Critics of the gaps in our nation’s health insurance decry the absence of a health insurance “system” and the resulting “patchwork” of private and public insurance that leaves so many Americans unprotected. There is no question that these gaps are unconscionable; but they are also no accident. They are the result of policy and political choices with substantial consequences for those who remain uncovered. In my view, the fundamental political barrier to universal coverage is that our success in insuring most (...) of the nation’s population has “crowded out” our political capacity to insure the rest. This paper will explain how we arrived at the mix of private and public insurance we now have, how that mix impedes efforts to achieve universal coverage, and how “crowd-out” affects strategy for improving coverage in the future. (shrink)

The debate on the influence of markets on virtues has focused on two opposite hypotheses: the doux commerce thesis and the self-destruction thesis. Whereas the doux commerce hypothesis assumes that capitalism polishes human manners, the self-destruction hypothesis holds that capitalism erodes the moral foundation of society. This paper will develop a more balanced position by using the virtue ethics developed by Aristotle, which distinguishes several virtues. The research will focus on the question for which virtues the doux commerce or self-destruction (...) thesis is likely to hold. An extensive literature survey shows that market competition tends to stimulate diligence, crowd out temperance, generosity, and sociability, and stimulate envy. The effect on other virtues – i.e. courage, high-spiritedness, justice, and prudence – is ambiguous. (shrink)

It is a popular view thatpractical deliberation excludes foreknowledge of one's choice. Wolfgang Spohn and Isaac Levi have argued that not even a purely probabilistic self-predictionis available to thedeliberator, if one takes subjective probabilities to be conceptually linked to betting rates. It makes no sense to have a betting rate for an option, for one's willingness to bet on the option depends on the net gain from the bet, in combination with the option's antecedent utility, rather than on the offered (...) odds. And even apart from this consideration, assigning probabilities to the options among which one is choosing is futile since such probabilities could be of no possible use in choice. The paper subjects these arguments to critical examination and suggests that, appearances notwithstanding, practical deliberation need not crowd outself-prediction. (shrink)

While no one denies that science depends on epistemic values, many philosophers of science have wrestled with the appropriate role of non-epistemic values, such as social, ethical, and political values. Recently, philosophers of science have overwhelmingly accepted that non-epistemic values should play a legitimate role in science. The recent philosophical debate has shifted from the value-free ideal in science to questions about how science should incorporate non-epistemic values. This article engages with such questions through an exploration of the environmental sciences. (...) These sciences are a mosaic of diverse fields characterized by interdisciplinarity, problem-orientation, policy-directedness, and ubiquitous nonepistemic values. This article addresses a frequently voiced concern about many environmental science practices: that they ‘crowd out’ or displace significant non-epistemic values by either (1) entailing some non-epistemic values, rather than others, or by (2) obscuring discussion of non-epistemic values altogether. With three detailed case studies e monetizing nature, nature-society dualism, and ecosystem health e we show that the alleged problem of crowding out emerges from active debates within the environmental sciences. In each case, critics charge that the scientific practice in question displaces nonepistemic values in at least one of the two senses distinguished above. We show that crowding out is neither necessary nor always harmful when it occurs. However, we do see these putative objections to the application of environmental science as teaching valuable lessons about what matters for successful environmental science, all things considered. Given the significant role that many environmental scientists see for non-epistemic values in their fields, we argue that these cases motivate lessons about the importance of value-flexibility (that practices can accommodate a plurality of non-epistemic values), transparency about value-based decisions that inform practice, and environmental pragmatism. (shrink)

Memes have been proposed to explain wide swathes of human culture and language use. I argue that what is really doing the explanatory work in many of these cases is a basic mechanism of information...

Motivation crowding out can lead to a reduction of ‘higher’ virtues, such as altruism or public spirit, in market contexts. This article discusses the role of virtue in the moral and economic theory of Adam Smith. It argues that because Smith’s account of commercial society is based on ‘lower’ virtue, ‘higher’ virtue has a precarious place in it; this phenomenon is structurally similar to motivation crowding out. The article analyzes and systematizes the ways in which Smith builds on (...) ‘contrivances of nature’ in order to solve the problems of limited self-command and limited knowledge. As recent research has shown, a clear separation of different social spheres can help to reduce the risk of motivation crowding out and preserve a place for ‘higher virtue’ in commercial society. The conclusion reflects on the performative power of economics, arguing that the one-sided focus on models of ‘economic man’ should be embedded in a larger context. (shrink)

Decision-theoretic representation theorems have been developed and appealed to in the service of two important philosophical projects: in attempts to characterise credences in terms of preferences, and in arguments for probabilism. Theorems developed within the formal framework that Savage developed have played an especially prominent role here. I argue that the use of these ‘Savagean’ theorems create significant difficulties for both projects, but particularly the latter. The origin of the problem directly relates to the question of whether we can have (...) credences regarding acts currently under consideration and the consequences which depend on those acts; I argue that such credences are possible. Furthermore, I argue that attempts to use Jeffrey’s non-Savagean theorem in the service of these two projects may not fare much better. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 6, June 2019, Page 42-44.

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (French: Psychologie des Foules; literally: Psychology of Crowds) is a book authored by Gustave Le Bon that was first published in 1895. In the book, Le Bon claims that there are several characteristics of crowd psychology: "impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others. Le Bon claimed that "an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself (...) - either in consequence of magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant - in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer. (shrink)

Payment for performance is widely embraced as a key component of any well-designed executive compensation package. There is a price to be paid, however, for the heavy reliance on incentives as a way of controlling agent behavior. In particular, evidence exists demonstrating that incentives can crowd out an agent’s social preferences towards her principal. Social preferences are pro-social tendencies of people to do things for others for reasons such as fairness, reciprocity, altruism, and ethical or moral beliefs. The use of (...) incentives in compensation can result in self-interested agents. When crowding out occurs, in order to elicit the desired level of performance, principals may need to increase the level of incentive employed. Crowding out therefore provides an additional account for rising levels of executive compensation. In addition, crowding theory can provide a helpful explanation for the tension around the U.S. government’s reaction to preexisting banker incentive contracts during the 2008 financial crisis. (shrink)

This paper discusses the implications for public participation in science opened by the sharing of information via electronic media. The ethical dimensions of information flow and control are linked to questions of autonomy, authority and appropriate exploitation of knowledge. It argues that, by lowering the boundaries that limit access and participation by wider active audiences, both scientific identity and practice are challenged in favor of extra-disciplinary and avocational communities such as scientific enthusiasts and lay experts. Reconfigurations of hierarchy, mediated by (...) new channels of information flow, are increasingly visible at the interface between professional and non-professional practice. Setting the scene by surveying the role of the media in defining twentieth-century contexts of lay science, the paper illustrates the appropriation and recuperation of scientific authority being played out in two contemporary models of active public engagement: so-called “citizen science” and varieties of “crowd-sourced science”. Both participatory models are increasingly reliant on information exchange via social media, but may be implemented to support distinctly different societal goals and beneficiaries. (shrink)

This paper discusses how an interactive artwork, the Crowd-Sourced Intelligence Agency, can contribute to discussions of Big Data intelligence analytics. The CSIA is a publicly accessible Open Source Intelligence system that was constructed using information gathered from technical manuals, research reports, academic papers, leaked documents, and Freedom of Information Act files. Using a visceral heuristic, the CSIA demonstrates how the statistical correlations made by automated classification systems are different from human judgment and can produce false-positives, as well as how the (...) display of information through an interface can affect the judgment of an intelligence agent. The public has the right to ask questions about how a computer program determines if they are a threat to national security and to question the practicality of using statistical pattern recognition algorithms in place of human judgment. Currently, the public’s lack of access to both Big Data and the actual datasets intelligence agencies use to train their classification algorithms keeps the possibility of performing effective sous-dataveillance out of reach. Without this data, the results returned by the CSIA will not be identical to those of intelligence agencies. Because we have replicated how OSINT is processed, however, our results will resemble the type of results and mistakes made by OSINT systems. The CSIA takes some initial steps toward contributing to an informed public debate about large-scale monitoring of open source, social media data and provides a prototype for counterveillance and sousveillance tools for citizens. (shrink)

Fission of cellular membranes is ubiquitous and essential for life. Complex protein machineries, such as the dynamin and ESCRT spirals, have evolved to mediate membrane fission during diverse cellular processes, for example, vesicle budding. A new study suggests that non-specialized membrane-bound proteins can induce membrane fission through mass action due to protein crowding. Because up to 2/3 of the mass of cellular membranes is contributed by proteins, membrane protein crowding is an important physiological parameter. Considering the complexity of (...) membrane shape transitions during a fission reaction, spatial and temporal variability in protein distribution, and the abundance of intrinsically disordered regions in proteins on an invaginating membrane, protein crowding can have diverse consequences for fission in the cell. The question is, how and to what extent this mechanism combines with the action of dedicated fission machineries. Membrane fission, which is required for formation of vesicles or cytokinesis, can be carried out by specialized proteins like dynamin and the ESCRT complex. Recent work suggests that fission of cellular membranes, which are densely packed with proteins, can also be induced by protein crowding due to high entropic tension. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fellini's Crowds and the Remains of ReligionAndrew Mckenna (bio)The fascist parade in Federico Fellini's Amarcord enables us to take the measure of the director's analytic and inteve genius. It begins amid swirls of dust and smoke emanating from the town train station, as if attributing the successful spread of Italian fascism to a failure of perception. The party is, as the saying goes, blowing smoke in our face, producing (...) a cultural climate favorable to murky thinking. The haze connotes the inability to properly envision phenomena with any mental or moral clarity, to distinguish matters clearly, such as the difference that the film suggests in a later scene, with comic irony, between a real military victory and shooting a gramophone out of a bell tower because it is playing the communist Internationale.But we cannot get away with anything like blaming fascism only on the weather, moral or physical. Far more revealing is the next sequence of shots, in which local party officials and members, all in uniform, are shown running a little breathlessly in loose formation, while exchanging remarks that express gleeful admiration of their leader and his party. They hustle up some stairs in the same loose formation and stand facing the camera, medium close-up, in order to acclaim the party slogans booming from loudspeakers. They shout in unison before, we note, the slogans are fully pronounced, so that we are made aware that they are not really listening to what is being said, but only acting in concert. Their acclamation is comically out of sync—with reality, perceptual and, by implication, social. This image of the bersaglieri running in unison is familiar to spectators at political rallies and from newsreels at the time, and to historians since then. But Fellini has moved the camera in closer than it has ever been before, combining two or three characters in a head-shot as they trot up the street. It is a classic gesture of defamiliarization, as the Russian formalists called it when identifying art-work, that makes this phenomenon available to deeper understanding. [End Page 159]We have just viewed a penetrating analysis of group action, a symbolic discourse on crowd behavior as it concerns organized political activity. The running here is not natural to such a group; it must mean something. It isn't dictated to them as orders; it must obey the dictates of the phenomenon that Fellini is revealing to us. This brilliantly orchestrated scene prompts the question: why, when, for what reason does a crowd run? The answers, typically, are two: in fear, in panic, as from fire or flood; or in rage, in fury, as against an abhorred enemy culprit—to the Bastille, or the gallows, or the nearest tree or lamppost that can serve as such. Though it is closer to the second case, Fellini's gang of fascists fits neither of these models precisely, and we have to step back a bit and reflect upon what he is representing to us about crowd behavior and organized political activity of a certain kind, of the kind that can only succeed, perhaps, amid a hazy climate of moral perception. We need to probe further the logic of this phenomenon, to explore the meaning of what appears before our eyes, as the philosophers do when they say they are doing phenomenology. We can do this by further considering alternative models of behavior.In a military parade, we have an organized crowd of a certain specific type, in which a group is massed in rigid formation and everyone moves in lock-step order to the regular beat of the drum or to a repeated count of numbers. Fellini gives us an example of this in the fascist youth athletic exercises performed by uniformed groups of boys and girls who move their rifles and hoops to a steady eight-count beat. So we know the director of Amarcord is thinking about mass movements of all sorts. Moreover, his film also provides us with a crowd phenomenon at the opposite end of the social spectrum. At the beginning of the film, we witness the nightly passagiata, the evening town stroll still very... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"The Crowd Is Untruth": A Comparison of Kierkegaard and Girard Charles K. Bellinger University of Virginia The purpose ofthis essay is to provide an introductory comparison of the writings of Soren Kierkegaard and René Girard. To my knowledge, a substantial secondary article or book has not been written on this subject.1 Girard's writings themselves contain only a handful of references to Kierkegaard.2 This deficiency is unfortunate, since, as I (...) hope to show in the following pages, these two authors do share common insights into the psychology ofviolence. Girard's writings usually take the form of a scientific analysis of historical data. He is attempting to frame a theory of culture which takes into account all of the data which he has encountered. It would seem that Kierkegaard's mode of thought is very different, since he is primarily concerned with the meaning of personal existence before God. But 1 Eugene Webb's Philosophers of Consciousness and The Self Between contain discussions ofKierkegaard and Girard, but they are basically parallel sections which do not include a focused comparison of the two authors. David McCracken's The Scandal ofthe Gospels makes reference to Girard and contains a chapter on Kierkegaard, but it also lacks an extended comparison. 2 See Girard 1984, 58; 1986, 173; 1988, 26-7. In his Foreword to Robert HamertonKelly (xi), Girard says, "Mimetic theory is too realistic and commonsensical to be confused with one more nihilistic stepchild ofGerman idealism. And yet, unlike the positivistic social sciences, it is not blind to paradox; it can articulate the intricacies of human relations just as effectively as a Kierkegaard or a Dostoievsky." 104Charles K Bellinger Kierkegaard was in his own way and in his own time a kind of social scientist. He engaged in an extended "anthropological contemplation" (1967-1978, 1:37), in which he attempted to map out the territory of the human spirit. Girard's thought, for its part, occasionally steps outside ofthe methodological atheism of the scientific guild to speak in theological terms. Thus in both realms, the scientific and the theological, there is the possibility of fruitful dialogue between these two authors. I am assuming that the readers ofthis essay are more familiar with the writings of Girard than with the writings of Kierkegaard. My procedure will therefore involve listing certain key concepts in Girard's thought, such as mimetic desire, envy, the social crisis, etc., followed by a search for parallel ideas in Kierkegaard. IfGirard were claiming complete originality for his interpretation of culture, my findings would show that he was in many respects foreshadowed by Kierkegaard. But, of course, he is not claiming this. He claims only to be restating and organizing insights which have already been achieved by great novelists and the Bible. I would argue that Kierkegaard is rightly seen as one of the great "novelists" who sees human culture clearly and penetratingly. It is not a coincidence that Kierkegaard's thought, like Girard's, is rooted in an interpretation ofthe Bible. After this initial survey ofsimilarities between Kierkegaard and Girard, I will outline a few possible differences between their approaches. This will lead to comments on the way in which Kierkegaard's thought can be used as a basis for understanding the motives which underlie political violence. Consequently Kierkegaard's thought can be coordinated with Girard's in such a way that the thought ofeach author is strengthened by the contribution of the other. Mimetic desire Mimetic desire is the main starting point for Girard's theory of personality and culture. Human beings have a basic feeling ofexistential lack that leads them to look to a model who seems to possess a greater fullness of being. The desires of the model are imitated in the hope of acquiring a similar fullness ofbeing. In Girard's words: When modem theorists envisage man as a being who knows what he wants, or who at least possesses an "unconscious" that knows for him, they may simply have failed to perceive the domain in which human uncertainty is most extreme. Once his Kierkegaard and Girard105 basic needs are satisfied (indeed, sometimes even before), man is subject to intense desires, though he may not... (shrink)

The legal doctrine of ‘common purpose’ in South African criminal law considers all parties liable who have been in implicit or explicit agreement to commit an unlawful act, and associated with each other for that purpose, even if the consequential act has been carried out by one of them. It relieves the prosecution of proving the causal link between the conduct of an individual member of a group acting in common purpose, and the ultimate consequence caused by the action of (...) the group as a whole. The National Prosecuting Authority’s controversial and vociferously challenged decision to charge 270 demonstrators at Lonmin Platinum Mine in Marikana with the murders of 34 colleagues under the ‘common purpose’ doctrine, implying liability by association or agreement, raises the question as to the constitution and characteristics of the crowd and of the public, respectively. This article outlines the history of the application of the common purpose rule in South Africa, to then examine ‘common purpose’ within the philosophical parameters of group psychology and collective intentionality. It argues for methodological individualism within a psychoanalytic theorisation of group dynamics, and a non-summative approach to collective intentionality, in addressing some problems in the conceptualisation of group formation. (shrink)

Many social media platforms enable (nearly) anyone to post (nearly) anything. One clear downside of this permissiveness is that many people appear bad at determining who to trust online. Hacks, quacks, climate change deniers, vaccine skeptics, and election deniers have all gained massive followings in these free markets of ideas, and many of their followers seem to genuinely trust them. At the same time, there are many cases in which people seem to reliably determine who to trust online. Consider, for (...) example, Do It Yourself (DIY) content about how to play guitar, bake, fix one’s plumbing, or repair one’s car. For these topics, those who have the largest accounts and the most popular content typically possess significant expertise. That is, social media users seem to reliably pick out DIY experts. We thus have a puzzle: why are social media users seemingly competent at identifying DIY experts, but not climate science or vaccine experts? In what follows, we solve this puzzle. We begin by identifying a novel wisdom of the crowds phenomenon: specifically we argue that the crowd (in combination with social media search and recommendation algorithms) reliably picks out DIY experts and serves as a credentialing institution for DIY content. Next, we argue that (a) there are five epistemic factors that determine whether the crowd can succeed at recognizing experts on social media platforms, and (b) while many of those factors are satisfied to a sufficiently high degree by DIY content, they are mostly lacking for content about climate change or vaccines. (shrink)

Biodiversity offsetting is an increasingly popular policy instrument used to compensate for losses in biodiversity and ecosystem services caused by development projects. Although evidence suggests that offsetting can yield significant environmental benefits, application of the policy instrument is surrounded by controversy. Among other things, critics argue that offsetting builds on normatively contentious assumptions regarding the value of nature and the fungibility of biodiversity components, such as species, habitats, ecosystems, and landscapes. A large portion of the criticism targets the allegedly illegitimate (...) commodification of nature that the policy instrument entails. Exploring the significantly more developed normative discussion on carbon offsetting, this article identifies four arguments that plausibly could be made to support the claim that it is wrong to commodify nature in the way biodiversity offsetting schemes do: the common ownership argument, the price argument, the non‐substitutability argument, and the “crowding out” argument. Although none of the arguments definitively invalidate the use of biodiversity offsets, they provide good reasons to proceed with caution when designing and implementing them. (shrink)

Following the pattern set by the early German Romantics, Kierkegaard conveys many of his insights through literature rather than academic prose. What makes him a valuable member of this tradition is the theory he develops to support it, his so-called “theory of indirect communication.” The most exciting aspect of this theory concerns the alleged importance of indirect communication: Kierkegaard claims that there are some projects only it can accomplish. This paper provides a critical account of two arguments Kierkegaard offers in (...) defense of this claim. The first argument is that he needs to use indirect communication in order to discourage people from losing themselves in the “crowd”. The second argument is that he needs to use it in order to help people out of a “monstrous illusion”. It is shown that while both arguments justify Kierkegaard’s decision to use indirect communication, neither one supports the original claim about its indispensability. (shrink)

In this article, I argue we have collective duties to people who suffer from kidney failure and these duties are best fulfilled through a government-monopsony market in kidneys. A government-monopsony market is a model where the government is the sole buyer, and kidneys are distributed according to need, not ability to pay. The framework of collective duties enables us to respond to several of the most pressing ethical and practical objections to kidney markets, including Cécile Fabre's objection that it is (...) unjust to be paid to do one's duty, Simon Rippon's objections that it is harmful to be pressured to sell a kidney and that a market is unfair, Richard Titmuss's crowding out objection, and Ronald Dworkin's objection that body parts should not be among the goods we owe each other. (shrink)

Judging on the basis of standard accounts of commodification, one might reasonably suggest that liberalism intrinsically lacks an adequate theory of commodification. Liberalism, with its commitment to individual choice and to neutrality as regards competing evaluation practices, seems conceptually incapable of identifying or abolishing many significant forms of commodification. This essay aims to refute this claim. It employs a strategy of appealing to the harm principle as grounds for a liberal anti-commodification theory. I claim that we are harmed when we (...) are denied ways to meaningfully engage in certain evaluative practices, ways that depend on evaluations shared with others with whom we stand in meaningful social relationships. Markets can crowd out these shared evaluations, and to this extent cause us psychological harm; this in turn supplies grounds for restrictions on certain markets within a liberal state. (shrink)

Due to the shortage of organs, it has been proposed that the ban on organ sales is lifted and a market-based procurement system introduced. This paper assesses four prominent proposals for how such a market could be arranged: unregulated current market, regulated current market, payment-for-consent futures market, and the family-reward futures market. These are assessed in terms of how applicable prominent concerns with organ sales are for each model. The concerns evaluated are that organ markets will crowd out altruistic donation, (...) that consent to sell organs is invalid, that sellers will be harmed, and that commodification of organs will affect human relationships in a negative way. The paper concludes that the family-reward futures market fares best in this comparison but also that it provides the weakest incentive to potential buyers. There is an inverse relationship between how applicable prominent critiques are to organ market models and the increase in available organs they can be expected to provide. (shrink)

Computational models of emotions have been thriving and increasingly popular since the 1990s. Such models used to be concerned with the emotions of individual agents when they interact with other agents. Out of the array of models for the emotions, we are going to devote special attention to the approach in Adamatzky’s Dynamics of Crowd-Minds. The reason it stands out, is that it considers the crowd, rather than the individual agent. It fits in computational intelligence. It works by mathematical simulation (...) on a crowd of simple artificial agents: by letting the computer program run, the agents evolve, and crowd behaviour emerges. Adamatzky’s purpose is to give an account of the emergence of allegedly “irrational” behaviour. This is not without problem, as the irrational to one person may seem entirely rational to another, and this in turn is an insight that, in the history of crowd psychology, has affected indeed the competition among theories of crowd dynamics. Quite importantly, Adamatzky’s book argues for the transition from individual agencies to a crowd’s or a mob’s coalesced mind as so, and at any rate for coalesced crowd’s agency. (shrink)

Following Zizek's insight that the blockbuster can constitute the ideal terrain for mapping out the ideological and political dilemmas of our conjuncture, this piece takes a Zizekian look awry at two recent depictions of revolutionary crowds/movements in "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Argo". Viewed through the genealogical lens of representations of the “people” in philosophy and literature, what we find in both films is a (distorted, dispersed) staging not only of our own time and situation, a strange figuration of capital (...) and an ultimately justified revolutionary struggle over the city (or, surplus). (shrink)

Purpose Children are becoming heavy users of communication and information technologies from an early age. These technologies carry risks to which children may be exposed. In collaboration with the Israel Ministry of Education, the authors launched a week-long safe online awareness program for school children in 257 elementary and middle schools in Israel. Each class independently composed a safe and ethical code of online behavior following two classroom debate sessions. The purpose of this study was to analyze these codes and (...) learn how school children perceive and understand the proper use of the network using thematic analysis. Design/methodology/approach A total of 8,181 students between the ages of 8 and 14 years in 303 classes from 257 schools participated in the program. These classes composed 303 ethical codes, which were decomposed into 2,201 elements. Using mixed-methods research combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the elements of the ethical codes were analyzed, interpreted, and classified to identify the dominant themes and discourses used by the students when addressing issues related to safe online use. Findings Findings indicate that Israeli students are aware of the dangers and risks of the internet, and these concerns are reflected in their own ethical codes. The students discouraged online self-exposure and encouraged precautions and wariness towards members of out-groups. The themes included sentences which asked for responsible, appropriate, and lawful use, expressed concern about privacy issues, and stated the need for adult involvement. Most of them reflected an “us against them ” perspective. Originality/value The current study presents an innovative “bottom-up” program based on wisdom of the crowd approach, that can be implemented in schools internationally in order to encourage reflexivity and teach children the necessary skills for safe online experiences. In addition, this study analyses the school children’s own views of the dangers of social media and learn about their perspective and understanding of internet use. (shrink)

This article proposes that the propagation of vibrations could serve as a better model for understanding the transmission of affect than the flow, circulation or movement of bodies by which it is most often theorized. The vibrations (or idiomatically ‘vibes’) among the sound system audience (or ‘crowd’) on a night out on the dancehall scene in Kingston, Jamaica, provide an example. Counting the repeating frequencies of these vibrations in a methodology inspired by Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis results in a Frequency Spectrogram. This (...) ranges from the sociocultural frequencies of nightly, weekly and seasonal cycles and circulations of musical style and fashion, to the material frequencies of the amplitudes and timbres of sound itself, with reggae’s signature low-pitched bass-line, to the corporeal frequencies of the flesh and blood of the dancehall ‘crowd’, pulsating with heartbeats and kinetic dance rhythms. The vibration model then addresses the intensities of affect in terms of auditory amplitudes, as with sonic dominance; feelings as frequencies; and the distinctive meaning of affect as timbre. This aims to encourage the radical impulse of the idea of affect to abandon the traditional envelope of the autonomous, self-consistent, rational individual. The meaning of affect is thus located in the ratio, proportions and patterning of vibrations, that is, outside the discourse of emotions or representation of feelings. (shrink)

Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? What is more: if the market’s utilitarian logic can corrupt or ‘crowd out’ altruistic feelings or motivations, what makes us think that the welfare state cannot also be a source (...) of corruption? To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first re-examine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss’s work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout’s position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss’s arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi’s “critical point” theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein. Through the analysis of these paradigmatic positions I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of ‘gift’ or ‘corruption’ we are thinking about, and who or what the ‘giver’, the ‘corrupter’, the ‘receiver’ and/or the ‘corrupted’ party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom. (shrink)

This article argues that positioning disclosure as a primary remedy in addressing the ethical problems posed by conflicts of interest in medicine and health is an error. Instead, bioethical resources should be devoted to the problems associated with sequestration, defined as the elimination of relationships between commercial industries and health professionals in all cases where it is remotely feasible. The argument begins by arguing that adopting Andrew Stark’s conceptual framework for COIs leads to advantages in understanding COIs and in ordering (...) priorities for intervention. The article then draws on prior work establishing that COIs are, under ordinary epidemiologic standards, properly regarded as population health hazards. This justifies attention to possible remedies, of which disclosure generates by far the most analysis. Such primacy is unwarranted given the extensive evidence suggesting that disclosure as a remedy for COIs is at best ineffective. ‘At best’ is justified because the evidence also shows that disclosure may have a perverse effect, intensifying biased behaviors. Expending significant attention on an ineffective or even deleterious intervention is unjustified and also crowds out devotion of resources to the real problems that attend sequestration. Therefore, disclosure ought to be regarded as a lower priority among possible COI interventions. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, governments have turned their attention to digital contact tracing. In many countries, public debate has focused on the risks this technology poses to privacy, with advocates and experts sounding alarm bells about surveillance and mission creep reminiscent of the post 9/11 era. Yet, when Apple and Google launched their contact tracing API in April 2020, some of the world’s leading privacy experts applauded this initiative for its privacy-preserving technical specifications. In an interesting twist, the tech (...) giants came to be portrayed as greater champions of privacy than some democratic governments. This article proposes to view the Apple/Google API in terms of a broader phenomenon whereby tech corporations are encroaching into ever new spheres of social life. From this perspective, the advantage these actors have accrued in the sphere of the production of digital goods provides them with access to the spheres of health and medicine, and more worrisome, to the sphere of politics. These sphere transgressions raise numerous risks that are not captured by the focus on privacy harms. Namely, a crowding out of essential spherical expertise, new dependencies on corporate actors for the delivery of essential, public goods, the shaping of public policy by non-representative, private actors and ultimately, the accumulation of decision-making power across multiple spheres. While privacy is certainly an important value, its centrality in the debate on digital contact tracing may blind us to these broader societal harms and unwittingly pave the way for ever more sphere transgressions. (shrink)

The nudge approach seeks to improve people’s decisions through small changes in their choice environments. Nudge policies often work through psychological mechanisms that deviate from traditional notions of rationality. Because of that, some critics object that nudging treats people as irrational. Such treatment might be disrespectful in itself and might crowd out more empowering policies. I defend nudging against these objections. By defending a nonstandard, ecological model of rationality, I argue that nudging not only is compatible with rational agency but (...) can even support it. Accordingly, a concern with rationality speaks for more rather than less public policy nudging. (shrink)

We draw on Alasdair MacIntyre's virtues, practices, and institutions schema to argue that employee participation in governance practices can play an important role in developing virtue. Whereas MacIntyre's schema has been most widely employed to understand how productive practices can cultivate virtue, we focus instead on the way that meaningful deliberation about the common good can provide experiences requiring employees to exercise the virtues. We then apply this theoretical framework to an analysis of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Our analysis emphasizes (...) the importance of participatory governance over employee ownership. Based on this analysis, we draw several implications for increasing participatory governance in a way that will prevent shareholder maximization from crowding out virtue, even in corporate contexts where productive activity itself does not provide a meaningful, virtue-instilling experience. (shrink)

A number of schemes have been attempted, both in public health and more generally within social programmes, to pay individuals to behave in ways that are presumed to be good for them or to have other beneficial effects. Such schemes are normally regarded as providing a financial incentive for individuals in order to outweigh contrary motivation. Such schemes have been attacked on the basis that they can ‘crowd out’ intrinsic motivation, as well as on the grounds that they are in (...) some sense ‘corrupt’. In response, they have been defended on the grounds that they can ‘crowd in’ improved motivation. I will argue that these debates have tended to overlook the difficulties individuals can have when attempting to behave against peer group norms. In some cases, financial payments can allow individuals to defend their actions on the grounds that ‘I am only doing it for the money’ in circumstances when it would be difficult to defend their action on their real motivations. Examples of paying children to read books, and paying women to give up smoking in pregnancy, will be discussed. (shrink)

The gradual crowding out of singleton and small team science by large team endeavors is challenging key features of research culture. It is therefore important for the future of scientific practice to reflect upon the individual scientist’s ethical responsibilities within teams. To facilitate this reflection we show labor force trends in the US revealing a skewed growth in academic ranks and increased levels of competition for promotion within the system; we analyze teaming trends across disciplines and national borders demonstrating (...) why it is becoming difficult to distribute credit and to avoid conflicts of interest; and we use more than a century of Nobel prize data to show how science is outgrowing its old institutions of singleton awards. Of particular concern within the large team environment is the weakening of the mentor–mentee relation, which undermines the cultivation of virtue ethics across scientific generations. These trends and emerging organizational complexities call for a universal set of behavioral norms that transcend team heterogeneity and hierarchy. To this end, our expository analysis provides a survey of ethical issues in team settings to inform science ethics education and science policy. (shrink)

The paper defends the permissibility of paying inducements to research subjects against objections not covered in an earlier paper in Bioethics. The objections are that inducements would cause inequity, crowd out research, and undesirably commercialize the researcher‐subject relationship. The paper shows how these objections presuppose implausible factual and/or normative claims. The final position reached is a qualified defence of freedom of contract which not only supports the permissibility of inducements but also offers guidance to ethics committees in dealing with practical (...) problems that might arise if inducements are offered. (shrink)

Economic formalism crowds out the analysis of change and adjustments to change under capitalism. The style of analytical narrative that was practiced by the first generation of neoclassical economists, in contrast, is more productive of genuine economic understanding. Despite Daniel Haus‐man's challenging argument to the contrary, I maintain that Joseph Stiglitz's work is formalist at its core. While I agree with Robert Heilbroner's critique of contemporary economics, there is a limited sense in which nonformalist economics can rely on universalistic assumptions. (...) And Thomas Mayer has provided useful guidelines for focusing nonformalist analysis on real‐world economic problems. (shrink)

In this paper, I present two types of arguments against the prohibition as they apply to a regulated market in kidneys from living suppliers: the utilitarian argument and the argument from non-uniqueness. The utilitarian argument shows a regulated market is likely to result in a significant increase in overall well-being. The international guidelines and treaties supporting the prohibition invariably quote the harm associated with the illegal organ trade; yet, a regulated market does not share the characteristics of the illegal trade (...) that gives rise to such harm. I argue that objections to such a market claiming that it would result in poor health outcomes, lead to crowding-out, and harm the global poor are unfounded. The argument from non-uniqueness, on the other hand, focuses on three objections to the market following the pattern of widely quoted principles of bioethics: objections from autonomy, “do no harm”, and justice. I argue that these objections, if taken seriously, apply equally to the sale and donation of kidneys, the latter of which is unanimously endorsed in all international guidelines and treaties. Unable to identify any relevant unique aspect of a market, these objections fail to justify an exclusive prohibition of a market in kidneys. (shrink)

The international symposium celebrated the bicentennial of the Dartmouth Medical School by generating 30 papers on general areas with specific orientations. For genetics the focus is the human genome, for neuroscience the origin and substrate of thinking, for health care asking for whom and by whom, for world population the crisis of human crowding, and for the future peering through the looking glass. Al Gore adds a special address on population growth and environmental impact. Drawings accompany profiles of the (...) contributors. There is no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

The nature of the relation between jurisprudential theories and first-order legal judgments is a strangely uncontroversial matter in contemporary legal philosophy. There is one dominant conception of the relation according to which jurisprudential theories are second-order or meta-legal theories that specify the ultimate grounds of first-order legal judgments. According to this conception, difficult first-order legal disputes are to be resolved by jurisprudential theorizing. According to an alternative conception that Ronald Dworkin has influentially advocated, jurisprudential theories are not second-order theories about (...) the nature of law, but instead covert first-order legal theories. These two conceptions of the relation between jurisprudential theories and first-order legal judgments dominate the contemporary legal philosophical scene and crowd out other possible conceptions. This article scrutinizes the two conceptions, and in the process raises the possibility of a different and arguably more credible conception. According to this new conception, our first-order legal views and a jurisprudential theory that we accept are supposed to form a mutually disciplining and supporting set of views that we accept in our pursuit of the epistemic ideal of wide reflective equilibrium. The two sets of views are supposed to constrain and discipline each other; but neither is meant to underwrite, certify, or ultimately determine the contents of the other. This new conception, which allows the relation between jurisprudential theories and first-order legal judgments to be much looser, untidier, and more complex than what the two dominant conceptions imply, should facilitate progress in legal philosophy and in first-order legal thinking. (shrink)

This essay explores how evidence-based policy can be developed for sport-related concussion (SRC), focusing particularly on the role and influence of the Consensus Statements of the Concussion in Sport Group (CiSG). Three credible policy purposes are suggested: (i) to mitigate acute health impacts of concussion events in sport; (ii) to reduce or eliminate the identified causes of SRC (direct blows to the head, neck, or body); and (iii) to improve long-term brain health outcomes for athletes. Eight of ten systematic reviews (...) commissioned for the most recent Consensus Statement, and ten of its thirteen headings, address the first purpose. The primary influence of the CiSG Consensus Statements has been to improve SRC acute response practice and protocols in professional/elite sport, which has always been their primary policy purpose, although evidence of improvement is more limited in child/adolescent and recreational sport. But a primary focus on mitigating acute health impacts has crowded out other credible policy purposes of concern to stakeholder groups with whom evidence-based policy for SRC must be co-produced. No recommendations are made to improve long-term brain outcomes for athletes because concerns about imperfections in evidence are cited to question the link between such outcomes and SRC. Modifications to reduce or eliminate purposive blows to the head, neck, or body that are permitted as a structural part of the way some sports are played are given very limited attention, even when discussing prevention, where they are just one approach considered alongside protective equipment, neuromuscular strengthening, and concussion management strategies. The essay concludes that the CiSG should shift the primary policy purpose of its Consensus Statements to address the identified causes of SRC: purposive blows to the head, neck, or body. Reducing or removing causes of SRC both better safeguards children/adolescents and renders debates about the link between SRC and long-term brain health outcomes superfluous. (shrink)

Controversy over providing financial incentives to research participants has a long history and remains an issue of contention in both current discussions about research ethics and for institutional review bodies/human research ethics committees which are charged with the responsibility of deciding whether such incentives fall within ethical guidelines. The arguments both for and against financial incentives have been well aired in the literature. A point of agreement for many is that inducement in the form of financial incentive is permissible when (...) the risk of harm to the individual is negligible in terms of degree and probability of occurrence. In the absence of harm to the individual, encouraging more people to participate in research would appear to be a good thing in so far as it will lead to statistically more robust research outcomes, which can then be translated into better healthcare and other practice. Whilst, on the face of it, this position seems highly defensible, I will explore the possibility that it is counterproductive – that is, providing individuals with financial incentives to become research participants may have the unintended outcome of reducing participation rates in some areas of research. In exploring this idea I will draw on empirical findings from the literature on crowding-out – the hypothesis that providing monetary incentives to people can backfire by overall reducing intrinsic motivation, in this instance intrinsic motivation to behave altruistically or undertake civic duties. (shrink)

Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and a buyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthiness and trust in markets with moral hazard problems. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedback determine the gains from trade that can be obtained in equilibrium. Buyer insurance, on the other hand, can affect the trading dynamics and equilibrium selection. We find that, under reasonable conditions, buyer insurance crowds out (...) trust, and trustworthiness. (shrink)

The current economic and preceding financial crises seem to provide evidence in favour of the self-destruction thesis of capitalism. Responses to the crisis have been polarised. Some suggest that regulatory changes are all that is needed. Others suggest the need to change the economic system by developing a new global economic ethic. The first is too limited, the second too utopian. This article suggests that a MacIntyrean virtue ethics approach provides both a more convincing diagnosis of the problem and leads (...) to a more workable prescription. First, we need to understand the internal contradictions of the tradition that has developed of how to ‘do’ business. Then we need the virtues to be exercised inside practices and institutions. But virtue itself needs to be institutionalised; we need an appropriate governance of virtue in organizations. Even though governance is usually taken to ‘crowd out’ virtue, this article proposes an approach to governance that ‘crowds in’ virtue. (shrink)