This study examines the impact of the level of religious observance on the attitudes toward end‐of‐life (EOL) decisions and euthanasia of Jews in Israel—where euthanasia is illegal—as compared to Jews living in the USA, in the states where euthanasia is legal. A self‐reporting questionnaire on religiosity and personal beliefs and attitudes regarding EOL care and euthanasia was distributed, using a convenience sample of 271 participants from Israel and the USA. Findings show that significant differences were found in attitudes between Jews (...) of different levels of religious observance with respect to patient autonomy, right to die with dignity, and dying in familiar and supportive surroundings. The USA and Israeli Jews have similar knowledge regarding EOL care and expressed similar attitudes and perceptions toward the issues of authority of medical staff and religious figures and patient's autonomy. Findings indicate that the level of religious observance has more potency in shaping their attitudes and perceptions of EOL decisions than the state law. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings with regard to multicultural health systems and providing practical recommendations. (shrink)

Both left libertarians, who support the redistribution of income and wealth through taxation, and right libertarians, who oppose redistributive taxation, share an important view: that, looming catastrophes aside, the state must never redistribute any part of our body or our person without our consent. Cécile Fabre rejects that view. For her, just as the undeservedly poor have a just claim to money from their fellow citizens in order to lead a minimally flourishing life, the undeservedly ‘medically poor’ have a just (...) claim to help from fellow citizens in order to lead such a life. Such obligatory help may in principle involve even the supply of body parts for transplantation. The state ought to exact such resources from the medically rich whenever doing so would secure the prospect of a minimally flourishing life to the medically poor without denying that prospect to anyone else. Fabre criticizes Ronald Dworkin's belief in ‘a prophylactic line that comes close to making the body inviolate, that is, making body parts not parts of social resources at all’. For her, ‘Duties to help. . . do not stop at material resources: they involve the body. . . in invasive ways’. (shrink)

Major depression is among the most common, challenging and disabling conditions. It is highly heterogeneous, affects patients throughout the lifespan and, in up to one-third of people affected, res...

This paper presents a review of academic literature, policy documents from government organizations and international agencies, and reports from industries and popular media on the trends in Big Data utilization in key development issues and its worthwhileness, usefulness, and relevance. By looking at Big Data deployment in a number of key economic sectors, it seeks to provide a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges of using it for addressing key issues facing the developing world. It reviews the uses of (...) Big Data in agriculture and farming activities in developing countries to assess the capabilities required at various levels to benefit from Big Data. It also provides insights into how the current digital divide is associated with and facilitated by the pattern of Big Data diffusion and its effective use in key development areas. It also discusses the lessons that developing countries can learn from the utilization of Big Data in big corporations as well as in other activities in industrialized countries. (shrink)

This article analyses and interprets the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000) as a source of inspiration for environmental ethics and offers an extended model of the Ecological Self based on an interpretation of his works. Hundertwasser was a prominent Jewish-Austrian artist and environmental activist, yet despite his commitment to environmental issues, he has not received the attention he deserves from the environmental ethics community. His works and writings suggest a critique and reformulation of the well-known concept of the Ecological Self. (...) This concept implies that humans are essentially embedded in the natural world – that the Self is porous and open rather than disengaged and atomistic. This article suggests an alternative, holistic and extended version of this concept. It assesses and incorporates additional layers found between humans and nature – clothing, architecture, urban environments, and social and political environments. (shrink)

In political philosophy and in economics, unfair inequality is usually assessed between individuals, nowadays often on luck-egalitarian grounds. You have more than I do and that's unfair. By contrast, in epidemiology and sociology, unfair inequality is traditionally assessed between groups. More is concentrated among people of your class or race than among people of mine, and that's unfair. I shall call this difference the egalitarian ‘divorce’. Epidemiologists, and their ‘divorce lawyers’ Paula Braveman, Norman Daniels, and Iris Marion Young, explain that (...) not every inequality between individuals is an inequity. Only inequality between social status groups is unfair. Only such inequality stems from problems like partiality, discrimination, oppression, inequality-related population health problems, and unfair distribution of prospects. And it alone is actionable. By contrast, inequality between individuals, e.g. in longevity, is natural, inevitable, less important, or otherwise less informative — not unjust. In ‘divorce trial’ mode, I respond to epidemiologists that group inequalities lack the intrinsic disvalue that they ascribe them. They may be instrumentally or contingently bad or wrong, not essentially so. I then shift to ‘remarriage’: although group inequalities lack intrinsic badness or wrongness, for multiple reasons they remain useful to measure. (shrink)

Brain implants, such as Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), which are designed to improve motor, mood and behavioural pathology, present unique challenges to our understanding of identity, agency and free will. This is because these devices can have visible effects on persons' physical and psychological properties yet are essentially undetectable when operating correctly. They can supplement and compensate for one's inherent abilities and faculties when they are compromised by neuropsychiatric disorders. Further, unlike talk therapy or pharmacological treatments, patients need not ‘do’ (...) anything for the treatment to take effect. If one accepts, as we argue here, that brain implants are unique among implantable types of devices, then this can have significant implications for what it means to persist as the same person and be the source of one's thoughts and actions. By examining two of the most common indications for DBS in current use, namely in the motor (Parkinson's Disease) and psychiatric (Major Depression) domains, we further argue that although DBS, as it is currently applied, does not necessarily represent a unique threat to personal identity and agency per se, it introduces an unprecedented ‘third party’ into the debate on these concepts. In this way, DBS can be used as a tool to begin probing, both conceptually and empirically, some of philosophy's most perennial metaphysical questions. (shrink)

Do the dynamics of a physical system determine what function the system computes? Except in special cases, the answer is no: it is often indeterminate what function a given physical system computes. Accordingly, care should be taken when the question ‘What does a particular neuronal system do?’ is answered by hypothesising that the system computes a particular function. The phenomenon of the indeterminacy of computation has important implications for the development of computational explanations of biological systems. Additionally, the phenomenon lends (...) some support to the idea that a single neuronal structure may perform multiple cognitive functions, each subserved by a different computation. We provide an overarching conceptual framework in order to further the philosophical debate on the nature of computational indeterminacy and computational explanation. (shrink)

Fear can undermine cooperation. It may discourage individuals from collaborating with others because of concerns about potential exploitation; prompt them to engage in defensive aggression by launching a preemptive strike; and propel power-seeking individuals to act dominantly rather than compassionately. Therefore, accumulated evidence requires a more contextualized consideration of the link between fear and cooperation in adults.

Advances in neuromodulation and an improved understanding of the anatomy and circuitry of psychopathology have led to a resurgence of interest in surgery for psychiatric disease. Clinical trials exploring deep brain stimulation (DBS), a focally targeted, adjustable and reversible form of neurosurgery, are being developed to address the use of this technology in highly selected patient populations. Psychiatric patients deemed eligible for surgical intervention, such as DBS, typically meet stringent inclusion criteria, including demonstrated severity, chronicity and a failure of conventional (...) therapy. Although a humanitarian device exemption by the US Food and Drug Administration exists for its use in obsessive-compulsive disorder, DBS remains a largely experimental treatment in the psychiatric context, with its use currently limited to clinical trials and investigative studies. The combination of a patient population at the limits of conventional therapy and a novel technology in a new indication poses interesting challenges to the informed consent process as it relates to clinical trial enrollment. These challenges can be divided into those that relate to the patient, their disease and the technology, with each illustrating how traditional conceptualisations of research consent may be inadequate in the surgical psychiatry context. With specific reference to risk analysis, patient autonomy, voluntariness and the duty of the clinician-researcher, this paper will discuss the unique challenges that clinical trials of surgery for refractory psychiatric disease present to the consent process. Recommendations are also made for an ethical approach to clinical trial consent acquisition in this unique patient population. (shrink)

In recent decades, the scientific study of consciousness has significantly increased our understanding of this elusive phenomenon. Yet, despite critical development in our understanding of the functional side of consciousness, we still lack a fundamental theory regarding its phenomenal aspect. There is an “explanatory gap” between our scientific knowledge of functional consciousness and its “subjective,” phenomenal aspects, referred to as the “hard problem” of consciousness. The phenomenal aspect of consciousness is the first-person answer to “what it’s like” question, and it (...) has thus far proved recalcitrant to direct scientific investigation. Naturalistic dualists argue that it is composed of a primitive, private, non-reductive element of reality that is independent from the functional and physical aspects of consciousness. Illusionists, on the other hand, argue that it is merely a cognitive illusion, and that all that exists are ultimately physical, non-phenomenal properties. We contend that both the dualist and illusionist positions are flawed because they tacitly assume consciousness to be an absolute property that doesn’t depend on the observer. We develop a conceptual and a mathematical argument for a relativistic theory of consciousness in which a system either has or doesn’t have phenomenal consciousness with respect to some observer. Phenomenal consciousness is neither private nor delusional, just relativistic. In the frame of reference of the cognitive system, it will be observable and in other frame of reference it will not. These two cognitive frames of reference are both correct, just as in the case of an observer that claims to be at rest while another will claim that the observer has constant velocity. Given that consciousness is a relativistic phenomenon, neither observer position can be privileged, as they both describe the same underlying reality. Based on relativistic phenomena in physics we developed a mathematical formalization for consciousness which bridges the explanatory gap and dissolves the hard problem. Given that the first-person cognitive frame of reference also offers legitimate observations on consciousness, we conclude by arguing that philosophers can usefully contribute to the science of consciousness by collaborating with neuroscientists to explore the neural basis of phenomenal structures. (shrink)

Which inequalities in longevity and health among individuals, groups, and nations are unfair? And what priority should health policy attach to narrowing them? These essays by philosophers, economists, epidemiologists, and physicians attempt to determine how health inequalities should be conceptualized, measured, ranked, and evaluated.

This study explores academic dishonesty within higher education, with a particular focus on the perspectives of the Arab ethnic community in Israel. Through in-depth interviews involving 38 students, the research unveils three overarching themes: (a) “Academic dishonesty as a social norm” illuminates the prevalent acceptance of cheating driven by moral justifications, emphasizing the crucial role of perceived low likelihood of detection and inconsistencies in enforcing academic standards in a multicultural context, (b) “Rationalizations for academic dishonesty and coping with minority status,” (...) explores how overwhelming academic demands, familial and social pressures, and collaborative support networks contribute to unethical behavior, and (c) “Erosion of academic effort,” elucidates the connection between uninspiring teaching methods and the derision of less committed peers, contributing to plagiarism. These findings contribute to a culturally understanding of academic dishonesty. Practically, recognizing specific groups’ challenges with academic dishonesty can inform instructors and administrators, aiding effective strategies to promote integrity. (shrink)

The article begins by reconstructing the just distribution of the social bases of self-respect, a principle of justice that is covert in Rawls’s writing. I argue that, for Rawls, justice mandates that each social basis for self-respect be equalized. Curiously, for Rawls, that principle ranks higher than Rawls’s two more famous principles of justice - equal liberty and the difference principle. I then recall Rawls’s well-known confusion between self-respect and another form of self-appraisal, namely, confidence in one’s determinate plans and (...) capacities. Correcting that confusion forces Rawls to accept objectionable and illiberal politics. Surprisingly, a consistent Rawls must endorse absolute economic equality, deny liberty any priority whatsoever, or sponsor still other illiberal political views - evidence of a flaw in the ethical basis of Rawls’s politics. (shrink)

This chapter investigates how a reading of Wittgenstein along the lines laid out by Cora Diamond makes room for a novel approach to ethical truth. Following Diamond, I develop the connection between the kinds of elucidatory propositions by means of which we spell out and maintain the shape of our theoretical thinking, such as “‘someone’ is not the name of someone” and “five plus seven equals twelve,” and the kind of propositions by means of which we spell out and maintain (...) the shape of ethical thinking, such as “slavery is unjust.” As Diamond points out in connection with the last example, this is a proposition that we take to be an undeniable truth; for anyone who would attempt to negate it would become unintelligible to us. In this sense this ethical truth spells out the limits of ethical thinking. And yet what counts as coherent thought about such matters tends to shift over time. Indeed the great difficulty of overcoming ethical disagreements has to do with the fact that what is at stake in them is not just the content, but the form and limits of thought. Nonetheless, Diamond proposes that ethical propositions may count as genuine truths. For this to make sense, a middle path between realism and relativism must be found. In order to show how this is possible, and in order to defend Diamond’s view, I propose to approach ethical truth by means of a disjunctivist strategy. On this approach, while we, just as much as our interlocutor, may at times be misled in our ethical thinking, and while we may at times fail to shape our ethical thought in ways that prevent us from gaining clarity on ethical matters, this does not detract from the fact that we may at times be right, and that we may then genuinely possess ethical truth. (shrink)

This article argues that, in its standard formulation, luck-egalitarianism is false. In particular, I show that disadvantages that result from perfectly free choice can constitute egalitarian injustice. I also propose a modified formulation of luck-egalitarianism that would withstand my criticism. One merit of the modification is that it helps us to reconcile widespread intuitions about distributive justice with equally widespread intuitions about punitive justice.

By means of a reductio argument, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus calls into question the very idea that we can represent logical form. My paper addresses three interrelated questions: first, what conception of logical form is at issue in this argument? Second, whose conception of logic is this argument intended to undermine? And third, what could count as an adequate response to it? I show that the argument construes logical form as the universal, underlying correlation of any representation and the reality it represents. (...) I further show that the argument seeks to undermine core commitments of Frege’s and Russell’s. But the reductio, as I read it, is not intended to establish the falsity of any of their specific assumptions. Rather, its aim is to make manifest the indeterminacies that underlie the language in which these assumptions are framed, and establish the need for a transformation of that language. So understood, Wittgenstein’s argument exemplifies his idea that philosophy is not a theory, but an activity of elucidation. The interpretation I propose bears on one of the central debates in the literature, namely how we should understand Wittgenstein’s contention that his elucidations succeed despite being nonsensical. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 53-69.

Growing interest in psychiatric neurosurgery, and in deep brain stimulation (DBS) in particular, requires that the field be placed in the appropriate historical and scientific context. Current methods of neuromodulation for refractory psychiatric conditions are premised on assumptions similar to those proposed in earlier attempts, namely, the number of resistant patients and the absence of any other effective treatments. As a result, a discussion of the current and future prospects, as well as the limits, of neuromodulation is required to avoid (...) a replay of earlier transgressions, and to place its current chapter in the appropriate historical and ethical context. (shrink)

BackgroundMeasuring the outcomes of palliative care plays an important role to improve the quality, efficiency, and availability of these services in patients with cancer. Using valid, reliable, and culturally appropriate tools has a considerable role to measure these outcomes. This study aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the translated version of the Palliative care Outcome Scale.MethodsThis methodological study was conducted in two outpatient clinics related to Shohada Tajrish and Baqiyatallah hospitals in Tehran in 2019–2020. The translation was done using (...) the Forward-Backward approach after gaining permission from the developer. Face validity was tested with 10 patients with cancer through cognitive interviewing, as well as content validity with four experts. Construct validity was performed by exploratory factor analysis and confirmation. To assess the reliability, internal consistency was assessed by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and relative stability was assessed using the interclass correlation coefficient. Furthermore, interpretability and ceiling and floor effects were assessed.ResultsA total of 353 patients with cancer under palliative care were included in the study. Then, three psychological, physical, and social factors with a cumulative variance of 54.34% were extracted in exploratory factor analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model has a good fit of information. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for scale was 0.719. Furthermore, the ICC was 0.812. The scale was interpretable, and ceiling and floor effects were 0%.ConclusionPersian version of the POS was evaluated as a valid and reliable tool. Therefore, it can be used by the clinician to monitor the consequences of palliative care in Iranian cancer patients. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question: how is computation best individuated? -/- 1. The semantic view of computation: computation is best individuated by its semantic properties. 2. The causal view of computation: computation is best individuated by its causal properties. 3. The functional view of computation: computation is best individuated by its functional properties. -/- Some scientific theories explain the capacities of brains by appealing to computations that they supposedly perform. The reason for that is usually that computation is individuated (...) semantically. I criticize the reasons in support of this view and its presupposition of representation and semantics. Furthermore, I argue that the only justified appeal to a representational individuation of computation might be that it is partly individuated by implicit intrinsic representations. (shrink)

Often, a health resource distribution (or, more generally, a health policy) ranks higher than another on one value, say, on promoting total population health; and lower on another, say, on promoting that of the worst off. Then, some opine, there need not be a rational determination as to which of the multiple distributions that partially fulfill both one ought to choose. Sometimes, reason determines only partially, intransitively, or contentiously which of the many “compromises” between these two values is best or (...) most choiceworthy. Norman Daniels, Ruth Chang, Martijn Boot, and Anders Herlitz affirm this opinion, which I shall call “value incommensurability,” “rational underdeterminacy,” or “reasonable disagreement.” To decide between the multiple reasonable compromises on health resource distribution, these philosophers recommend a deliberative democratic process, on two main grounds. First, in such situations, deliberation can produce the determinacy needed for decisionmaking. Second, by treating respectfully and justly even those patients or communities for whom the distributive compromise selected is bad, deliberation shields the legitimacy of that policy. Increasingly, practically-oriented bioethics recommends democratic deliberation even more expansively than these philosophers do—for nearly every decision on health resource distribution and not only when values are incommensurate—on these two grounds and on others. And one could propose a more modest variant on this expansive move as the justification of democratic deliberation. I argue that none of these moves warrants democratic deliberation on health policy. (shrink)

Dreams are a remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person. They show that the human brain, disconnected from the environment, can generate an entire world of conscious experiences by itself. Content analysis and developmental studies have promoted understanding of dream phenomenology. In parallel, brain lesion studies, functional imaging and neurophysiology have advanced current knowledge of the neural basis of dreaming. It is now possible to start integrating these two strands of research to address fundamental (...) questions that dreams pose for cognitive neuroscience: how conscious experiences in sleep relate to underlying brain activity; why the dreamer is largely disconnected from the environment; and whether dreaming is more closely related to mental imagery or to perception. (shrink)

Recent developments in the field of neurosurgery, specifically those dealing with the modification of mood and affect as part of psychiatric disease, have led some researchers to discuss the ethical implications of surgery to alter personality and personal identity. As knowledge and technology advance, discussions of surgery to alter undesirable traits, or possibly the enhancement of normal traits, will play an increasingly larger role in the ethical literature. So far, identity and enhancement have yet to be explored in a neurosurgical (...) context, despite the fact that 1) neurological disease and treatment both potentially alter identity, and 2) that neurosurgeons will likely be the purveyors of future enhancement implantable technology. Here, we use interviews with neurosurgical patients to shed light on the ethical issues and challenges that surround identity and enhancement in neurosurgery. The results provide insight into how patients approach their identity prior to potentially identity-altering procedures and what future ethical challenges lay ahead for clinicians and researchers in the field of neurotherapeutics. (shrink)

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein consider the possibility of a philosophical inquiry of an absolutely universal scope—an inquiry into the being of all beings, in Heidegger’s case, and into the logical form of everything that can be meaningfully said, in Wittgenstein’s. Moreover, they both raise the worry that the theoretical language by means of which we speak of particular beings and assert particular facts is not suited to this task. And yet their own philosophical work seems to include many assertions of (...) ordinary, theoretical language. Are they being inconsistent? Or are they hoping to use theoretical language in a way that conveys what cannot be said in that language? Much of the scholarship on each of these thinkers takes the form of one of the two horns of this dilemma. In the context of Wittgenstein scholarship, however, a third alternative has been proposed: the Resolute Reading of the Tractatus. My aim is to establish the availability of a similar solution to Heidegger’s predicament. It will emerge that Heidegger rejects the possibility of a theoretical account of being and pursues a project of a radically different sort, whose goal is to bring about a transformation of our fundamental relation to being. (shrink)

There are many different notions of information in logic, epistemology, psychology, biology and cognitive science, which are employed differently in each discipline, often with little overlap. Since our interest here is in biological processes and organisms, we develop a taxonomy of functional information that extends the standard cue/signal distinction (in animal communication theory). Three general, main claims are advanced here. (1) This new taxonomy can be useful in describing learning and communication. (2) It avoids some problems that the natural/non-natural information (...) distinction faces. (3) Functional information is​ ​produced through exploration and stabilisation processes. (shrink)

The notion of the riddle plays a pivotal role in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus . By examining the comparisons he draws between philosophical problems and riddles, this paper offers a reassessment of the aims and methods of the book. Solving an ordinary riddle does not consist in learning a new fact; what it requires is that we transform the way we use words. Similarly, Wittgenstein proposes to transform the way philosophers understand the nature of their problems. But since he holds that these (...) problems are ultimately unsolvable, rather than attempting to solve the riddles of philosophy, he aims to dissolve them. (shrink)

Are some risks to study participants too much, no matter how valuable the study is for society? This article answers in the negative.

Is the mathematical function being computed by a given physical system determined by the system’s dynamics? This question is at the heart of the indeterminacy of computation phenomenon (Fresco et al. [unpublished]). A paradigmatic example is a conventional electrical AND-gate that is often said to compute conjunction, but it can just as well be used to compute disjunction. Despite the pervasiveness of this phenomenon in physical computational systems, it has been discussed in the philosophical literature only indirectly, mostly with reference (...) to the debate over realism about physical computation and computationalism. A welcome exception is Dewhurst’s ([2018]) recent analysis of computational individuation under the mechanistic framework. He rejects the idea of appealing to semantic properties for determining the computational identity of a physical system. But Dewhurst seems to be too quick to pay the price of giving up the notion of computational equivalence. We aim to show that the mechanist need not pay this price. The mechanistic framework can, in principle, preserve the idea of computational equivalence even between two different enough kinds of physical systems, say, electrical and hydraulic ones. (shrink)

The phenomenon of digital computation is explained (often differently) in computer science, computer engineering and more broadly in cognitive science. Although the semantics and implications of malfunctions have received attention in the philosophy of biology and philosophy of technology, errors in computational systems remain of interest only to computer science. Miscomputation has not gotten the philosophical attention it deserves. Our paper fills this gap by offering a taxonomy of miscomputations. This taxonomy is underpinned by a conceptual analysis of the design (...) and implementation of conventional computational systems at various levels of abstraction. It shows that ‘malfunction’ as it is typically used in the philosophy of artefacts only represents one type of miscomputation. (shrink)

Growing interest in psychiatric neurosurgery, and in deep brain stimulation (DBS) in particular, requires that the field be placed in the appropriate historical and scientific context. Current methods of neuromodulation for refractory psychiatric conditions are premised on assumptions similar to those proposed in earlier attempts, namely, the number of resistant patients and the absence of any other effective treatments. As a result, a discussion of the current and future prospects, as well as the limits, of neuromodulation is required to avoid (...) a replay of earlier transgressions, and to place its current chapter in the appropriate historical and ethical context. (shrink)

The feeling of shame has a longstanding role in the relations between individual and society. In this article we shall distinguish between shame and shaming and try to understand the social and cultural function of shame. Even though shame is a feeling that has a physiological basis, the way in which we experience emotions differs from culture to culture since it is the meaning that we attach to an event that evokes the emotion rather than the event itself. In order (...) to understand the phenomenon of social shaming in the present we must examine the social origins of this phenomenon in Western culture. The methodology most fitting to examine this cultural construct is the genealogical method, by way of which we shall come to see that shaming is not an essentially new phenomenon in Western culture, but only a new mode of expressing old patterns. (shrink)

Is reducing large-scale intergroup conflict the business of corporations? Although large corporations can use their power and prominence to reduce intergroup conflict in society, it is unclear to what extent stakeholders support corporate Intergroup Responsibility. Study 1 showed that support for CIR correlates in theoretically meaningful ways with relevant economic, social, and moral attitudes, including fair market ideology, consumer support for corporate social responsibility, social dominance orientation, symbolic racism, and moral foundations. Studies 2 and 3 employed experimental designs to test (...) the hypothesis that business leaders who advocate for intergroup tolerance boost perceptions of corporations and their leaders as moral, just, and fair, which in turn, increases stakeholders’ support for CIR. We found support for this hypothesis across two highly publicized and contentious events related to racial conflict in the U.S.: The White supremacy rally in Charlottesville and the federal government’s announcement about the planned rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy. Specifically, exposing participants to real-world tweets by CEOs who advocated intergroup tolerance following these events increased participants’ support for CIR. This effect was mediated by heightened perceptions of corporations and their leaders as moral, just, and fair. Taken together, these findings enhance our understanding of the factors that shape stakeholders’ reactions to CIR; highlight intergroup conflict as an emerging arena for CSR; and illustrate the power of ethical intergroup leadership. (shrink)

The target article focuses on how attacker-defender conflicts are fought. This commentary complements it by considering how attacker-defender conflicts may be resolved at the bargaining table. I highlight multiple linkages between asymmetric intergroup conflict as modeled with the attacker-defender game and negotiation research and illustrate how the proposed model of attacker-defender conflicts can inspire new research on intergroup negotiation.

In many countries worldwide, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, a shortage of physicians limits the provision of lifesaving interventions. One existing strategy to increase the number of physicians in areas of critical shortage is conditioning medical school scholarships on a precommitment to work in medically underserved areas later. Current practice is usually to demand only one year of service for each year of funded studies. We show the effectiveness of scholarships conditional on such precommitment for increasing physician supplies in underserved areas. (...) Then we defend these scholarships against ethical worries that they constitute slavery contracts; rely on involuntary, biased, or unauthorized early consent by a young signatory; put excessive strains on signed commitments; give rise to domination; and raise suspicion of slavery contracts. Importantly, we find that scholarships involving far longer commitment than current practice allows would also withstand these worries. Policymakers should consider introducing conditional scholarships, including long-term versions, as a means to increasing the supply of physicians to medically underserved areas. (shrink)

Distributive theories evaluate distributions of goods based on candidate recipients’ characteristics, e.g. how well off candidates are, how deserving they are, and whether they fare below sufficiency. But such characteristics vary across possible worlds, so distributive theories may differ in terms of the world which for them settles candidates’ characteristics. This paper examines how distributive theories differ in terms of whether candidate recipients’ relevant characteristics are grounded in the possible world that would take place if the distributor does not intervene (...) (call it the “input” world) or if they are grounded in each possible world that the distributor can bring about through different decisions (call each an “output” world). We illustrate the importance of this distinction in relation to one distributive theory, prioritarianism. As we show, both input and output versions of prioritarianism are plausible interpretations of the literature, and there are good reasons to take input prioritarianism seriously. Ultimately, however, we argue that input prioritarianism should be rejected. (shrink)