self equipped with a few bivariate processes, the mind is composed of a dissociated aggregation of subselves processing qualitatively different information relevant to different adaptive problems. Each subself selectively processes the information coming in to the brain as well as information previously stored in the brain.

Dynamical simulations of male and female mating strategies illustrate how traits such as restrictedness constrain, and are constrained by, local ecology. Such traits cannot be defined solely by genotype or by phenotype, but are better considered as decision rules gauged to ecological inputs. Gangestad & Simpson's work draws attention to the need for additional bridges between evolutionary psychology and dynamical systems theory.

Given the strength of Archer's case for a sexual selection account, he is too accommodating of the social roles alternative. We present data on historical changes in violent crime contradicting that perspective, and discuss recent evidence showing how an evolutionary perspective predicts sex similarities and differences responding in a flexible and functional manner to adaptively relevant triggers across different domains.

Consideration of the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors suggests functional reasons why people exhibit some biases in social judgment more than others. We present a taxonomy consisting of six domains of central social challenges. Each is associated with somewhat different motivations, and consequently different decision-rules. These decision-rules, in turn, make some biases inherently more likely to emerge than others.