In this paper I do three things. First, I argue that Stephen Yablo’s influential account of mental causation is susceptible to counterexamples involving what I call disproportional mental causation. Second, I argue that similar counterexamples can be generated for any alternative account of mental causation that is like Yablo’s in that it takes mental states and their physical realizers to causally compete. Third, I show that there are alternative nonreductive approaches to mental causation which reject the idea of causal competition, (...) and which thus are able to allow for disproportional mental causation. This, I argue, is a significant advantage for such noncompetitive accounts. (shrink)

Trata-da resenha do livro Infini et disproportion chez Pascal, de João Cortese.

ABSTRACT Pettigrove advances a persuasive case against the proportionality principle. In my view, the moral respect that his modus operandi account of virtue affords to each person’s ‘characteristic way of being’ is also to be applauded. While various philosophers have come to believe in the proportionality principle, it is something that presupposes a monistic account of value. Moreover, it is readily arguable that the kind of abstraction that this involves provides nothing more than an illusion of understanding, and that any (...) supposed insights associated with it have no genuine or practical application. While Pettigrove presents the modus operandi account of virtue as something that competes with consequentialist accounts of virtue, his discussion of consequentialist considerations is both minimal and equivocal. With this in mind, I seek to challenge Pettigrove’s apparent suggestion that the goodness of virtue is always ‘fundamental’. (shrink)

Disproportional morbidity and mortality experienced by ethnic minorities in the UK have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has exposed structural racism’s contribution to these health inequities. ‘Cultural Safety’, an antiracist, decolonising and educational innovation originating in New Zealand, has been adopted in Australia. Cultural Safety aims to dismantle barriers faced by colonised Indigenous peoples in mainstream healthcare by addressing systemic racism.This paper explores what it means to be ‘culturally safe’. The ways in which New (...) Zealand and Australia are incorporating Cultural Safety into educating healthcare professionals and in day-to-day practice in medicine are highlighted. We consider the ‘nuts and bolts’ of translating Cultural Safety into the UK to reduce racism within healthcare. Listening to the voices of black, Asian and minority ethnic National Health Service (NHS) consumers, education in reflexivity, both personal and organisational within the NHS are key. By listening to Indigenous colonised peoples, the ex-Empire may find solutions to health inequity. A decolonising feedback loop is required; however, we should take care not to culturally appropriate this valuable reverse innovation. (shrink)

La disproportion est grande et ne cesse d'augmenter ces dix dernières années, entre la mémoire de la Shoah et celle du Goulag. La première, ponctuée par les commémorations internationales des 50 et 60 ans de la Libération d'Auschwitz ne cesse de cristalliser l'attention tandis que le regard porté sur le Goulag se tient, lui, nettement aux marges de la vie culturelle, médiatique et scolaire, du moins en Europe occidentale. Cette mémoire bancale a créé un litige qui semble se normaliser, (...) voire s'effacer. Cependant l'Europe demeure un paysage mémoriel fractionné, les différences entre les mémoires des camps en témoignent.There is an imbalance between memories of the Shoah and memories of the Gulag, and the gap has been steadily growing in the last ten years. The Shoah with international 50 and 60-year commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz continues to focus attention, while reflections on the Gulag have remained very much on the sidelines in the spheres of culture, education and the media, at least in Western Europe. This lopsidedness has created an area of contention that seems to be straightening out, and even fading away. But European memory is still a fractured landscape, as evidenced by the differences between memories of the camps. (shrink)

« La disproportion de la violence anti-spéciste par rapport à ses objets pose la question des motifs de cette violence. Loin d’être l’expression d’une compassion instruite par une morale hédoniste, par une écologie et une éthologie, cette violence joue dans l’idéologie générale de l’indifférenciation, un rôle capital et manifeste le ressentiment propre à la post-modernité. On ne peut retrouver la place privilégiée de l’homme qu’en répondant à la crise cosmologique de la modernité par une cosmologie panpsychiste, celle, par exemple, (...) de Raymond Ruyer. La dignité centrale de l’homme y est fondée sur la nature de son cerveau, embryon continué, renversant le rapport de subordination à l’organisme, pour offrir à la personne humaine un don de relation avec le Monde comme totalité. La pluralité des espèces est ainsi dépassée par l’accès à un monde des valeurs, unifié par un Sens des sens. Ne pas vouloir occuper la place centrale, c’est déroger aux exigences fondatrices de la personne. La violence anti-spéciste n’est donc ni altruisme étendu à tout être sentant ni humilité mais ressentiment contre une situation qui n’est pas une situation de pouvoir mais de responsabilité. ». (shrink)

Indigenous peoples are disproportionally vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, they possess valuable knowledge for fair and sustainable climate adaptation planning and policymaking. Yet Indigenous peoples and knowledges are often excluded from or underrepresented within adaptation plans and policies. In this paper we ask whether the concept of epistemic injustice can be applied to the context of climate adaptation and the underrepresentation of Indigenous knowledges within adaptation policies and strategies. In recent years, the concept of epistemic injustice has (...) gained prominence, indicating that someone has been unfairly discriminated against in their capacity as a knower. We argue that many climate adaptation policies are epistemically unjust towards Indigenous peoples because of the underrepresentation of Indigenous knowledges by showing how the case of Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation planning and policy satisfies five conditions of epistemic injustice. We further consider what challenges there are to integrating local and Indigenous knowledges within development in general, and climate adaptation strategies in particular and how these can be addressed. Whether the lack of Indigenous knowledges in climate adaptation policies constitutes an epistemic injustice matters because an injustice denotes an unfair advantage to one group – whether by design or default – that ought to be remedied and redressed. (shrink)

Smallholder farmers are disproportionally vulnerable to climate change, and knowledge on cognitive factors and processes is required to successfully support their adaptation to climate change. Hence, we apply a qualitative interview approach to investigate smallholder farmers’ adaptation intentions and behavior. The theoretical Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change has guided data collection and analysis. We conducted twenty semi-structured interviews with smallholder farmers living and working in Tiruchirappalli District in South India. We applied a qualitative content analysis by combining (...) a content-structuring with a type-building approach. The systematic analysis resulted in four types of smallholder farmers that differ in the formation of adaptation intentions. Three of these types intend to adapt and follow different adaptation plans: (i) innovative measures that are new to the farm or region and are considered effective to overcome the detriments experienced from past efforts, (ii) contractive measures such as selling land or livestock, and (iii) retaining past measures they consider effective while relying on their access to resources. Only one type does not intend to adapt, emphasizing that rain is absolutely necessary to continue farming. We conclude that public efforts could focus on education and training programs adjusted to the farmers’ needs, measures to maintain or increase the fertility of land and farmers’ livelihood, flexible water conservation technologies and regular checking of dams, fostering combined adaptation and mitigation measures, providing access to loans up to debt cancellation, and offering physical and mental health programs. (shrink)

L’article situe Disproportion de l’Homme dans le prolongement de la discussion entre Descartes et Christine de Suède (1647), la jeune reine objectant à la cosmologie des Principia Philosophiae que son infinitisme blesse les « fondements de la religion », là où, répond Descartes, on ne devrait pas, si l’on avait une idée juste de la puissance divine, « enfermer le monde dans une boule ». Bien que la discussion ne porte à aucun moment sur Copernic, elle n’a de sens (...) que parce que l’immensité du monde et la distance indéfinie des étoiles fixes sont, chez Copernic, une conséquence nécessaire des nouvelles hypothèses astronomiques. Mais Descartes, au lieu de conclure à cette immensité sur la base d’une hypothèse physique ou astronomique, part d’une déduction métaphysique de la grandeur – grandeur telle qu’un système héliocentrique y devient possible sans contradiction. Pascal, forçant encore le trait, va jusqu’à faire de la disproportion comme telle la prémisse d’un raisonnement physico-théologique associant de manière inédite et originale théologie négative et théologie naturelle. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes two interpretations of G. E. Moore''s principle of organic unities, which says that the intrinsic value of a whole need not equal the sum of the intrinsic values its parts would have outside it. A holistic interpretation, which was Moore''s own, says that parts retain their values when they enter a whole but that there can be an additional value in the whole as a whole that must be added to them. The conditionality interpretation, which has been (...) defended by Korsgaard, says that parts can change their values when they enter wholes, so no additional value is needed. The paper shows that the two interpretations, which differ on such apparently important issues as the nature of intrinsic value, can always yield the same conclusions about the overall value in a state of affairs, so there is in that sense nothing to choose between them. At the same time, though, the differences between the interpretations make sometimes one and sometimes the other more appropriate for expressing a given evaluative view. In this last connection the paper considers views about beauty, posthumous achievement, vices of disproportion, deserved and compassionate pain, and undeserved and malicious pleasure. (shrink)

This meta-study of animal semantics is anchored in two claims, seemingly creating a fuzzy mismatch, that animal utterances generally appear to be simple in structure and content variation and that animals’ communicative understanding seems disproportionally more advanced. A set of excerpted, new studies is chosen as basis to discuss whether the semantics of animal uttering and understanding can be fused into one. Studies are prioritised due to their relatively complex designs, giving priority to dynamics between syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and between (...) utterers and receivers in context. A communicational framework based on utterance theory is applied as a lens for inspection of how these aspects relate to the assumed mismatch. Inspection and discussions of the studies bring several features to surface of which five are stressed in the following. Firstly, both syntactic structures and possible semantic content are seen as lean, although richer than earlier believed, and research continues to reveal new complexities in utterances. Secondly, there is a clear willingness to broaden the perception of animals’ semantic capacity to comprehend communication both by arguing theoretically and by generating empirical research in new contexts. Thirdly, the ambition to make sense of these tendencies is still often motivated by an evolutionary search for early building blocks for verbal language, with the pro et cons that such a position can have. Fourthly, the ‘allowed’ scientific frame for studying semantic capacity among animals is extended to new fields and contexts challenging the only-in-the-wild norm. Fifthly, the dilemma of integrating uttering and understanding as aspects of an after all functional communicational system, calls for new epistemological concepts to make sense of the claimed mismatch. Affordances, abduction, life-genre, and lifeworld are suggested. (shrink)

The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that the most important (...) cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole. The proposed model of business cycle is based on its subdivision into four phases: – recovery phase (which could be subdivided into the start sub-phase and the acceleration sub-phase); – upswing/prosperity/expansion phase (which could be subdivided into the growth sub-phase and the boom/overheating sub-phase); – recession phase (within which one may single out the crash/bust/acute crisis subphase and the downswing sub-phase); – depression/stagnation phase (which we could subdivide into the stabilization subphase and the breakthrough sub-phase). The article provides a detailed qualitative description of macroeconomic dynamics at all the phases; it specifies driving forces of cyclical dynamics and the causes of transition from one phase to another (including psychological causes); a special attention is paid to the turning point from the peak of overheating to the acute crisis, as well as to the turning point from the downswing to recovery. The proposed mathematical model of Juglar cycle takes into account the following effects that are typical for the market economy: • positive feedbacks between various economic processes; • presence of a certain inertia, time lags in reactions of the economic subsystem to the change in conditions; • amplification by the financial subsystem of positive feedbacks and time lags in the economic subsystem; • excessive reaction to changing conditions during the acute crisis sub-phase. The authors suggest that the current crisis turns out to be rather similar to classical Juglar crises; however, there is also a significant difference, as the current crisis occurs at a truly global scale. Yet, due to this truly global scale of the current crisis, the possibilities of regulation with the national state's measures have turned out to be ineffective,whereas the suprastate regulation of financial processes hardly exists. It is shown that all these have led to the reproduction of the current crisis according to a classical Juglar scenario. (shrink)

Medical assistance in dying was legalized by the Supreme Court of Canada in June 2016 and became a legal, viable end of life care option for Canadians with irremediable illness and suffering. Much attention has been paid to the balance between physicians’ willingness to provide MAiD and patients’ legal right to request medically assisted death in certain circumstances. In contrast, very little attention has been paid to the challenge of making MAiD accessible to vulnerable populations. The purpose of this paper (...) was to examine the extant literature and resources that are available on the provision of MAiD in Canada. We found that the provision of EOLC in Canada offers insufficient access to palliative and EOLC options for Canadians and that vulnerable Canadians experience disproportional barriers to accessing these already limited resources. Consequently, we argue that palliative care, hospice care and MAiD must be considered a spectrum of EOLC that is inclusive and accessible to all Canadians. We conclude by imploring Canadian healthcare professionals, policy makers and legislators to consider MAiD as a viable EOLC option for all Canadians. (shrink)

Strategies for combating climate change which advocate for human population limitation have recently been understandably criticised on the grounds that they embody a form of 'climate colonialism': a moral wrong that involves disproportionally shifting the burdens of climate change onto developing, historically exploited nations (which have low per capita emissions but high fertility rates) in order to offset burdens in affluent nations (which have high per capita emissions but low fertility rates). This article argues that once the relevance of population (...) growth to climate change has been correctly understood as working in tandem with consumption levels, this objection fails as a general criticism. Moreover, even if population could be ignored as a variable, the climate colonialism charge would re-emerge in a different form, since, at present population sizes, it would be environmentally catastrophic for developing nations to reach production ambitions which see their per capita emissions massively increase. Even if emission reductions in affluent nations are (rightly) prioritised, there are good reasons to prevent enormous growth of emissions in developing nations. Those environmental risks become much greater given those nations' projected population increases in the coming century. The article then explores how the necessary radical environmental policies pertaining to fertility rates might be enacted in non-coercive ways, reducing the sting of the ‘climate colonialism’ charge. The article ends by considering some reasons to be moderately sceptical about such policies. (shrink)

Everything is phenomenon, everything is gift, or everything is given. This presupposition of phenomenology, which makes giveness the starting point for phenomenality, is not altogether self-evident. It is not sufficient to look merely at the reverse of the gift, but it is a matter of questioning the impossibility of even giving. Questioning the strategies of the contemporary reappropriations of Kant—radicalization, disproportion, and inversion —this text works under a fourth possibility, seldom examined and yet still envisaged by Kant: the “Extra-Phenomenal”, (...) or in other words, the “Chaos”, the “pell-mell”, the “Cinnabar”, or the “melee of sensations”. (shrink)

Slow euthanasia or a good palliative intervention?There are many ways in which doctors influence the circumstances and/or the timing of a patient’s death. Some of these are accepted as normal medical practice—for instance, when a disproportional treatment is forgone, others are considered tolerable only under strict conditions or even intolerable, such as non-voluntary active euthanasia. A relatively new phenomenon in the ethical discussion on end-of-life decisions is terminal sedation. Terminal sedation is used in patients with terminal illnesses where normal medical (...) treatments cannot relieve severe symptoms such as pain and agitation, and no option is left but to take away the perception of these symptoms. Often, the decision to start terminal sedation is accompanied by the decision to forgo the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration in these patients. In The Netherlands, terminal sedation was estimated to be applied in 4–10% of all deaths in 2001.1 The combination of these two decisions have made the moral status of terminal sedation the subject of fierce ethical debates. Is it slow euthanasia2,3 or is it a good palliative intervention that should be sharply distinguished from euthanasia?4,5 One of the characteristics of this debate is that it is a very confused one: people disagree about the meaning of the term, the appropriateness of it and, of course, about the conditions under which it would be morally justified. As a matter of fact, these three discussions are deeply connected: as is often the case, a discussion about terms is a discussion about norms in disguise.The first observation to be made is that many seemingly descriptive definitions of terminal sedation contain normative claims. Examples of this are definitions of terminal sedation in which only …. (shrink)

Traditionally, it has been thought that, assuming other conditions are satisfied, your action must be morally worthy or good if you are acting solely from good motives. There is a lively dispute as to which motives are good, but whichever motives are good, acting solely from good motives is not always good and can even be bad on the whole. We may act rightly from a good motive while being indifferent to what matters most. Indifference, I argue, can make our (...) actions less than ideally good and at times even bad. Traditional theories, however, cannot accommodate cases of indifference by assuming absent and ineffective motives can never make a difference to an action’s moral value. Absent as well as ineffective motives can make an action less good and at times even bad. To accommodate this, we need to adopt a proportionality principle in assessing an action. An action is made good to a degree in proportion to the goodness of its effective motives. But an action is also made bad to a degree in proportion to the disproportion it exhibits through its whole set of relevant motives including not only effective motives but also absent as well as ineffective ones. (shrink)

Oppressive governments that use violence against citizens, e.g. murder and torture, are usually thought of as liable to armed revolutionary attack by the oppressed population. But oppression may be non-violent. A government may greatly restrict political rights and personal autonomy by using surveillance, propaganda, manipulation, strategic detention and similar techniques without ever resorting to overt violence. Can such regimes be liable to revolutionary attack? A widespread view is that the answer is ‘no’. On this view, unless a government is or (...) is likely to turn violent, revolution against it is disproportional. After all, revolution would involve launching potentially lethal attacks against oppressors who do not threaten the lives and bodily integrity of their subjects but pose only lesser threats. I argue that this claim of disproportionality is false. Armed revolution against Stably Non-violent Oppressive Regimes can be proportional under some circumstances, thus they may be liable to revolutionary attack. My argument relies on the Responsibility-Sensitive Account of Proportionality. This account holds that responsibility for posing threats renders agents liable to greater defensive harms than the harms with which they threaten. Even if non-violent oppressive regimes do not threaten citizens with murder, serious physical injury, or enslavement, their responsibility for creating an environment in which citizens’ political rights and personal autonomy are extremely restricted may loosen the proportionality requirement of inflicting defensive harm and render them liable to revolutionary attack. (shrink)

The intellectual property regimes we have currently in place are heavily under attack. One of the points of criticism is the interaction between two elements of article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the widely discussed issue of being able to benefit from scientific progress and the less argued for position of having a right to take part in scientific enterprises. To shine light on the question if we should balance the two elements or prioritize one of them, (...) an exploration will be offered on how benefiting from scientific progress and the ability to participate in the advancement of science relate to securing human capabilities. A different perspective to the question will be gained by identifying the problem as an issue of misrecognition, especially the failure to recognize many willing collaboration partners in scientific research as peers. Lastly, I will argue that cooperative justice requires that if we have an innovation incentive system that disproportionally benefits one particular group, a certain duty to counterbalance this advantage exists when we are relying on mutual cooperation for the recognition of intellectual property rights. (shrink)

This article examines publication patterns over the last seventy years from the American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology, the two most prominent journals in sociology. We reconstructed the gender of all published authors and each author’s academic pedigree. Results would suggest that these journals published disproportionally more articles by male authors and their coauthors. These gender inequalities persisted even when considering citations and after controlling for the influence of academic affiliation. It would seem that the potentially positive advantage (...) of working in a prestigious, elite sociology department, in terms of better learning environment and reputational signal, for higher publication opportunities only significantly benefits male authors. While our findings do not mean that these journals have biased internal policies or implicit practices, this publication pattern needs to be considered especially regarding the possibility of their “social closure” and isomorphism. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore whether face recognition technology – as it is intensely used by state and local police departments and law enforcement agencies – is racism free or, on the contrary, is affected by racial biases and/or racist prejudices, thus reinforcing overall racial discrimination. Design/methodology/approach The study investigates the causal pathways through which face recognition technology may reinforce the racial disproportion in enforcement; it also inquires whether it further discriminates black people by making them experience more (...) racial discrimination and self-identify more decisively as black – two conditions that are shown to be harmful in various respects. Findings This study shows that face recognition technology, as it is produced, implemented and used in Western societies, reinforces existing racial disparities in stop, investigation, arrest and incarceration rates because of racist prejudices and even contributes to strengthen the unhealthy effects of racism on historically disadvantaged racial groups, like black people. Practical implications The findings hope to make law enforcement agencies and software companies aware that they must take adequate action against the racially discriminative effects of the use of face recognition technology. Social implications This study highlights that no implementation of an allegedly racism-free biometric technology is safe from the risk of racially discriminating, simply because each implementation leans against our society, which is affected by racism in many persisting ways. Originality/value While the ethical survey of biometric technologies is traditionally framed in the discourse of universal rights, this study explores an issue that has not been deeply scrutinized so far, that is, how face recognition technology differently affects distinct racial groups and how it contributes to racial discrimination. (shrink)

The introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing in healthcare systems around the world offers an opportunity to reconsider funding policies for prenatal screening. In some countries with universal access healthcare systems, pregnant women and their partners are asked to pay for NIPT. In this paper, we discuss two important rationales for charging women for NIPT: to prevent increased uptake of NIPT and to promote informed choice. First, given the aim of prenatal screening, high or low uptake rates are not intrinsically desirable (...) or undesirable. Using funding policies to negatively affect uptake, however, is at odds with the aim of screening. Furthermore, copayment disproportionally affects those of lower socioeconomic status, which conflicts with justice requirements and impedes equal access to prenatal screening. Second, we argue that although payment models may influence pregnant women’s choice behaviours and perceptions of the relevance of NIPT, the copayment requirement does not necessarily lead to better-informed choices. On the contrary, external influences on women’s personal choices for or against prenatal screening should ideally be avoided. To improve informed decision-making, healthcare systems should instead invest in adequate non-directive, value-focused pretest counselling. This paper concludes that requiring copayments for NIPT in universal access healthcare systems fails to promote reproductive autonomy and is unfair. (shrink)

Many of the seemingly bland assertions and bald statements of the eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume contain more than the mind immediately perceives. Author John Valdimir Price contends that an understanding of Hume's writings cannot be separated from an understanding of his life. By examining the works of Hume, Price shows the way in which an ironic way of seeing events and an ironic mode of expression permeated Hume's life and writings. Price examines Hume's irony as it is exhibited in letters (...) to his friends and in his writings concerned with morality, people, philosophy, politics, history, and above all religion. Hume's opinions on life in general are stated in works ranging from the Treatise of Human Nature and the Essays, Moral and Political, through the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and the Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals, to the Dialogue and Four Dissertations of his maturity. Price feels that Hume's recognition of the ironic in life came about from his perception of the disproportion between human hopes and human accomplishments. The rhetorical consequences of applying reason to a duality in human nature creates the ironic mode. Hume conceived man's opposing tendencies as his willingness to commit himself orally to a concept, a dogma, an idea, or an ideology, and his unwillingness to involve himself in the logical and rhetorical implications of articulating those principles. Hume's use of the ironic mode in his writings provides him with a means of challenging certain dogmatic assumptions common to thought, particularly to traditional religious thought; it acts as a mask for his sceptical intentions, and it is an implied criticism of many ideas. In his political writing, Hume frequently implied that the question under argument was almost too ridiculous to deserve serious treatment. This tactic was effectively employed in the Account of Stewart, in which Hume came to the defense of a friend. In his most profitable venture, the History of England, Hume not only used irony to advantage, but developed a new approach to the writing of history—the use of narrative. He presented history as a series of more or less connected events, not as a series of "right" or "wrong" attitudes. The author believes that Hume's initial religious scepticism, combined with the predominant satiric-ironic mode in the literature of his time, led him to seek irony as a method of self expression. This scepticism, which permeated all of Hume's attitudes toward life, reached its most complete expression in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, which accepted reason as its guide, but also accepted experience as its master. (shrink)

A shift away from exclusionary moral reductionism can be discerned in modern interpretations of Kant’s philosophy of religion. Consequently, at least since the 1970s, historical faith has been appreciated as a necessary and desirable element of Kant’s philosophy of religion. One of the reasons prompting Kant to include historical faith in his system of the philosophy of religion is what commentators on Kant’s philosophy call the ‘moral gap’ as there is a disproportion between the limited competence of man as (...) a natural being and moral goals that seem unattainable. For the believer, the content of historical faith offers a real solution to the disproportion between his limitations as a natural being and the goals set for him by practical reason. For the believer, the ‘moral gap’ is not just a theoretical problem, but an existential challenge whose solution lies beyond his own limited competence. In this article, I consider whether historical faith can also provide a theoretical supplement to the picture of one’s own life. If so, then the content of historical faith may also prove important for the non-believer. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In virtually every corner of ethics—including discussions of value, practical reasoning, moral psychology, and justice—it is common for theorists to suggest that our actions, attitudes, or emotions should be proportional to the degree of value present in the objects or events to which they are responding. I argue that there is a fundamental problem with these approaches: they overlook the character of the agent and what it adds to the equation. I show that a commitment to proportionality is at (...) odds with both ordinary and admirable instances of love, ambition, and forgiveness. To make room for disproportional attitudes and actions, I introduce a novel account of virtue and its relation to value. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que la musique? Selon Jankélévitch, il y a dans la musique une double complication, génératrice de problèmes métaphysiques et de problèmes moraux. Car la musique est à la fois expressive et inexpressive, sérieuse et frivole, profonde et superficielle ; elle a un sens et n'en a pas. Il y a une ironique disproportion entre la puissance incantatoire de la musique et l'inévidence foncière du beau musical.

Into the forge -- Of measured multitude -- Remainders -- Disproportions -- Ciphers -- Temperaments -- Of measureless magnitude.

As the HIV epidemic continues to grow worldwide, women are increasingly and disproportionally affected. With the introduction of anti-retroviral medications that have been found to effectively prevent perinatal transmission of HIV, the approach to HIV testing in pregnant women has grown increasingly more controversial. In recent years, the model of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) has come into question with opt-out testing now advocated for by the Centers for Disease Control and occurring widely in pregnancy. The benefits of opt-out testing (...) are numerous and may justify its use in replacing the VCT that many have come to see as insufficient. An ethical analysis of opt-out testing suggests it may be at odds with true informed consent and involve a degree of coercion that would not be allowed outside the prenatal setting. If opt-out testing is going to remain the standard of care then the ethical issues it raises must be made transparent. Strategies need to be designed for ensuring that HIV counseling and testing in pregnancy is done in accordance with ethical and reproductive rights principles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"I'd Love to go Off the Grid and Never Come Back"AlishaDisclaimers. The author has chosen to disclose only her first name. All other names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals mentioned.I have been a nurse for 18 years. I have dealt with death. I have performed CPR, closed eyes, called families, and bagged bodies. I have taken decedents to the morgue. I knew what I (...) signed up for when I became a nurse, but nothing prepared me for the 2020–2022 pandemic years, and the havoc wreaked on my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. I was then in a managerial position. Patients' accounts of tragedy and families' sorrow, confusion, denial, anger, regret, and fear came across my desk daily at the hospital, nightly to my phone, and over the weekend while at home. In March of 2020, I took responsibility for managing the hospital's morgue, an experience that proved to me that death is no respecter of man.The morgue had the capacity to hold five decedents. It was my responsibility to ensure that we had space for the decedents that were coming in droves. Though our hospital was hit disproportionally by COVID-19, we were unable to secure a refrigerated truck for the overages. Instead, we had to transfer our overflow across town to another hospital no matter the time of day or night. The funeral homes were overwhelmed and could not meet the mass demands, which caused major delays in picking up decedents from the hospital. Most funeral homes took them in body bags straight to the crematory or the cemetery for burial. Many would not open the bags to confirm identities. Instead, they trusted the information I wrote on the [End Page 77] bag in black marker and information on the ID tag attached to the zipper.As the deaths increased and more transfers were made, my social work supervisor Audi and I could barely keep track of the decedents—let alone which families we had reached. We created a process and checklist that had to be signed off before any transfers were made. My director, who supported us, encouraged me to train others to help. However, I felt an intense duty to own this process because of how easy it could be to misidentify someone. Families were losing loved ones daily. They could not be by their side as they took their last breath. The next contact the family had was picking up the decedent's ashes or burying a closed casket. I refused to be responsible for causing additional suffering by losing a loved one's remains. When I made the decision to control the process, I never dreamed I would do this job for three years, nor did I realize the trauma it would cause.One day, a lady named Pam asked us if she could see her mother in the morgue. "Of course not!" I thought. We were not opening body bags for any reason. When I spoke with Pam, she explained that her son had been shot and killed and that her mother witnessed his death. Pam's mother suffered a fatal heart attack after witnessing her grandson's murder."Ma'am, give me a moment," I said. I reviewed the decedent's chart to verify the information and considered what to do. After discussing Pam's request with Audi and my director, we decided to make an exception for this extenuating circumstance and allow Pam to see her mother. Audi and I viewed the decedent to ensure she was presentable. I closed her eyes and cleaned her. When I closed her eyes, a little fluid came out. When we brought Pam in, she noticed and wiped away her mother's "tears," lovingly looking at her. When walking Pam to the front door, she told us about her other son, who had also passed away recently. Remember, we were not supposed to touch anyone at that time "out of an abundance of caution," but with her heart-wrenching situation, we hugged Pam anyway.By the end of April 2020, Audi and I had monitored nearly 100 deaths, coordinating with funeral homes to... (shrink)

Lifelong smokers lose on average a decade of life vis-à-vis non-smokers. Globally, tobacco causes about 5–6 million deaths annually. One billion tobacco-related deaths are predicted for the 21st century, with about half occurring before the age of 70. In this paper, we consider a complete ban on the sale of cigarettes and find that such a ban, if effective, would be justified. As with many policy decisions, the argument for such a ban requires a weighing of the pros and cons (...) and how they impact on different individuals, both current and future. The weightiest factor supporting a ban, we argue, is the often substantial well-being losses many individuals suffer because of smoking. These harms, moreover, disproportionally affect the disadvantaged. The potential gains in well-being and equality, we argue, outweigh the limits a ban places on individuals’ freedom, its failure to respect some individuals’ autonomous choice and the likelihood that it may, in individual cases, reduce well-being. (shrink)

The need to use green taxes to protect the environment is urgent, particularly because of climate change, and can be justified via sound deontological and consequence-based arguments. One very influential criticism of such taxes, however, claims that they disproportionately burden relatively poor individuals who tend to contribute to environmental problems far less than wealthier persons. Critics can also object that because of the link between economic inequality and environmental destruction it is preferable to adopt environmental measures that impede rather than (...) accelerate the growth of inequality. Defusing these criticisms, the article argues that various types of green fiscal reform can both avoid disproportionally burdening those who pollute least and reduce the economic inequalities that income taxes leave behind, and slow down the collectively self-defeating consumption arms race that currently besets so many affluent societies. Global progressive environmental taxation is also a possibility, and even easier to justify. (shrink)

Michael Dummett famously maintained that analytic philosophy was simply philosophy that followed Frege in treating the philosophy of language as the basis for all other philosophy (1978, 441). But one important insight to emerge from computer science is how difficult it is to animate the linguistic artifacts that the analysis of thought produces. Yet, modeling the effects of thought requires a new skill that goes beyond analysis: procedural literacy. Some of the most promising research in philosophy makes use of a (...) variety of modeling techniques that go beyond basic logic and elementary probability theory. What unifies this approach is a focus on what Alan Perlis called procedural literacy. This essay argues that the future spoils in philosophical research will disproportionally go to those who are procedurally literate. (shrink)

Western democracies have become neoliberal with all the disproportions of economic and political power that have emerged in capitalist society. The power acquired in the free market not only deforms the integrity of society and economic and political balance, but also it has become virtually impossible for democracy as a form of government to exist. As the scale of the free market became global, the economic entity has also gone global creating disproportions that have led Western democracies to be ruled (...) by economic entities rather than political ones. However, proper education, the use of new economic decentralisation trends, changing the role of politicians and the activity of citizens, and emerging new possibilities of digital democracy give us a glimpse of how to use the opportunities of the free market for strengthening democracies. At the same time, the reforms that have taken place in China in recent years have paradoxically shown that neoliberalism can also have positive aspects for society, which, as a new balance of economic and political capital, can be applied in the West as well. (shrink)

This article presents the ethical situation that evolves the discussion of limitation of treatment offered to patients in a persistent vegetative state. Health professionals find themselves in difficult situations when dealing with these recurrent problems in their daily professional activities. This is presented, then, as an ethical issue of difficult solution, the decision of suspension of life support tasks. The debate is sustained, however, on how to distinguish the concepts of terminality of life, orthothanasia, euthanasia, dysthanasia, palliative care and, in (...) an specific case, a persistent neurovegetative state, with its implications in the use of disproportional treatment that prolongs life, in a painful and a futile way, of the process of agony to the death. There are questions or dilemmas involved in this debate, such as in which moment the suspension of treatment can be considered adequate or the use of all possible measures to maintain life, even in advanced, irreversible and terminal illness are ethically acceptable. And finally, who is responsible for the suspension of therapeutic procedures in the irreversible and terminal clinical situations. (shrink)

The impact of this pandemic is not only through COVID-19 itself: the care for non-COVID-19 related conditions has been dramatically curtailed, shaking entire healthcare services around the world. Amongst the non-COVID-19 related conditions, oncology has been disproportionally affected. We discuss how oncology has changed since the acute phase of the pandemic; its impact on clinicians, trainees, and patients; and offer some medical and historical perspectives to reflect on how this impact could be reduced.

En este artículo se exploran las relaciones entre finito-infinito y los límites del lenguaje posible, del lenguaje finito, para hablar de su callado fundamento. En este sentido, el mismo vaciamiento del lenguaje, expresión de una imposibilidad a la cual empero no se hurta, la de hablar de Dios, conduce a ponderar la importancia que tiene la teología negativa en el sentido de permitir al mundo humano barruntar las dimensiones del misterio que lo funda. Se tocan, de esta manera, las concepciones (...) de Maimónides y de santo Tomás acerca de la vía negativa como mecanismo parcial que afronta eso que, precisamente, desborda las fronteras del entendimiento humano. No porque Dios, en sí mismo, no sea, por decirlo con Erígena, plus quam esse, hiperesencial, sino porque en la noche cognoscitiva del lenguaje a éste no le queda sino su propia abdicación en relación al telos que lo mueve. En la desproporción existente entre el lenguaje y aquello que lo anima, aquél, el lenguaje, celebrará su propio silencio y la lejanía abismal en relación a su fundamento. Palabras clave : teología negativa; vía negativa; teología apofática; teología catafática; vía de la eminencia. Maimonides and Thomas: The Triumph of NegationIn this article I explore the finite-infinite relations and the limits of the possible language, of the finite language, in order to speak of its silent foundation. In this regard, the very emptying of language, expression of an impossibility from which it nevertheless does not hide, that of speaking of God, leads to think over the importance that negative theology has, in the sense of allowing the human world to conjecture the dimensions of the mystery on which it is founded. Thus, the conceptions of Maimonides and Saint Thomas are found to be very akin as to their regarding the negative way as a partial mechanism to deal with that which, precisely, surpasses the bounds of human understanding. Not because God in himself is not, to say it with Erigena, plus quam esse, hyperessential, but because in the cognitive night of language the latter has no choice but its own abdication with respect to the telos that animates it. In the disproportion existing between language and that which animates it, the former, language, will celebrate its own silence and the abysmal distance in relation to its foundation. Keywords: Negative theology; Negative way; Apophatic theology; Cataphatic theology; Way of eminence. (shrink)

One of the most commonplace worries about humanitarian intervention relates to the perverse incentives that it might create, or the adverse reactions that it might provoke. For instance, it is sometimes said that by weakening the norm of sovereignty humanitarian intervention can encourage unscrupulous states to wage aggressive wars of self-interest using human rights as a pretense. It is feared, in other words, that humanitarian intervention—even when it has the purest motives—might ultimately do more harm than good by inciting unwanted (...) reactions from other states or substate groups. I will refer to these kinds of knock-on effects as the mediated consequences of intervention. They are brought about via the interceding agency of parties other than the intervener. It is generally assumed that when judging the proportionality of a humanitarian intervention, these consequences must be factored into the equation. If an intervention is expected to provoke adverse reactions the accumulated costs of which will outweigh the benefits that the intervention will deliver, then the intervention is thought to be disproportional and, therefore, unjustified. I want to challenge this assumption. I begin by considering what the principle of proportionality can reasonably demand of rebels who are defending their own basic rights against an oppressive government. I argue that a rebellion in such circumstances cannot plausibly be rendered impermissible solely by the expectation of negative mediated consequences, even when those consequences outweigh the anticipated benefits of the rebellion. This would seem to imply that rebels may discount mediated consequence from the proportionality calculus. But if this is so, do we have sound reasons for withholding the same prerogative from humanitarian interveners pursuing similar ends and using similar means? Can we justify asymmetric standards of proportionality? (shrink)

Best of both worlds: objective truth exists -- Beyond circular reasoning: time is linear -- I am who I am: an entity can have contradictory natures -- Seeing in the dark: significant parts of reality are hidden from us -- Not of this world: light is unearthly -- An egg-straordinary event: the universe was created Ex Nihilo -- The certainty of uncertainty: truth is bigger than proof -- La vida loca: cause and effect can be disproportional -- The cosmic grapevine: (...) instantaneous communication is possible -- Beyond fleas and grapes: humans are unique. (shrink)

Apart from a few exceptions,1 studies of Carl Schmitt in English have not dealt with the legal and constitutional aspects of his work. William Scheuerman's book begins to fill this gap. His work is an important corrective to previous interpretations which, by disproportionally emphasizing the cultural and theological aspects of Schmitt's work, have neglected its central legal character, thus reducing one of the most influential jurists of the 20th century either to a right-wing cultural critic or to a dissatisfied crypto-theologian.2 (...) Among other consequences, this neglect has contributed to disregarding themes that are pivotal to Schmitt's thinking.3 Scheuerman focuses on…. (shrink)

This study concerns the distribution of metaphorical lexis in discrete syntactic constructions. Source and target seed language from established conceptual metaphors in economic discourse is used to catalogue the specific patterns of how metaphorical pairs align in five syntactic constructions: A-NP, N-N, NP-of-NP, V-NP, and X is Y. Utilizing the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the examination includes 12 frequent metaphorical target triggers combined with 84 source triggers to produce 2,016 ordered collocations, i.e. investment freeze and turbulent market. Through detailed (...) type and token counts, results confirm that source domains function as conceptual material used to structure the target domain and disproportionally fill syntactic positions associated with predication, Studies in cognitive corpus linguistics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Publishers; Sullivan, Karen. 2013. Frames and constructions in metaphoric language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing). Given a lexeme’s origin – source or target – when used in source-target metaphors, syntactic alignment can be predicted, market climate is metaphorical, climate market is not. Exceptions to these strong tendencies are explained through genre-specific lexicalization processes in which predicate denoting terms like bubble establish themselves as domain modifiers in economic jargon. Through quantitative techniques to gage metaphorical conventionality and lexical versatility, corpus methodology is used to define and inform the value of frequency effects in cataloguing and understanding metaphorical lexicalization. (shrink)

Cet essai à teneur philosophique s'intéresse à la force d'évocation et d'invocation de la musique. à son charme magique dirait Nietzsche. Comment la musique me parle-t-elle '? Que suggère-t-elle? Pourquoi parle-t-elle de moi? Quelle fonction a-t-elle dans l'humanité '? L'argumentation de l'auteur utilise la philosophie et la psychologie musicales afin d'expliquer la scandaleuse disproportion entre la puissance à dire de la musique et l'inévidence foncière de ce qu'elle dit (pour reprendre les mots de Jankelé?itch). disproportion en laquelle réside (...) selon l'auteur tout son mystère, en laquelle réside tout son sens. Ce texte court mais dense s'adresse aux musicologues ainsi qu'à tout lecteur ou musicien éclairé voulant densifier son horizon de compréhension de la musique et de ses effets. Il puise ses exemples dans de nombreux corpus : musiques classique et romantique, avant-gardes, jazz, musiques de film."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

The Party has shifted the focus of its national endeavor onto socialist modernization. In light of the severe disproportion in economic development that resulted from the long-time interference and sabotage by Lin Biao and the "gang of four," the Party has decided to implement from this year onward a policy of readjustment, reform, consolidation, and improvement of the national economy so that it can move from a state of serious disequilibrium to relative equilibrium and along a track of proportionate (...) development of sustained high speed. This is a major policy to achieve socialist modernization in China. To acquire a deep understanding of and fully implement this policy, we should conduct further discussions on the issue of equilibrium and disequilibrium in light of the basic theory of Marxist philosophy. This will bear a positive significance both in theory and in practice. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE The spotlight that Martha Nussbaum turns on the plight of women in developing nations brings the disproportion between human capabilities and the opportunities to exercise them sharply into focus. Social prejudices, economic discrimination, and deep-seated traditions and attitudes all harbor the seeds of systemic injustices within governing policies and institutions. The refusal on the part of a dominant class to recognize the rights and (...) claims of subaltern individuals and groups has both symbolic and material consequences. The power that one group exercises over another brings the refusal to recognize the rights and claims of others to the fore. Thanks to the moral priority that Paul Ricoeur accords to the victim against such refusals, I tie the fragility of identity to the idea of justice’s federating force. This federating force, I therefore argue, accompanies the struggle for recognition among capable human beings. (shrink)

In Brazil, the epicenter of the Zika crisis, brown, black, and indigenous poor women living in municipalities with scarce resources were disproportionally affected. The gendered consequences of the epidemic exposed how intersectional lenses are central to understand the impact of public health emergencies in the lives of women and girls. The demand for Zika-affected children and women to be research participants is relevant for an ethical analysis of participant protection procedures during a crisis. We investigated how women experienced research participation (...) by analyzing their narratives. Two-year-long longitudinal qualitative study in Brazilian sites located in the epidemic's epicenter was performed using mixed methods: ethnography with women from two distinct states and individual semi-structured interviews with five women in different Zika-affected states, four of which were community leaders. All women in the study were mothers or grandmothers of Zika-affected children. Thematic analysis was used for data evaluation. Women perceived being pressured to participate in research and a lack of benefit sharing. Structural determinants of gender inequality, such as its effect on power distribution, were found to impact research participant protection. Formal procedures for research protocols approvals were insufficient in protecting participants because these instruments were unable to account for structural aspects. Communitarian mobilization, through WhatsApp groups, was found to be an important mechanism to create conditions to challenge oppressive structures. Strengthening public health, effective community-based participation in research planning and implantation of ethical strategies that promotes gender equality can have transformative effect on unequal power structures and promote participant protection. (shrink)

Sociological research on moral panics, long understood as “struggles for cultural power,” has focused on the social groups and media conditions that enable moral panics to emerge, and on the consequences of moral panics for the social control systems of societies. In this article I turn instead to modeling the specific cultural process of how the conditions for a moral panic are turned into an actual moral panic, moving the understanding of moral panic away from its Durkheimian origins and towards (...) a process-relational cultural sociology. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ theory of myth and Kenneth Burke’s dramatism, the paper posits the cultural process of resignification via synecdoche and metanarrative as the driver of the disproportion, concern, hostility, consensus, and volatility of moral panics. This process can be carefully traced in the case of the Salem Witch Trials; a retrospective reading reveals the same process at work in the “Mods and Rockers” panic analyzed by Stanley Cohen. Beyond moral panics, theorizing resignification as a non-exclusive counterpoint to framing and ideational embeddedness enriches the theoretical repertoire of cultural sociology. “Deep culture” and mythological signification can, using the schema proposed here, be understood as practical accomplishments—rhetorical responses to particular situations that, when performed successfully, legitimate violence and other forms of domination. (shrink)

In the Pensées, Pascal uses the astonishing phrase “the reality of things” to designate, not the actual existence of things, but the being-thing of all things (in accordance with the meaning of the Latin realitas rerum). It will be established that with this phrase, although it is of Cartesian origin, the analysis of “Disproportion of Man” aims at a criticism of the Cartesian ratio formalis infiniti sive infinitas, which Pascal shows not to be suitable to think God, but only (...) to describe and name nature asthe totality of thinkable objects. (shrink)

The author argues that Quijano’s conceptualization of race within the theory of coloniality of power is limited and theoretically insufficient given its lack of elaboration regarding the role of anti-Blackness in Spanish colonization. This article contrasts the idea of coloniality of power with Cedric Robinson’s elaboration of racial capitalism to demonstrates how Robinson has a more complex and historically rich analysis of race that centers the expansion of racial capitalism with the invention of the Negro subject. The article closes with (...) an attempt to bridge the history of anti-Blackness and the idea of coloniality using Sylvia Wynter’s adaptation of the idea of coloniality, which is attentive to the Portuguese expeditions prior to Columbus and how coloniality disproportionally affected people of African descent in the Américas. (shrink)