This study considers a voting rule wherein each player sincerely votes when he/she has no information about the preferences of the other players. We introduce the concept of rank-dominant strategies to discuss the situation where a player is completely ignorant in the preferences of the other players and decision theoretic justification of the concept. We show that under the plurality voting rule with the equal probability random tie-breaking, sincere voting is always the rank-dominant strategy of each voter. (...) We also discuss other scoring rules and show that sincere voting may not be a rank-dominant strategy of a voter even with the equal probability random tie-breaking. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to explore and discuss the interesting juxtaposition of patient involvement within a standardised Enhanced Recovery After Surgery care programme (ERAS). We address our aim by examining the work and strategies of nursing staff caring for patients during postoperative recovery from surgery, exploring how these two potentially competing priorities might effectively co‐exist within a hospital ward. This was a qualitative exploratory study, with data generated through 42 semi‐structured interviews with patients and nurses who had (...) taken part in an ERAS programme in one of three hospital wards in the United Kingdom, adopting a reflexive thematic approach to data analysis. We shine a light on the work undertaken by patients and nurses during the navigation of postoperative recovery, identifying strategies of collaboration and negotiation during this journey. Furthermore, we also identify and consider patients engaged in peer‐peer support during postoperative recovery. This paper adds to the existing literature and current ways of thinking in relation to the quest for standardised, clinically effective care balanced with the aspirations for individualised, patient‐centred care. This paper also helps inform thinking about the use of care pathways in relation to service delivery, considering how best to initiate and deploy best practice aimed at safe and effective postoperative recovery. (shrink)

I explore the evolution of strategies in an Augmented Stag Hunt game that adds a punishing strategy to the ordinary Stag Hunt strategies of cooperating, which aims for optimality, and defecting, which “plays it safe.” Cooperating weakly dominates punishing and defecting is the unique evolutionarily stable strategy. Nevertheless, for a wide class of Augmented Stag Hunts, polymorphic strategies combining punishing and cooperating collectively have greater attracting power for replicator dynamics than that of the ESS. The analysis here lends (...) theoretical support to the altruistic punishment hypothesis in the social sciences. (shrink)

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give (...) for our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response. (shrink)

Ethical analyses, professional guidelines and legal decisions support the equivalence thesis for life-sustaining treatment: if it is ethical to withhold treatment, it would be ethical to withdraw the same treatment. In this paper we explore reasons why the majority of medical professionals disagree with the conclusions of ethical analysis. Resource allocation is considered by clinicians to be a legitimate reason to withhold but not to withdraw intensive care treatment. We analyse five arguments in favour of non-equivalence, and find only relatively (...) weak reasons to restrict rationing to withholding treatment. On the contrary, resource allocation provides a strong argument in favour of equivalence: non-equivalence causes preventable death in critically ill patients. We outline two proposals for increasing equivalence in practice: (1) reduction of the mortality threshold for treatment withdrawal, (2) time-limited trials of intensive care. These strategies would help to move practice towards more rational treatment limitation decisions. (shrink)

An early work in which Baudrillard became Baudrillard. When Fatal Strategies was first published in French in 1983, it represented a turning point for Jean Baudrillard: an utterly original, and for many readers, utterly bizarre book that offered a theory as proliferative, ecstatic, and hallucinatory as the postmodern world it endeavored to describe. Arguing against the predetermined outcomes of dialectical thought with his renowned, wry, ambivalent passion, with this volume Jean Baudrillard mounted an attack against the “false problems” posed by (...) Western philosophy. If his Marxist days were firmly behind him, Baudrillard here indicated that metaphysics had also gone the way of sociology and politics: the contemporary world demanded nothing less than Pataphysics, Alfred Jarry's absurdist philosphy that described the laws of the universe supplementary to this one. In effect, with Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard became Baudrillard. In his extrapolationist manner, Baudrillard sought to replace Western philosophy's circular arguments with a ritualistic Theater of Cruelty. Using this line of thought developed in Fatal Strategies, Baudrillard went on, throughout the 1980s, to find new and shatteringly accurate ways of discussing American corporatocracy, arms build-up, and hostage taking. Fatal Strategies asserts a profound critique of American politics, and it is an important step towards his examination of evil.Jean Baudrillard was a philosopher, sociologist, cultural critic, and theorist of postmodernity who challenged all existing theories of contemporary society with humor and precision. An outsider in the French intellectual establishment, he was internationally renowned as a twenty-first century visionary, reporter, and provocateur. His Simulations instantly became a cult classic and made him a controversial voice in the world of politics and art. (shrink)

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic raises a host of challenging ethical questions at every level of society. However, some of the most acute questions relate to decision making in intensive care. The problem is that a small but significant proportion of patients develop severe viral pneumonitis and respiratory failure. It now seems likely that the number of critically ill patients will overwhelm the capacity of intensive care units (ICUs) within many health systems, including the National Health Service in the UK. The (...) experience of Northern Italy—a couple of weeks ahead of the UK, suggests that it will simply not be possible to provide mechanical ventilation to every patient who might need it. When the crunch comes, the unpalatable question facing clinicians is which patient to save. There are some obvious strategies to avoid or reduce the problem—through measures to increase intensive care capacity, and via society-level interventions to reduce the spread of the virus. These are vitally important, but unfortunately they are unlikely to prevent the problem of demand outstripping supply from occurring. What, then, should clinicians do? How should they allocate the scarce resource of intensive care—particularly over the coming weeks as the crisis escalates? There are different values at stake in triage decisions, but at a basic level the key values are those of benefit and …. (shrink)

One of the most contested areas in relation to literacy has been the teaching of reading. The British National Literacy Strategy (NLS) was intended to foreclose the reading debate by taking a clear position on the teaching of reading and prescribing this for all schools. National policy makers have claimed that the NLS is underpinned by research evidence. The central question that informs this paper is: has the research evidence on the teaching of reading demonstrated that the greater emphasis (...) on phonics evident in the NLS Framework for Teaching is justified? Empirical evidence in a number of key areas is reviewed: seminal work; teaching method evaluations; longitudinal evidence and the DfEE review of research and related evidence. It is concluded that there is a weak link between research and the prescribed phonics teaching in the Framework, and that changes should be made to reflect more accurately the research evidence. (shrink)

Proponents of deliberative democracy believe deliberation provides the best chance of finding effective and legitimate climate policies. However, in many societies there is substantial evidence of biased cognition and polarisation about climate change. Further, many appear unable to distinguish reliable scientific information from false claims or misinformation. While deliberation significantly reduces polarisation about climate change, and can even increase the provision of reliable beliefs, these benefits are difficult to scale up, and are slow to affect whole societies. In response, I (...) propose a combined strategy of ‘thinking and nudging’. While deliberative theorists tend to view nudging askance, combining deliberation with nudges promises to be a timelier and more effective response to climate change than deliberation alone. I outline several proposals to improve societal deliberative capacity while reducing climate risks, including media reform, strategic communication and framing of debates, incentivising pro-climate behaviour change, and better education about science. (shrink)

Why do we tend to ascribe possibility to what we can imagine? One strategy for answering that question involves the thought that, just as sensory episodes often involve its seeming to us as though the world is certain ways, so imaginings involve its seeming to us that what we have imagined is possible. This chapter argues that while some imaginings do feature appearances of possibility, very many others do not; and it explores the broader relevance of its conclusions for (...) modal epistemology. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that confidence and conservatism promoted aggression in our ancestral past, and that this may have been an adaptive strategy given the prevailing costs and benefits of conflict. However, in modern environments, where the costs and benefits of conflict can be very different owing to the involvement of mass armies, sophisticated technology, and remote leadership, evolved tendencies toward high levels of confidence and conservatism may continue to be a contributory cause of aggression despite leading to greater (...) costs and fewer benefits. The purpose of this paper is to test whether confidence and conservatism are indeed associated with greater levels of aggression—in an explicitly political domain. We present the results of an experiment examining people’s levels of aggression in response to hypothetical international crises (a hostage crisis, a counter-insurgency campaign, and a coup). Levels of aggression (which range from concession to negotiation to military attack) were significantly predicted by subjects’ (1) confidence that their chosen policy would succeed, (2) score on a liberal-conservative scale, (3) political party affiliation, and (4) preference for the use of military force in real-world U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. We discuss the possible adaptive and maladaptive implications of confidence and conservatism for the prospects of war and peace in the modern world. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that contemporary media technologies push individuals into collective action on an industrial scale, without them necessarily being aware of it. Yet what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same affective networks and moments, but rather dispersed into countless different networks and moments? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the (...) same moment? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video, and, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity In this short and provocative book Dominic Pettman examines the deliberate deployment of what he calls ‘asynchronous hypermodulation’, as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. By focusing on ‘we, the mediated’, this radical intervention challenges the narratives that portray the new media environment as a monolithic media apparatus, rendering us all into the same libidinal grey glue, subsequently channelled at will through the pleasure palace of the internet. The unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distractions that accompany it. (shrink)

Background: Although inclusive education is widely discussed, its implementation has not, arguably, been far-reaching. There remains a lack of specific, targeted approaches towards fully including learners with physical and mental impairments in the educational space. Objectives: This study investigated the extent of the inclusion of learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in three schools in Johannesburg. Method: A qualitative interpretivist design was adopted. Teachers who work with learners with ASD were interviewed using open-ended questions. The sampled data were analysed using (...) thematic analysis, making use of both a priori codes and emergent codes that arose from the open-ended questions. Results: The findings reveal numerous pedagogic strategies such as differentiation, scaffolding, use of visual cues, group work and collaboration that can include learners with ASD in the classroom space. Conclusion: Teacher collaboration and teacher training are vital in ensuring that learners with ASD are fully included in the classroom space. (shrink)

Philosophy of psychiatry has boomed in the last few years. We are now seeing a growing literature on the nature of psychiatric explanation, including work that makes contact with longstanding disputes in the philosophy of science as well as more specific work on mental disorders. This paper looks at some recent work on both representing and explaining mental illness. An emerging picture sees explanation of mental disorder as first constructing causal-statistical networks that represent disease pathways as they unfold in time, (...) and then choosing strategies for causal explanation. The epistemic problems in psychiatry are huge, and they arise from the extreme variety in the causes and trajectories of mental disorders across patients. Existing concepts of levels of explanation and mechanism may seem like an obvious epistemic armoury, but they may not fit psychiatry very well, and philosophical theories of psychiatric explanation stress different ways of trying to understand robust patterns amid the individual variation. (shrink)

Parents who are facing decisions about life-sustaining treatment for their seriously ill or dying child are supported by their child's doctors and nurses. They also frequently seek other information sources to help them deal with the medical and ethical questions that arise. This might include written or web-based information. As part of a project involving the development of such a resource to support parents facing difficult decisions, some ethical questions emerged. Should this information be presented in a strictly neutral fashion? (...) Is it problematic if narratives, arguments or perspectives appear to favour stopping over continuing life-sustaining treatment? Similar questions might arise with written materials about decisions for adults, or for other ethically contentious decisions. This paper explores the meaning of ‘balance’ in information provision, focusing particularly on written information about life-sustaining treatment for children. We contrast the norm of non-directiveness in genetic counselling with the shared decision-making model often endorsed in end-of-life care. We review evidence that parents do not find neutrality from medical professionals helpful in discussions. We argue that balance in written information must be understood in the light of the aim of the document, the most common situation in which it will be used, and any existing biases. We conclude with four important strategies for ensuring that non-neutral information is nevertheless ethically appropriate. (shrink)

The UK government has put lateral flow antigen tests at the forefront of its strategy to scale-up testing in the coronavirus pandemic. However, evidence from a pilot trial using an LFAT to identify asymptomatic infections in the community suggested that the test missed over half of the positive cases in the tested population. This raises the question of whether it can be ethical to use an inaccurate test to guide public health measures. We begin by explicating different dimensions of (...) test accuracy, and why they matter morally, before highlighting key data from the Liverpool pilot. We argue that the poor sensitivity of the LFAT in this pilot trial suggests that there are important limitations to what we can expect these tests to achieve. A test with low sensitivity will provide false-negative results, and in doing so generate the risk of false assurance and its attendant moral costs. However, we also suggest that the deployment of an insensitive but specific test could identify many asymptomatic carriers of the virus who are currently being missed under existing arrangements. Having outlined ways in which the costs of false reassurance could potentially be mitigated, we conclude that the use of an insensitive LFAT in mass testing may be ethical if it is used predominantly to identify positive cases, it is a cost-effective method of achieving that goal and if other public health tools can effectively prevent widespread false reassurance. (shrink)

Why do we understand media the way we do? Sometimes we think about media simply as means of communication and instruments of human creativity. At other times we understand media as powerful technologies that influence human culture and that can even govern how we think and act. Dominic Boyer grapples with these complexities in Understanding Media, where he questions what our different strategies of engaging media actually tell us about media, their messages and powers." "Understanding Media explores, in a serious (...) yet entertaining way, our common habits of thinking about the presence and significance of media in our lives. Offering analysis of the philosophical and social foundations of contemporary media theory as well as everyday strategies of knowing media, it addresses the advantages and limitations of different ways of understanding media. Boyer also reflects on the practical issue of how we can know media better than we do."--Jacket. (shrink)

[Pre-peer review draft available to download.] Our imaginative capacities shape the making of images, while the making of images has the ability to shape our imaginative capacities. What are the connections between vision and mental visual images that allow for this traffic between the contents of our minds and external images? And how are image-makers able to exploit the distinctive powers of imagery, to extend the modes of representation that are available to us, and hence also to extend the resources (...) upon which our imaginations can draw? The chapter explores various aspects of those issues. It starts by exploring “visual imagery” as a general category; and it identifies one very striking range of cases that encompasses both suitable mental and nonmental visual images. It develops a philosophical account of what is distinctive about the range of visual images thus identified. Subsequent sections then use the resulting ideas to investigate some of the ways in which various strategies for creating visual images exploit in remarkably inventive ways possibilities that are latent within the general phenomenon of imagistic representation. (shrink)

I offer reasons against reading Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. I argue that Hume's scepticism is motivated differently, that his sceptical strategies are not analogous to Pyrrhonism's, and that it is profitable to read Hume as a critic of Pyrrhonism. I hold that the most informative point of comparison between Hume and Sextus Empiricus is a point of difference, namely, their stands on the connection between suspension of judgement (epochê) and tranquillity (ataraxia). For Sextus, tranquillity flows naturally from suspending judgement (...) on all opinions. Hume, by contrast, consistently treats radical suspension of judgement as resulting in despair and social detachment. I take a firmer stance than past commentators on this issue by affirming that Hume and Sextus do not merely disagree on this issue, but that Hume's view is more plausible. Reading Hume's sceptical crisis, I propose, reveals an insightful criticism of Pyrrhonism, one that sheds light on human nature's response to radical doubt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ends of the Divine:David Bentley Hart and Jordan Daniel Wood on GraceJames Dominic Rooney O.P.David Bentley Hart and Jordan Daniel Wood stand alongside some modern theologians in their diagnosis that there is a problem in an overly transcendent account of the divine nature. If God were unable to be affected by what happens in the world, many think, then God cannot really be responsive to or care about (...) us. Unlike "radical kenotic" theologians who hold that God is affected by the world and deny the classical doctrine of divine impassibility, however, Hart and Wood argue that we can get an intimate God–world relation without denying impassibility. If it were true that God was so free and unlimited as to express himself without hindrance in creating this world and guiding its history (they argue), then the world would necessarily express God's own inner life perfectly. There would be a non-contingent and mutual relation between the world and God's inner life.The Hart/Wood strategy appears to have all the right upshots of the radical kenotic views without sacrificing the metaphysics. However, this strategy rests upon a seriously fraught modal claim: that God could not have done otherwise than what he did (in creation, the Incarnation, redemption, etc.). This modal claim supports their inferences about the ways in which creation and its history will necessarily reflect who or what God is. Phrases about God being unable to do otherwise or acting "necessarily" lend themselves to equivocation, as it is easy to slip between de re and de dicto uses of "necessary." We need to distinguish: [End Page 811]1. Necessarily, if God creates, then God creates (and does so from eternity).2. If God creates, then God necessarily creates.To affirm 1 is true is only to say (de dicto) that, necessarily, whenever it is true God creates, then it is true he creates. This first proposition poses no serious metaphysical or theological puzzle. The necessity here concerns a relation among propositions. On reading 1, the "necessity" qualifies over not God's creating, but the conditional; there thus could be other logically possible situations where God does not create. That is, if "God creates" is true, then "God creates eternally" is also true, simply on account of God's actions necessarily being eternal in duration. The mere fact that God has a relation to the universe which is "necessarily eternal" in that way does not by itself entail that God cannot do otherwise than create.To affirm 2, by contrast, would be to switch to the claim that God creates necessarily, with the necessity concerning God's creating itself. Thus, 2 involves a relation of metaphysical necessity (de re). If God cannot not do or cause x, then x is metaphysically necessary insofar as x "could not not exist" or "could not not be otherwise." What I will show is that Hart and Wood both hold that, given God's character, his choices and actions simply could not be otherwise. That is, both hold reading 2. Since Hart and Wood appeal to God's character, they do not appeal to a relation among propositions or the relation among facts such that, necessarily, given God chose to create, God chooses to create. Their views involve a strong modal thesis about God's actions that goes beyond traditional claims that God's actions befit his wisdom, since, on those traditional claims, many possible courses of action could equally befit God's wisdom. Both Hart and Wood deny that God could have done anything else apart from what he (actually) did in creation and salvation that would befit his wisdom or character.I will show that, if such a modal claim is to support the implications that Hart and Wood (and others) draw from it, God would bear a relation to the world that is constitutive of his divine identity. I group these two together since Hart and Wood represent what appear to be the fundamentally logically exhaustive ways of pursuing this strategy in terms of either the divine nature or the persons. And their strategy is embraced by a family of theoretically similar contemporary proposals... (shrink)

The author of the Summa Halensis claims that the human body is maximally composite and argues for this using a proof strategy that intends to deduce the body’s composition from the human soul’s immateriality. This study examines that claim and argument, which is given both in a shorter and a longer form. The core of the article consists in a careful reconstruction of both forms, along with an enquiry into its Jewish Neoplatonic sources (first and foremost the Fons vitae) (...) and its appearance in zoological commentaries contemporary to the Summa written by Peter of Spain and Albert the Great. It emerges that the argument brings into play various features of the Summist’s hylomorphic theory, especially a pluralism about substantial forms. (shrink)

This paper describes a structured approach to the selection of an analytic strategy for cross-case analysis and a method for data display. To this end, criteria will be developed addressing both, aspects of scientific rigor as well as the practicability of application and the application of the decision process will be demonstrated.

This paper discusses the economic impact and political consequences of ethical investing, with particular attention to the case of South Africa. The origins of ethical investing are examined, along with the institutions and strategies by which ethical investing operates today. Of immediate relevance to managers is a recent judicial decision upholding Baltimore's divestment ordinance. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the likely consequences of ethical investing for U.S. multinationals in Southern Africa.

On top of the puzzles mentioned by Colman comes the puzzle of why rationality has bewitched classical game theory for so long. Not the smallest merit of evolutionary game theory is that it views rationality as a limiting case, at best. But some problems only become more pressing.

If a doctor is trying to decide whether or not to provide a medical treatment, does it matter ethically whether that treatment has already been started? Health professionals sometimes find it harder to stop a treatment (withdraw) than to refrain from starting the treatment (withhold). But does that feeling correspond to an ethical difference? In this article, we defend equivalence—the view that withholding and withdrawal of treatment are ethically equivalent when all other factors are equal. We argue that preference for (...) withholding over withdrawal could represent a form of cognitive bias—withdrawal aversion. Nevertheless, we consider whether there could be circumstances in which there is a moral difference. We identify four examples of conditional nonequivalence. Finally, we reflect on the moral significance of diverging intuitions and the implications for policy. We propose a set of practical strategies for helping to reduce bias in end-of-life decision making, including the equivalence test. (shrink)

David Bentley Hart and Jordan Daniel Wood are part of a movement aiming to overcome any separation between divine and human nature, avoiding what they see as a problematic account of grace. As opposed to radical kenoticism which holds that God only exists or has a given character in relation to creation, Hart and Wood appeal to facts about God such that He could not act otherwise towards human beings, given His character. They thereby ground conclusions that God could not (...) fail to create and that human beings could not be otherwise than divinized. Even though they differ on what it is in virtue of the fact that God could not act otherwise, both authors rest their views on such claims. I will argue such views involve serious theological and metaphysical problems, because this strategy entails – as much as radical kenoticism – that God is constituted by His relation to creation. (shrink)

Sara Rappe has given us a stimulating book full of interesting suggestions concerning philosophers hardly known, in some cases, in the English-speaking world. She raises a question concerning these philosophers that has not previously been discussed on this scale. The question arises from the comparison of two features of Neoplatonism. For the Neoplatonist philosopher, discursive thinking does not yield knowledge. By discursive thought is meant the kind of thinking we normally practice. It has to do with objects external to thought, (...) objects mediated by images derived from sense perception or also from a higher form of thought. From these images discursive thought elaborates further ideas derived by methods of reasoning such as those codified in Aristotelian logic. This kind of thinking is open, however, to the attacks of Skepticism, against which the Neoplatonist argues by appealing to another form of thinking and to the knowledge it constitutes, a form of thinking free of all mediation separating subject and object of thought, where subject and object of thought are identical. This is not discursive thought; dis- cursive thought does not yield knowledge that is immune to skeptical attack and that is obtained by a form of thought beyond discursive thinking. To the extent that language is the expression of discursive thought, this knowledge is not expressed in language. Yet the Neoplatonists of Late Antiquity were plunged in discursivity. In particular, they did philosophy by interpreting texts, the authoritative texts of their tradition, not only Plato’s dialogues, but also the Aristotelian corpus and what they supposed were the more ancient sources of their philosophy, Pythagorean and Orphic texts and the Chaldaean Oracles. How are and to be reconciled? The thesis explored by Rappe in this book is that the Neoplatonists had recourse to nondiscursive textual strategies, images, symbols, myths, ritual formulae, so as to convey nondiscursive thought and knowledge through their reading of discursive texts. (shrink)

The first part of this paper traces back to Plotinus a strategy applied by Augustine and Descartes whereby sceptical arguments are used to set aside sensualist forms of dogmatic philosophy, clearing the way for a dogmatism independent of sense-perception which is 'self-authenticating' and thus immune to, and even proven by, sceptical doubt. It is argued that Plotinus already uses this strategy in the opening chapters of "Enneads" V 5 and V 3. The second part of the paper argues (...) that Plotinus' account of how the ineffable One is said (we do not actually say the One, but merely express our own affections) is inspired by the structure of sceptic discourse (the sceptic does not say things as they are, but merely expresses personal affections). Finally, similarities and differences between sceptic discourse about things and Plotinian discourse about the ineffable are explored. (shrink)

Intense public interest in scientific claims about COVID-19, concerning its origins, modes of spread, evolution, and preventive and therapeutic strategies, has focused attention on the values to which scientists are assumed to be committed and the relationship between science and other public discourses. A much discussed claim, which has stimulated several inquiries and generated far-reaching political and economic consequences, has been that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then, either inadvertently or otherwise, released to the (...) public by a laboratory worker. This has been pursued despite a clear refutation, through comprehensive genomic analysis, of the hypothesis that the virus was deliberately engineered and the failure of detailed investigations to identify any evidence in support of a laboratory leak. At the same time a substantial, established body of knowledge about the many factors underlying the emergence of novel zoonotic diseases has been largely ignored—including climate change and other mechanisms of environmental destruction, tourism, patterns of trade, and cultural influences. The existence and conduct of these debates have raised questions about the vulnerability of science to manipulation for political purposes. Scientific discourses are vulnerable because: (i) claims can be made with no more than probabilistic force; (ii) alleged “facts” are always subject to interpretation, which depends on social, ethical, and epistemological assumptions; and (iii) science and scientists are not inherently committed to any single set of values and historically have served diverse, and sometimes perverse, social and political interests. In the face of this complexity, the COVID-19 experience highlights the need for processes of ethical scrutiny of the scientific enterprise and its strategic deployment. To ensure reliability of truth claims and protection from corrupting influences robust ethical discourses are required that are independent of, and at times even contrary to, those of science itself. (shrink)

The conceptualisation of schooling is often based on “ideal children” in “ideal situations.” However, in determining the level of participation for children who are considered vulnerable in schooling, it is important to understand the lived experiences of these children. In this study, migrant children (particularly undocumented ones) in South Africa are the focus, and their lived experiences were considered through reflections from their parents and teachers. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, and analysed using a constant comparative method of qualitative (...) analysis within a grounded theory approach. The study found that challenges affecting migrant children’s schooling include the lack of documentation, language barriers, issues of transition and adaptation (discrimination), and the inability to access further education. Strategies were identified to address the challenges, including schools liaising with the Department of Home Affairs, implementing cultural diversity programmes within the school, and through deliberate inclusive programmes. (shrink)

There is a tendency in decision‐making research to treat uncertainty only as a problem to be overcome. But it is also a feature that can be leveraged, particularly in social interaction. Comparing the behavior of profitable and unprofitable poker players, we reveal a strategic use of information processing that keeps decision makers unpredictable. To win at poker, a player must exploit public signals from others. But using public inputs makes it easier for an observer to reconstruct that player's strategy (...) and predict his or her behavior. How should players trade off between exploiting profitable opportunities and remaining unexploitable themselves? Using a recent multivariate approach to information theoretic data analysis and 1.75 million hands of online two‐player No‐Limit Texas Hold'em, we find that the important difference between winning and losing players is not in the amount of information they process, but how they process it. In particular, winning players are better at integrative information processing—creating new information from the interaction between their cards and their opponents’ signals. We argue that integrative information processing does not just produce better decisions, it makes decision‐making harder for others to reverse engineer, as an expert poker player's cards act like the private key in public‐key cryptography. Poker players encrypt their reasoning with the way they process information. The encryption function of integrative information processing makes it possible for players to exploit others while remaining unexploitable. By recognizing the act of information processing as a strategic behavior in its own right, we offer a detailed account of how experts use endemic uncertainty to conceal their intentions in high‐stakes competitive environments, and we highlight new opportunities between cognitive science, information theory, and game theory. (shrink)

Cells and tissue within injured organs undergo a complicated healing process that still remains poorly understood. Interestingly, smaller organisms respond to injury with tissue regeneration and restoration of function, while humans and other large organisms respond to injury by forming dysfunctional, fibrotic scar tissue. Over the past few decades, allometric scaling principles have been well established to show that larger organisms experience exponentially higher tissue forces during movement and locomotion and throughout the organism's lifespan. How these evolutionary adaptations may affect (...) tissue injury has not been thoroughly investigated in humans. We discuss how these adapations may affect healing and demonstrate that blocking the most evolutionary conserved biologic force sensor enables large organisms to heal after injury with true tissue regeneration. Future strategies to disrupt tissue force sensors may unlock the key to regenerating after injury in a wide range of organ systems. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has led a number of countries to introduce restrictive ‘lockdown’ policies on their citizens in order to control infection spread. Immunity passports have been proposed as a way of easing the harms of such policies, and could be used in conjunction with other strategies for infection control. These passports would permit those who test positive for COVID-19 antibodies to return to some of their normal behaviours, such as travelling more freely and returning to work. The introduction of (...) immunity passports raises a number of practical and ethical challenges. In this paper, we seek to review the challenges relating to various practical considerations, fairness issues, the risk to social cooperation and the impact on people’s civil liberties. We make tentative recommendations for the ethical introduction of immunity passports. (shrink)

This article investigates the factors affecting how public relations autonomy, legal dominance, and strategic orientation affect crisis communicative response in corporate contexts. Communication managers, crisis managers, public affairs managers, and/or public relations managers were solicited from Taiwan’s top 500 companies to participate in a survey. The results revealed that, in contrast to public relations autonomy being the strongest and sole predictor of concession strategy, legal dominance could predict defensive and diversionary responses in crisis events. The article concludes with a (...) discussion of practical applications and theoretical implications. (shrink)

The rapid development of vaccines against COVID‐19 represents a huge achievement, and offers hope of ending the global pandemic. At least three COVID‐19 vaccines have been approved or are about to be approved for distribution in many countries. However, with very limited initial availability, only a minority of the population will be able to receive vaccines this winter. Urgent decisions will have to be made about who should receive priority for access. Current policy in the UK appears to take the (...) view that those who are most vulnerable to COVID‐19 should get the vaccine first. While this is intuitively attractive, we argue that there are other possible values and criteria that need to be considered. These include both intrinsic and instrumental values. The former are numbers of lives saved, years of life saved, quality of the lives saved, quality‐adjusted life‐years (QALYs), and possibly others including age. Instrumental values include protecting healthcare systems and other broader societal interests, which might require prioritizing key worker status and having dependants. The challenge from an ethical point of view is to strike the right balance among these values. It also depends on effectiveness of different vaccines on different population groups and on modelling around cost‐effectiveness of different strategies. It is a mistake to simply assume that prioritizing the most vulnerable is the best strategy. Although that could end up being the best approach, whether it is or not requires careful ethical and empirical analysis. (shrink)

We discuss whether and under what conditions people should be allowed to choose which COVID-19 vaccine to receive on the basis of personal ethical views. The problem arises primarily with regard to some religious groups’ concerns about the connection between certain COVID-19 vaccines and abortion. Vaccines currently approved in Western countries make use of foetal cell lines obtained from aborted foetuses either at the testing stage or at the development stage. The Catholic Church’s position is that, if there are alternatives, (...) Catholic people have a moral obligation to request the vaccine whose link with abortion is more remote, which at present means that they should refuse the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. We argue that any consideration regarding free choice of the vaccine should apply to religious and non-religious claims alike, in order to avoid religion-based discrimination. However, we also argue that, in a context of limited availability, considering the significant differences in costs and effectiveness profile of the vaccines available, people should only be allowed to choose the preferred vaccine if: 1) this does not risk compromising vaccination strategies; and 2) they internalize any additional cost that their choice might entail. The State should only subsidize the vaccine that is more cost-effective for any demographic group from the point of view of public health strategies. (shrink)

Well-trained, competent therapists are crucial for safe and effective psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT). The question whether PAT training programs should require aspiring therapists to undergo their own PAT—commonly referred to as “experiential training”—has received much attention within the field. In this article, we analyze the potential benefits of experiential training in PAT by applying the framework developed by Rolf Sandell et al. concerning the functions of any training therapy (the therapeutic, modeling, empathic, persuasive, and theoretical functions). We then explore six key (...) domains in which risks could arise through mandatory experiential training: physical and psychological risks; negative impact on therapeutic skill; justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion; dual relationships; privacy and confidentiality; and undue pressure. Ultimately, we argue that experiential training in PAT should not be mandatory. Because many PAT training programs already incorporate experiential training methods, our exploration of potential harms and benefits may be used to generate comprehensive risk-mitigation strategies. (shrink)

The 2016 outbreak of the Zika arbovirus was associated with large numbers of cases of the newly-recognised Congenital Zika Syndrome. This novel teratogenic epidemic raises significant ethical and practical issues. Many of these arise from strategies used to avoid cases of CZS, with contraception in particular being one proposed strategy that is atypical in epidemic control. Using contraception to reduce the burden of CZS has an ethical complication: interventions that impact the timing of conception alter which people will exist (...) in the future. This so-called ‘non-identity problem’ potentially has significant social justice implications for evaluating contraception, that may affect our prioritisation of interventions to tackle Zika. This paper combines ethical analysis of the non-identity problem with empirical data from a novel survey about the general public's moral intuitions. The ethical analysis examines different perspectives on the non-identity problem, and their implications for using contraception in response to Zika. The empirical section reports the results of an online survey of 93 members of the US general public exploring their intuitions about the non-identity problem in the context of the Zika epidemic. Respondents indicated a general preference for a person-affecting intervention over an impersonal intervention. However, their responses did not appear to be strongly influenced by the non-identity problem. Despite its potential philosophical significance, we conclude from both theoretical considerations and analysis of the attitudes of the community that the non-identity problem should not affect how we prioritise contraception relative to other interventions to avoid CZS. (shrink)

여성혐오를 넘어서기 위해서는 여성이라는 존재론적 차원의 물질성과 현실성을 기각시키거나 저항의 단위소를 무화시키는 것이 아닌, 성별 불평등 구조에서 지배계급성을 구성하고 있는 남성성의 작동 메커니즘에 대한 치밀한 분석과 해체로 나아가야 한다. 이를 위해 필자는 첫 번째로 남근질서라는 아버지의 법질서에서 팔루스와 페니스 간의 유착성-팔루스가 초월적이며 절대적 심급이 아닌 스스로 축소되고 사라져버리는 페니스의 유약성에 참조점을 두고 있는 내재적 결핍성의 지점임을 이론적으로 추적해나감으로써 남근질서의 해체 가능성을 모색해보고자 한다.BR 두 번째로 남성지배의 축 중 하나인 페니스 나르시시즘이라는 개인적 정체성화의 작동방식을 분석해보고자 한다. 여기서 페니스는 해부학적 기관에 그치는 (...) 것이 아니라 자기애의 온전성을 담지받는 장소이자 아버지의 법질서의 사회문화적 권위와 권력의 계승점을 나타내는 것이다. 즉 남성은 자신의 페니스를 중심으로 페니스 나르시시즘이라는 개인으로서의 남성의 정체성화 양식을 구성해나 가고 있으며, 사회문화적으로는 방기하는 몸이라는 권력적 몸, 특권적 몸을 양산하는 것이다.BR 세 번째로 남성지배의 또 다른 축인 페니스 카르텔이라는 집단적 정체성화의 메커니즘은 남성들의 본래적 우월성의 상호확인에서만이 아니라, 남성들의 자기 완결성의 결여, 무능력함과 형편없음, 비리 축적을 상호 묵인함으로써 더욱 더 강력하게 작동하는 것이다. 왜냐하면 남성특권구조란 특정한 남성 개개인에게 독점되는 양태가 아니라, 남성이라는 성별 계급으로 범주화된 이들이 의식적, 무의식적으로 나눠가지는 지배적 집합성에서 기인하는 것이기 때문이다.BR 이러한 페니스 나르시시즘과 페니스 카르텔을 해체하기 위해서 페니스가 자기 완결적이며 불침투적인 닫힌 몸이 아님을 드러내어야 한다. 즉 페니스는 사정기관과 배설 기관이라는 다공성의 일체화 구조를 통해 구멍 지어진 몸이자 숭고와 비천, 깨끗함과 더러움 등의 분열적 지점이라 할 수 있다. 또한 우뚝 솟은 불변의 공격성과 능동성, 힘과 권위의 기관이 아닌, 시시각각 형태가 변하는 유동적 살로서의 페니스와 팔루스-기관의 유약성을 연동시켜 사유해봄으로써 페니스 카르텔의 남근다발이 한데 묶일 수조차 없는 결핍성의 지대임을 논증하고자 한다. 남근 이데올로기론이 갖는 임계점을 이론적으로 살펴봄으로써, 폭압적 남성성의 재생산 고리를 끊어내어 여성혐오를 극복해보고자 한다. (shrink)

Epistemic decision theory produces arguments with both normative and mathematical premises. I begin by arguing that philosophers should care about whether the mathematical premises (1) are true, (2) are strong, and (3) admit simple proofs. I then discuss a theorem that Briggs and Pettigrew (2020) use as a premise in a novel accuracy-dominance argument for conditionalization. I argue that the theorem and its proof can be improved in a number of ways. First, I present a counterexample that shows that one (...) of the theorem’s claims is false. As a result of this, Briggs and Pettigrew’s argument for conditionalization is unsound. I go on to explore how a sound accuracy-dominance argument for conditionalization might be recovered. In the course of doing this, I prove two new theorems that correct and strengthen the result reported by Briggs and Pettigrew. I show how my results can be combined with various normative premises to produce sound arguments for conditionalization. I also show that my results can be used to support normative conclusions that are stronger than the one that Briggs and Pettigrew’s argument supports. Finally, I show that Briggs and Pettigrew’s proofs can be simplified considerably. (shrink)

This paper proposes a logical framework for representing static and dynamic properties of different kinds of individual and collective attitudes. A complete axiomatization as well as a decidability result for the logic are given. The logic is applied to game theory by providing a formal analysis of the epistemic conditions of iterated deletion of weakly dominated strategies (IDWDS), or iterated weak dominance for short. The main difference between the analysis of the epistemic conditions of iterated weak dominance given in this (...) paper and other analysis is that we use a semi-qualitative approach to uncertainty based on the notion of plausibility first introduced by Spohn, whereas other analysis are based on a quantitative representation of uncertainty in terms of probabilities. (shrink)

This article analyses the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dominated choices are individually inconsequential for a person’s freedom but collectively consequential. Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro- domination poses a problem for ‘objective threshold’ accounts of domination which either prioritise particularly bad forms of domination or exclude powers that do not risk causing serious harm to their victims. Where the choices concerned are subjectively inconsequential to the victim, micro-domination poses a problem for the common republican (...) strategy of creating arenas of contestation for victims of domination, which rely on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating relationship to sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail victims of micro-domination. Throughout the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for and responding to cases of micro-domination. (shrink)

Universal basic income is increasingly proposed as a simple answer to the problem of domination at work—one policy whose knock-on effects will transform the balance of power between workers and employers. I argue against such ‘UBI-first’ approaches. Compared to UBI proposals for other purposes, a UBI sufficient or near-sufficient for minimising domination at work would be especially demanding in two ways. First, the level of the grant would be more demanding compared to UBIs suitable for other purposes, in order for (...) workers to be able to credibly threaten to leave their jobs. Secondly, the maintenance of the grant must also meet strict criteria. The demanding level of the grant must be effectively secured against reduction, allowing workers to plan on its long-term acceptability; and in order to avoid increased state domination it must assume the status of an entitlement rather than a gift that may be withdrawn, through stabilisation against political change or some other means. These difficulties render UBI-first approaches doubtful at best, and an unhelpful distraction from other, more fruitful strategies at worst. (shrink)

Advocates of gentrification regard it as a strategy of urban rehabilitation. Critics see in it the displacement of people from old neighborhoods, the polarizing of communities and both the expression and exacerbation of existing inequalities. Within political theory, assessments of gentrification have engaged primarily in evaluating gentrification’s benefits (rehabilitation) and burdens (displacements). In this paper, I argue gentrification is best understood as a relationship of domination between, on the one hand, the producers and consumers of gentrification, connected to one (...) another by a state-administered legislative apparatus that both commodifies land and makes it available as a consumable product, and on the other, all those individuals who are outside of that relationship, but who must nevertheless live in the shadows it casts. Focusing on how the boons of rehabilitated urban space can be weighed against the burdens assumed by displaced people is thus beside the point: domination is baked into gentrification as a strategy of capitalist urban development and should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

Payoff dominance, a criterion for choosing between equilibrium points in games, is intuitively compelling, especially in matching games and other games of common interests, but it has not been justified from standard game-theoretic rationality assumptions. A psychological explanation of it is offered in terms of a form of reasoning that we call the Stackelberg heuristic in which players assume that their strategic thinking will be anticipated by their co-player(s). Two-person games are called Stackelberg-soluble if the players' strategies that maximize against (...) their co-players' best replies intersect in a Nash equilibrium. Proofs are given that every game of common interests is Stackelberg-soluble, that a Stackelberg solution is always a payoff-dominant outcome, and that in every game with multiple Nash equilibria a Stackelberg solution is a payoff-dominant equilibrium point. It is argued that the Stackelberg heuristic may be justified by evidentialist reasoning. (shrink)

Cooperation in the prisoner’s dilemma is possible if interactions are sufficiently correlated. We show that when conditions favorable to the evolution of cooperation hold (rb > c) tag-based strategies dominate. Thus, well-meaning interventions aimed at promoting cooperation may succeed but will often lead to in-group favoritism and ethnocentric behavior. Exploring ways that promote cooperation but do not usher in tag-based strategies should be a focal point of future work on the evolution of cooperation.