Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the current status of ownership of patient information from a Lockean perspective and then present Datenherrschaft as a new model for patient ownership of patient information. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is theoretical in approach. It is based on arguments derived from Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Legal examples of the current situation are derived from Finnish, UK and Swedish legislation. Findings – Current legislation concerning patient information is not clearly formulated (...) and so recognising a new right on the part of the patient, Datenherrschaft, would be an ethically justifiable way of remedying the issue. Research limitations/implications – The legal analysis was limited to Finland, the UK and Sweden, and so other legislation should be looked at in future research. Datenherrschaft is used as an example of an ethically justified way of regulating patient information ownership and should be analysed further. Originality/value – Patient information ownership is an issue that is not unambiguously solved in many countries, nor has it, in our view, been ethically justified. The potential solution presented in this paper is clear and has strong ethical justifications. (shrink)

Utilitarianism could still be a viable moral and political theory, although an emphasis on justice as distributing burdens and benefits has hidden this from current conversations. The traditional counterexamples prove that we have good grounds for rejecting classical, aggregative forms of consequentialism. A nonaggregative, liberal form of utilitarianism is immune to this rejection. The cost is that it cannot adjudicate when the basic needs of individuals or groups are in conflict. Cases like this must be solved by other methods. This (...) is not a weakness in liberal utilitarianism, on the contrary. The theory clarifies what we should admit to begin with: that ethical doctrines do not have universally acceptable solutions to all difficult problems or hard cases. The theory also reminds us that not all problems are in this sense difficult or cases hard. We could alleviate the plight of nonhuman animals by reducing meat eating. We could mitigate climate change and its detrimental effects by choosing better ways of living. These would imply that most people’s desire satisfaction would be partly frustrated, but liberal utilitarianism holds that this would be justified by the satisfaction of the basic needs of other people and nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Should we make people healthier, smarter, and longer-lived if genetic and medical advances enable us to do so? Matti Häyry asks this question in the context of genetic testing and selection, cloning and stem cell research, gene therapies and enhancements. The ethical questions explored include parental responsibility, the use of people as means, the role of hope and fear in risk assessment, and the dignity and meaning of life. Taking as a starting point the arguments presented by Jonathan Glover, (...) John Harris, Ronald M. Green, Jürgen Habermas, Michael J. Sandel, and Leon R. Kass, who defend a particular normative view as the only rational or moral answer, Matti Häyry argues that many coherent rationalities and moralities exist in the field, and that to claim otherwise is mistaken"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Governmental reactions to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen as ethics communication. Governments can contain the disease and thereby mitigate the detrimental public health impact; allow the virus to spread to reach herd immunity; test, track, isolate, and treat; and suppress the disease regionally. An observation of Sweden and Finland showed a difference in feasible ways to communicate the chosen policy to the citizenry. Sweden assumed the herd immunity strategy and backed it up with health utilitarian arguments. This (...) was easy to communicate to the Swedish people, who appreciated the voluntary restrictions approach and trusted their decision makers. Finland chose the contain and mitigate strategy and was towards the end of the observation period apparently hesitating between suppression and the test, track, isolate, and treat approach. Both are difficult to communicate to the general public accurately, truthfully, and acceptably. Apart from health utilitarian argumentation, something like the republican political philosophy or selective truth telling are needed. The application of republicanism to the issue, however, is problematic, and hiding the truth seems to go against the basic tenets of liberal democracy. (shrink)

(1) Abstract objects. The nominalist (as the label is used today) denies that there exist abstract objects. The platonist holds that there are abstract objects. One example is numbers. The nominalist denies that there are numbers; the platonist typically affirms it.

Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitalityãeepresents a comprehensive account and understanding of Derridaâe(tm)s approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derridaâe(tm)s texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and specifically in relation to the texts of Husserl, Levinas, Freud and Heidegger - that the reasoning behind his elusive works on law and justice can be grasped. Through detailed readings of texts such as To speculate (...) âe" on Freud, Adieu, Declarations of Independence, Before the Law, Cogito and the history of madness, Given Time, Force of Law and Specters of Marx, De Ville contends that there is a continuity in Derridaâe(tm)s thinking, and rejects the idea of an âe~ethical turnâe(tm). Derrida is shown to be neither a postmodernist nor a political liberal, but a radical revolutionary. De Ville also controversially contends that justice in Derridaâe(tm)s thinking must be radically distinguished from Levinasâe(tm)s reflections on âe~the otherâe(tm). It is the notion of absolute hospitality - which Derrida derives from Levinas, but radically transforms - that provides the basis of this argument. Justice must on De Villeâe(tm)s reading be understood in terms of a demand of absolute hospitality which is imposed on both the individual and the collective subject. A much needed account of Derrida's influential approach to law,ãeeJacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitalityãeewill be an invaluable resource for those with an interest in legal theory, and for those with an interest in the ethics and politics of deconstruction. (shrink)

Abstract:Moralism in bioethics and elsewhere means going beyond accepted moral principles, either by exaggerating good ethical concerns, by applying them to areas where they do not belong, or simply by assuming anything else than concrete physical or mental harm as normative guides. This paper explores the conceptual background of moralism especially in the consequentialist tradition, presents cases of allegedly bad moralism in the light of this exploration, introduces six approaches to justice, and argues that these approaches question our prevailing views (...) on the goodness and badness of moralism in its various forms. (shrink)

The concept of mutual responsiveness is currently based on little empirical data in the literature of Responsible Research and Innovation. This paper explores RRI’s idea of mutual responsiveness in the light of recent RRI case studies on private sector research and development. In RRI, responsible innovation is understood as a joint endeavour of innovators and societal stakeholders, who become mutually responsive to each other in defining the ‘right impacts’ of the innovation in society, and in steering the innovation towards realising (...) those impacts. Yet, the case studies identified several reasons for why the idea of mutual responsiveness does not always appear feasible or desirable in actual R&D situations. Inspired by the discrepancies between theory and practice, we suggest three further elaborations for the concept of responsiveness in RRI. Process-responsiveness is suggested for identifying situations that require stakeholder involvement specifically during R&D. Product-responsiveness is suggested for mobilising the potential of innovation products to be adaptable according to diverse stakeholder needs. Presponsiveness is suggested as responsiveness towards stakeholders that are not reachable at a given time of R&D. Our aim is to contribute to a more tangible understanding of responsiveness in RRI, and suggest directions for further analysis in upcoming RRI case studies. (shrink)

Antinatalism assigns reproduction a negative value. There should be fewer or no births. Those who say that there should be fewer births have been called conditional antinatalists. A better name for their view would be selective pronatalism. Those who say that there should be no births face two challenges. They must define the scope of their no-birth policy. Does it apply only to human or sentient beings or can it also be extended to all organic life, perhaps even to machine (...) consciousness? And whatever the scope, they have to justify the eventual extinction of humankind or other life forms, an inevitable consequence of unconditional antinatalism. Different axiologies and moral theories produce different responses to these challenges. It is argued that a two-value conflict-sensitive negative utilitarianism would produce a kind and reasonable justification for ending at least human and factory-animal reproduction. The conclusion is purely moral and supports only voluntary extinction for humankind. (shrink)

In the summer of 1998, the Wisconsin State legislature amended its child protection laws. Under new child abuse provisions, Wisconsin judges can confine pregnant women who abuse alcohol or drugs for the duration of their pregnancies. South Dakota enacted similar legislation almost simultaneously. The South Dakota statute requires mandatory drug and alcohol treatment for pregnant women who abuse those substances and classifies such activity as child abuse. In addition, the South Dakota legislation gives relatives the power to commit pregnant women (...) involuntarily for two days; a court order can place the pregnant women in custody for up to nine months. These recent legislative “successes” follow scores of failed attempts by legislators in other states to establish fetal protection laws aimed at women who use and abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. (shrink)

_Liberal Utilitarianism and Applied Ethics_ explores the foundations of early utilitarianism and, at the same time, the theoretical bases of social ethics and policy in modern Western welfare states. Matti Hayry sees the main reason for utilitarianism's growing disrepute among moral philosophers is that its principles cannot legitimately be extended to situations where the basic needs of the individuals involved are in conflict. He is able to formulate a solution to this fundamental problem by arguing convincingly that by combining (...) a limited version of liberal utilitarianism and the methods of applied ethics, we are able to define our moral duties and rights. _Liberal Utilitarianism and Applied Ethics_ will appeal to students and teachers of philosophy who are interested in the doctrine of utilitarianism or in ethical decison-making. (shrink)

Oystein Linnebo's book Thin Objects is partly devoted to defending the view that some objects are “thin” in that their existence does not impose any substantive demands on the world. In this paper, I discuss the concern that the defense relies on there being entities that serve as the referents of predicates. Linnebo thus seems to assume the thinness of those entities. In the course of my discussion, I also discuss what Linnebo says about the role of criteria of identity (...) in his discussion of reference and existence. (shrink)

The surprise minimization principle has been applied to explain various cognitive processes in humans. Originally describing perceptual and active inference, the framework has been applied to different types of decision making including long-term policies, utility maximization and exploration. This analysis extends the application of surprise minimization to a multi-agent setup and shows how it can explain the emergence of social rules and cooperation. We further show that in social decision-making and political policy design, surprise minimization is superior in many aspects (...) to the classical approach of maximizing utility. Surprise minimization shows directly what value freedom of choice can have for social agents and why, depending on the context, they enter into cooperation, agree on social rules, or do nothing of the kind. (shrink)

Added by a category editor--not an official abstract. -/- Discusses the history (and reasons for the history) implicit in the title, as well as the author's view on same.

The reversal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the states to regulate terminations of pregnancy more autonomously than during 1973–2022. Those who think that women should be legally entitled to abortions at their own request are suggesting that annulling the reversal could be an option. This would mean continued reliance on the interpretation of privacy that Roe v. Wade stood on. The interpretation does not have the moral support that its supporters think. This can be shown (...) by recalling the shortcomings of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous violinist example and its application to abortion laws. Philosophically better reasons for not restricting access to abortion can be found in a simple principle of fairness and in sensible theories on the value of human life. Whether or not philosophy has any use in the debate is another matter. Legal decisions to regulate terminations are probably based on pronatalist state interests, shared by the apparently disagreeing parties and immune to rational argumentation. (shrink)

The dramatic appearance of managed care organizations (MCOs) on the U.S. health scene has generated tremendous anxiety among health care providers and patients. These fears are based on the belief that managed care techniques pose greater risks of under treatment than do fee-for-service modes of payment. In addition, many physicians and patients resent the limits placed on clinical autonomy by the MCO model and the stresses that it places on the traditional physician-patient relationship. These misgivings have been exacerbated by the (...) mostly negative response to MCOs in the media and academia. Legislatures have responded to these claims and public fears with a wave of regulatory initiatives. Some of these regulations are attempts to protect patients. Others, however, are motivated primarily by antipathy toward the concept of managed care itself. This essay is an attempt to develop a social ethic of regulation and argues that the sole reason that private enterprise may be justifiably limited is when it presents a risk of harm to others or society. While some regulation and proposed regulation of MCOs meet this standard, much legislation represents an unjustified attempt to limit or handicap otherwise legal behavior merely because a segment of the population and medical profession find it aesthetically unpleasing and oppose its approach to the delivery of health services. (shrink)

Rights can be founded in a variety of ethical systems—e.g., on natural law, on the duties postulated by deontological ethics, and on the consequences of our actions. The concept of risk we will outline supports a theory of rights which provides at least individual human beings with the entitlement not to be harmed by the environmental impacts of biotechnology. The analysis can, we believe, also be extended to the rights of animals as well as ecosystems, both of which can be (...) harmed by human actions. We argue that further examination of these harms and rights would be the best way to proceed from emotional moral objections to truly ethical analyses in the context of biotechnology and the environment. (shrink)

The aging process involves changes in immune regulation, i.e. adaptive immunity declines whereas innate immunity becomes activated. NF‐κB signaling is the master regulator of the both immune systems. Two recent articles highlight the role of the NF‐κB system in aging and immune responses. Adler et al1 showed that the NF‐κB binding domain is the genetic regulatory motif which is most strongly associated with the aging process. Kwon et al2 studying HIV‐1 infection and subsequent immune deficiency process demonstrated that HIV‐1 Tat (...) protein binds to SIRT1 protein, a well‐known longevity factor, and inhibits the SIRT1‐mediated deacetylation of the p65 component of the NF‐κB complex. As a consequence, the transactivation efficiency of the NF‐κB factor was greatly potentiated, leading to the activation of immune system and later to the decline of adaptive immunity. These observations support the scenario where immune responses and aging process can be enforced by the potentiation of NF‐κB transactivation efficiency. Longevity factors, such as SIRT1 and its activators, might regulate the efficiency of the NF‐κB signaling, the major outcome of which is inflamm‐aging via proinflammatory responses. BioEssays 30:939–942, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In Passive Obedience Berkeley argues that we must always observe the prohibitions decreed by our sovereign rulers. He defends this thesis both by providing critiques against opposing views and, more interestingly, by presenting a moral theory that supports it. The theory contains elements of divine - command, natural - law, moral - sense, rule - based, and outcome - oriented ethics. Ultimately, however, it seems to rest on a notion of spiritual reason — a specific God - given faculty that (...) all rational human beings have. Berkeley’s work on immaterialism, for which he is better known, could thus perhaps best be seen as an attempt to find a scientific justification for his moral doctrine. (shrink)

Bioethics as a philosophical discipline deals with matters of life and death. How it deals with them, however, depends on the kind of life particular bioethicists focus on and the kind of value they assign to it. Natural-law ethicists and conservative Kantians emphasize biological human life regardless of its developmental stage. Integrative bioethicists also embrace nonhuman life if it can be protected without harming humans. Liberal and utilitarian moralists concentrate on life that is sentient and aware of itself, to the (...) exclusion of biological existence devoid of these. Extinctionist and antinatalist philosophers believe that life’s value is negative and that its misery should be alleviated and terminated by not bringing new individuals into existence. As the last-mentioned approach reverses the idea of life’s positive value, it could be called oibethics. (shrink)

The concepts we use to value and prescribe are historically contingent, and we could have found ourselves with others. But what does it mean to say that some concepts are better than others for purposes of action-guiding and deliberation? What is it to choose between different normative conceptual frameworks?

The role that trust plays in blockchain-based systems is understood and portrayed in various manners. The blockchain technology is said to enable and establish trust as well as to redirect it, to substitute for it, and to make it obsolete. Furthermore, there is disagreement on whom or what users have to trust when using the blockchain technology: code, math, algorithms, and machines, or still human actors. This paper hypothesizes that the divergences of the depictions largely rest on implicitly adhering to (...) different accounts of trust. Thus, the goal of this paper is to outline how the current lack of a shared understanding of the term “trust” leads to diverging interpretations of the blockchain technology’s core features. Furthermore, it shows how this lack of common understanding obstructs scholars from referring to one another meaningfully in the discourse on blockchain technology. To do so, this paper outlines the most prominent depictions of the setup of relevant trust relationships within blockchain-based systems and traces their roots to different underlying assumptions on the nature of trust. (shrink)

My focus here will be Rudolf Carnap’s views on ontology, as these are presented in the seminal “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950). I will first describe how I think Carnap’s distinction between external and internal questions is best understood. Then I will turn to broader issues regarding Carnap’s views on ontology. With certain reservations, I will ascribe to Carnap an ontological pluralist position roughly similar to the positions of Eli Hirsch and the later Hilary Putnam. Then I turn to some (...) interrelated arguments against the pluralist view. The arguments are not demonstrative. Some possible escape routes for the pluralist are outlined. But I think the arguments constitute a formidable challenge. There should be serious doubt as to whether the pluralist view, as it emerges after discussion of these arguments, will be worth defending. Moreover, there is an alternative ontological view which equally well subserves the motivations underlying ontological pluralism. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that we sometimes are disposed to accept false and even jointly inconsistent claims by virtue of our semantic competence, and that this comes to light in the sorites and liar paradoxes. Among the subsidiary theses are that this is an important source of indeterminacy in truth conditions, that we must revise basic assumptions about semantic competence, and that classical logic and bivalence can be upheld in the face of the sorites paradox.

(For colloquium talk in Aarhus, Denmark.).

Rights, autonomy, privacy, and confidentialityare concepts commonly used in discussionsconcerning genetic information. When theseconcepts are thought of as denoting absolutenorms and values which cannot be overriden byother considerations, conflicts among themnaturally occur.In this paper, these and related notions areexamined in terms of the duties and obligationsmedical professionals and their clients canhave regarding genetic knowledge. It issuggested that while the prevailing idea ofautonomy is unhelpful in the analysis of theseduties, and the ensuing rights, an alternativereading of personal self-determination canprovide a firmer (...) basis for ethical guidelinesand policies in this field. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt sees the 1933 Nazi seizure of power as a revolution that inaugurates an entirely new era of political-legal order. Analyzing Schmitt’s rarer Nazi-texts, diaries, and correspondence, I argue that from 1933 to 1936 Schmitt attempts to theorize the Nazi revolution by developing an entirely new political language of Nazism, cleansed from non-German ways of thinking, especially nineteenth-century liberalism. I focus on three conceptual transformations through which Schmitt understands the remaking of the German state: The shift from the liberal (...) democratic neutral state to a new one-party state or a Führer-state dominated by a movement – a shift symbolized by the “death of Hegel”; the transformation of sovereign power into Führertum, represented by the symbolical deaths of Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, whose thought cannot comprehend the totality of the Nazi movement, and the perversion of the liberal-democratic equality before the law to the völkisch equality of the race as the basis of all Nazi political–legal life. Criticizing previous interpretations of Schmitt’s Nazi thinking, I demonstrate that when Schmitt abandons his own decicionist thought in favor of concrete order thinking in 1933/1934 the idea of race becomes the basis of his political–legal thought. (shrink)

Jaakko Hintikka's Kantianism in philosophy of logic and mathematics is known to go further than Kant's own, for he argues that mathematical reasoning involves the "language-games" of seeking and finding. Therefore, logic mirrors the structure of this activity. But Hintikka also pushes the Copemican Revolution further to epistemology and philosophy of science. He agrees that "reason has insight only into what which it produces after a plan of ist own", but gives the idea a new logical turn. Kant thought that (...) reason imposes certain architectonic constraints on the possible outcome of inquiry, but Hintikka's interrogative model of inquiry also emphasizes the activity of and therefore the strategy in, putting questions to Nature. (shrink)

I critically discuss Douglas Edwards' construal of the debate over truth, and his case for truth pluralism. Toward the end I present a constructive suggestion on Edwards' behalf. This suggestion avoids the problems I have presented, whatever in the end its fate.

My theme here will be vagueness. But first recall Quine’s arguments for the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference. (I will presume these arguments to be familiar.) If Quine is right, then there are radically different acceptable assignments of semantic values to the expressions of any language: different assignments of semantic values that for all that is determined by whatever it is that determines semantic value are all acceptable, and all equally good. Quine even argued that the indeterminacy (...) is so radical that some sentences are true under some acceptable assignments but false under others.1 Still, Quine does not allow intermediate truth-values or truthvalue gaps. (As I will put it, avoiding the disjunctive formulation: does not allow that there are sentences which are neuter.) Quine holds on to classical logic and bivalence and requires each acceptable assignment to be classical and bivalent.2. (shrink)

Here is the liar paradox. We have a sentence, (L), which somehow says of itself that it is false. Suppose (L) is true. Then things are as (L) says they are. (For it would appear to be a mere platitude that if a sentence is true, then things are as the sentence says they are.) (L) says that (L) is false. So, (L) is false. Since the supposition that (L) is true leads to contradiction, we can assert that (L) is (...) false. But since this is just what (L) says, (L) is then true. (For it would appear to be a mere platitude that if things are as a given sentence says they are, the sentence is true.) So (L) is true. So (L) is both true and false. Contradiction. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeanism in the philosophy of mathematics consists of two main parts: the logicist thesis, that mathematics (or at least branches thereof, like arithmetic) all but reduce to logic, and the platonist thesis, that there are abstract, mathematical objects. I will here focus on the ontological thesis, platonism. Neo-Fregeanism has been widely discussed in recent years. Mostly the discussion has focused on issues specific to mathematics. I will here single out for special attention the view on ontology which underlies the neo-Fregeans’ (...) claims about mathematical objects, and discuss this view in a broader setting. (shrink)

Let the moral question of personal identity be the following: what is the nature of the entities we should focus our prudential concerns and ascriptions of responsibility around? (If indeed we should structure these things around any entities at all.) Let the semantic question of personal identity be the question of what is the nature of the entities that ‘person’ is true of. A naive (in the sense of simple and intuitive) view would have it that the two questions are (...) so intimately connected that the entities we should focus our concerns and ascriptions around are, pretty trivially, the persons. In part, my aim here is to evaluate this naive view. However, I will not actually attempt to give a definite verdict on it. Rather, I will identify the assumptions under which the naive view is true, and discuss how to go about evaluating those assumptions. (shrink)

Many theorists hold that there is, among value concepts, a fundamental distinction between thin ones and thick ones. Among thin ones are concepts like good and right. Among concepts that have been regarded as thick are discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, assiduity, frugality, economy, good sense, prudence, discernment, treachery, promise, brutality, courage, coward, lie, gratitude, lewd, perverted, rude, glorious, graceful, exploited, and, of course, many others. Roughly speaking, thick concepts are value concepts with significant descriptive content. I will discuss a number (...) of problems having to do with how best to understand the notion of a thick concept. Thick concepts have been widely discussed in the .. (shrink)