In this paper, I will argue that it is a moral obligation for companies, firstly, to accept their moral responsibility with respect to non-discrimination, and secondly, to address the issue with a full-fledged programme, including but not limited to the countering of microsocial discrimination processes through specific policies. On the basis of a broad sketch of how some discrimination mechanisms are actually influencing decisions, that is, causing intended as well as unintended bias in Human Resources Management (HRM), (...) I will argue that the well known tools of legislation and ethical codes are necessary although insufficient to cope with the problem. However, based on empirical evidence, we know which set of measures is likely to diminish discrimination. Taking non-discrimination seriously implies complex and longitudinal policies which include assigning responsibility for a non-discrimination policy within the firm, making managers conscious of implicit stereotypes and helping them to cope with prejudices that no one can totally overcome. Insofar as corporate responsibility with respect to non-discrimination is accepted and strategies that are not prohibitively expensive are known, companies are bound to implement them. Not implementing the best set of measures may be considered at least as a moral shortcoming or, depending on the size of the company, mere lip service to the non-discrimination principle. Although the paper refers to empirical material of diverse backgrounds, its intent is clearly normative. It wishes to spell out what companies ought to do if they are committed to responsible behaviour. The discussion of effective remedies against discrimination is based on a case study of a French company. The retailer Auchan was recently surprised to learn that it was discriminating against ethnic minorities despite strong ethical standards, an ethics committee and ethical leadership. The company dropped its naïve beliefs and set up an ambitious policy cope with the issue. The case illustrates what recent empirical research has revealed about the effectiveness of diversity policies: establishing responsibility for diversity results, firm ethical commitment and support from top management make diversity programs effective. (shrink)

The non-discrimination principle is one of the essential principles in the area of European public and private law too. The importance of this principle also takes a great place in field of company law, especially in the area of “freedom of establishment of the companies” in the European Single Market. Freedom of establishment of companies is closely related to the general concept of “free movement of people, capital, goods and services,” in ESM. In fact, freedom of establishment is a (...) substantive part of the process of creation the internal market in EU. The freedom of establishment is based on the Treaty of the functioning of EU. According to article 49 from TFEU, restrictions on the freedom of establishment of nationals of a Member State in the territory of another Member State shall be prohibited. This prohibition also applies to restrictions on setting-up of agencies, branches or subsidiaries by nationals of any Member State established in the territory of any Member State. In-depth exploration of this issue is conditioned by the interpretation of the Court of justice of European Union, which embodies the real legal regime of freedom of establishment. Freedom of establishment of companies is closely related to the principles of healthy and fair competition and equal access of the companies too. This article seeks to elaborate fundamental theoretical aspects of this issue, considering certain case - study analyze of CJEU judgements. The main focus is on the non-discrimination principle, legal effects of the CJEU judgments, free market and competitiveness, and finally, determination of the concept of primary and secondary establishment of companies in EU. (shrink)

For several decades, the international community has criticized Turkey for failing to uphold the human rights and freedoms of its citizens and for not realizing the principles of non-discrimination and equality within its borders. As Turkey’s European Union candidacy proceeds, religious groups such as the Alevis claim to face discrimination and violations of their human rights and freedoms by the Turkish state. The Justice and Development Party debated the Alevis’ problems and structured the Alevi Initiative, which conducted relevant (...) workshops and discussions. Alevi arguments regarding their places of worship and the state’s religious education policy were identified as their main challenges. Alevis argued that the state’s policies on religious education and places of worship discriminated against them and violated their human rights. Through several human rights law cases before domestic and international tribunals, Alevis requested fulfillment, protection, and assurance of their human rights and freedoms. Several court decisions agreed that Alevis’ human rights and freedoms were being violated. However, the challenges and demands of Alevis still persist, as they contend that they have not succeeded in gaining the human rights and freedoms as required in contemporary Turkey under the JDP government. (shrink)

In this introduction, the author briefly presents the way in which Clayton, Segall and Lippert-Rasmussen deal with what egalitarianism has to say about non-discrimination in hiring. Parallels and differences between their approaches are stressed.

The Cameron government has recently negotiated a deal with the EU which permits the UK to restrict access to in-work benefits for recent EU migrants in the first four years of residence. Withdrawing access to in-work benefits will lead to significant inequalities in pay between British workers and their EU equivalents working at the same job, in the same general situation. The proposal has been widely decried as discriminatory. Is it? I do not, in this article, ask the legal question: (...) Does it violate anti-discrimination norms implicit in the treaties? Rather, I will ask the moral question underlying the legal one: Would, say, Polish citizens denied in-work benefits that British citizens receive be victims of wrongful discrimination? This question deserves consideration not simply because it will help us to evaluate some of the central concerns at stake in the Brexit debates but also because it will allow us to explore the role of norms against discrimination according to nationality within the EU, to address the nature of the European commitment to freedom of movement, and, in the reverse direction, to better understand our own moral commitment to anti-discrimination norms. (shrink)

Le présent article revient sur la polémique qui anime les sphères politiques européenne et française depuis les années 1990 autour de la suppression du mot « race » des textes normatifs. Au-delà des enjeux idéologiques que ce débat cristallise, il propose d’élargir la perspective d’analyse à un phénomène plus englobant : la confrontation d’ordres juridiques hétérogènes engagés dans des processus intégratifs : « le droit français et le droit communautaire diffèrent dans leur démarche en matière de lutte contre les discriminations (...) ». Si le droit français « dit » la race, il lui nie une existence normative. A l’inverse, le droit de l’Union en fait un critère distinctif susceptible d’activer des dispositions juridiques liées au principe de non-discrimination. Ce changement de paradigme conduit le juge interne à modifier son approche traditionnelle des droits de l’Homme fondée sur le principe d’égalité. Les décisions du juge et du rapporteur public portent les traces d’aménagements dénominatifs lorsqu’il raisonne dans le cadre d’une approche plus relativiste, légitimant la différence de traitement. (shrink)

Social Justice is a concept familiar to most Indians but one whose meaning is not always understood as it signifies a variety of government strategies designed to enhance opportunities for underprivileged groups. By tracing the trajectory of social justice from the colonial period to the present, this book examines how it informs ideas, practices and debates on discrimination and disadvantage today. After outlining the historical context for reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes that began under British colonial rule, (...) the book examines the legal and moral strands of demands raised by newer groups since 1990. In addition the book shows how the development of quota policies has been significantly influenced by the nature and operation of democracy in India. It describes the recent proliferation of quota demands for reservations in higher education, private sector and for women and religious minorities in legislative assemblies. The book goes on to argue that while proliferation of demands address unequal incidence of poverty, deprivation and inequalities across social groups and communities, care has to be taken to ensure that existing justifications for quotas for discriminated groups due to caste hierarchies are not undermined. Providing a rich historical background to the subject, the book is a useful contribution to the study on the evolution of multiple conceptions of social justice in contemporary India. (shrink)

The text examines the article 11 of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights of UNESCO that deals with the principle of non-discrimination and non-stigmatization. Both concepts are related to the theme of human dignity, while discrimination is an inherent part of stigma: stigma does not exist if there is no discrimination. In this context, this paper aims to study the relationship between stigma, discrimination and HIV / AIDS. The study argues that to loosen the (...) bonds that hold the subjects that are attached to them is necessary questioning the broader forces - social, cultural, political and economic - that structure stigma, stigmatization and discrimination as social processes directly linked to production and reproduction of structural inequalities. (shrink)

Analysing two reproductive rights claims brought before the High Court of Namibia and the European Court of Human Rights, this article argues that human dignity is not reducible to a recognized warrant to demand a particular set of goods, services, or treatments. Rather, dignity in the contexts in which women experience sterilization abuse would be better characterized as an existential protest against degradation, a protest that takes concrete form in legal demands for equal citizenship. Equality is conceived here as necessitating (...) the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women in public and private life. The dignity as non-discrimination framework developed in the article thus integrates two of the leading interpretations of dignity in contemporary political philosophy – the existentialist approach that attends to the inward cry against degradation and the view of dignity as the equal, public status of democratic citizenship. (shrink)

Conflicting social expectations in a particular state affect the interpretation and implementation of international human rights law. Ideological, religious, and legal factors related to the protection of freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in Ukraine put businesses under social pressure. Businesses thus face a legitimate dilemma whether to follow national social expectations perceiving FoRB and freedom from discrimination based on SOGI as rights in conflict or expectations (...) arising from international human rights law establishing both freedoms as equal and non-clashing. Based on desk research and in-depth interviews with business policymakers the article identifies neutrality, ignoring, and active engagement strategies when providing corporate respect to FoRB and SOGI under the business and human rights framework ‘Protect, Respect, Remedy’ which requires responsible business conduct. The article concludes with the implications each strategy has for resolving presumed clashes between FoRB and SOGI at the community level. (shrink)

The concept of non-discrimination has been central in the feminist challenge to gendered violence within international human rights law. This article critically explores non-discrimination and the challenge it seeks to pose to gendered violence through the work of Judith Butler. Drawing upon Butler’s critique of heteronormative sex/gender, the article utilises an understanding of gendered violence as effected by the restrictive scripts of sex/gender within heteronormativity to illustrate how the development of non-discrimination within international human rights law renders (...) it ineffective to challenge gendered violence due to its own commitments to binarised and asymmetrical sex/gender. However, the article also seeks to encourage a reworking of non-discrimination beyond the heteronormative sex binary through employing Butler’s concept of cultural translation. Analysis via the lens of cultural translation reveals the fluidity of non-discrimination as a universal concept and offers new possibilities for feminist engagement with universal human rights. (shrink)

People with cognitive impairments often have difficulties formulating, understanding, or articulating decisions that others judge reasonable. The frequent response shifts decision-making authority to substitutes through advance directives of the person or guardianship orders from a court. The Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities defends supported decision-making as an alternative to such forms of supplanted decision-making. But supported decision-making raises both metaphysical questions—what is required for a decision to be the person’s own?—and epistemological questions: how do we know what (...) persons judge to be their good, when they have difficulty conceptualizing and articulating? It raises practical questions, too, such as protection against risks of exploitation. This article uses a non-discrimination account of legal personhood drawn from the CRPD to explore how common features of decisions employed by people without cognitive disabilities are important in supported decision-making too. These features include prostheses, guardrails, relationships, and social contexts. (shrink)

The World Bank estimates that over one billion people currently lack official identity documents. To tackle this crucial issue, the United Nations included the aim to provide legal identity for all by 2030 among the Sustainable Development Goals. Technology can be a powerful tool to reach this target. In the digital age, new technologies increasingly mediate identity verification and identification of individuals. Currently, State-led and public–private initiatives use technology to provide official identification, to control and secure external borders, and to (...) distribute humanitarian aid to populations in need. All of these initiatives have profound implications for the protection of human rights of those affected by them. Digital identity technologies may render individuals without legal documentation more visible and therefore less vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. However, they also present risks for the protection of individuals' human rights. As they build on personal data for identification and identity verification, data protection and privacy rights are most clearly affected. The prohibition of discrimination in the digital space is also of concern as these technological advances' societal impact is not yet fully understood. Accordingly, the article argues that emerging digital identity platforms will only contribute to the protection of human rights if the providers adequately mitigate any risks of potential discrimination and promote high standards of privacy and data protection. (shrink)

Deciding the conflict between various rights and interests, especially in medical ethics where health and lives are in question, has significant challenges, and to obtain appropriate outcomes, it is necessary to properly apply the principles of non-discrimination and proportionality. Using the example of mandatory vaccination policies, we show that this task becomes even more difficult when these principles lead us to counterintuitive and paradoxical results. Although the general purpose of these principles is to ensure that decisions and policies seek (...) the highest and broadest possible enjoyment of rights for all (ie, the least restrictive solution), they achieve the complete opposite when applied to mandatory vaccination policies. To highlight and explain these paradoxical results, we present a typology of fifteen hypothetical mandatory vaccination policies containing various degrees of restriction and apply well-established non-discrimination and proportionality tests from constitutional law to each. We argue that mandatory vaccination policies exhibit two characteristics, namely the non-linear relationship between their general purposes and specific goals and the involvement of life and health, suggesting that more restrictive policies should prevail even though less restrictive policies might fail these tests. Using clearly structured and rigorous methodology from constitutional law, the proposed approach delivers a fresh view on the core ethical principles of non-discrimination and proportionality and a potentially useful tool in helping resolve also other challenges encountered in medical ethics beyond mandatory vaccination policies. (shrink)

Normative debates on migration control, while characterised by profound disagreement, do appear to agree that the state has at least a prima facie right to prevent the entry of security threats. While concern is sometimes raised that this ‘security exception’ can be abused, there has been little focus by normative theorists on concrete practices of security, and how we can determine what a ‘principled’ use of the security exception would be. I argue that even if states have a right to (...) prevent migrants from entering on grounds of security, the practices required to implement this right will likely compromise core liberal democratic values in ways that have not been sufficiently appreciated. I draw on literature from Science and Technology Studies and Critical Security Studies to examine the proliferation of digital border control technologies which are increasingly dominating state security practices, and explain the challenges these technologies pose to non-discrimination, liberty and equality. I also highlight the difficulties of taking these principles as presumptive limitations on the operation of the security exception. A more sustained conversation among ethical theorists is needed to address the profound ethical challenges that the ever-increasing use of these technologies poses, particularly in pursuit of security. (shrink)

Discrimination in the postmodern society can have many different causes and can affect people of different racial, ethnic, national or social backgrounds, such as communities of Asian or African descent, Roma people, indigenous peoples, Aboriginal people and people of different castes. Discrimination can also refer to people of different cultural, linguistic or religious backgrounds, people with disabilities or the elderly. Moreover, people can be discriminated because of their sexual orientation or preferences. Gender-based discrimination is also common, despite (...) progress in many countries. Women are also particularly prone to violent and abusive practices, and therefore often suffer from a double discrimination, both because of their race or origin and because of their gender, which is why feminist literature in recent years points to new acts or forms of discrimination against women. A major problem in the postmodern world is the discrimination that many people are subjected to, especially women and children, because they live in extreme poverty. These circumstances may force them to migrate and further contribute to a conceptual or social contamination, that may aggravate discriminatory tendencies in the societies where they migrate. The article aims to theoretically analyse the degree of functionality that the principle of non-discrimination based on gender, race, religion and sexual orientation has in the contemporary, postmodern, individualistic society. (shrink)

In this commentary, we critically review the Quebec Court of Appeal’s reference decision to the effect that the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act is unconstitutional. In sum, the court held that the federal government exceeded its criminal law power through the GNDA, as the Act did not have a valid criminal law purpose. The decision was met with opposition, as advocacy groups for Canadians suffering from genetic diseases or genetic predispositions viewed the GNDA as a step in the right direction and (...) were hopeful that it would offer protection from genetic discrimination. In closing, we argue that the consequences of the Court of Appeal’s opinion will be less dire than anticipated by some advocacy groups. In fact, we suggest that this decision brings about a unique opportunity for progress, where stakeholders can engage the public and policymakers in a forward- looking debate on the use of genetic information. (shrink)

Monitoring health is one of the basic principles of Occupational Health and Safety. The main objective of this monitoring will be the detection of possible damage to health arising from work. They try to discover the effects that the inherent risks with the work may cause the worker, which will show, given the case, through an alteration of health or the state of organic and functional state, both physically and mentally. Regarding the monitoring of health, there are many and varied (...) issues to be raised concerning the right to personal privacy. Thus, notably, whether there was effective consensus, and whether, in particular, the object and the purpose of the medical examination meant a disregard of the statutory scheme, an excess or even a failure to comply with the terms of the Spanish Constitution. The limits imposed by the law makers to the productive unit will play a key role in identifying the content of the company obligation to monitor health, being in many cases guarantees of constitutional rights. Therefore, the methods of health monitoring and control of workers will always be carried out respecting the privacy and dignity of the worker as well as the confidentiality of all information related to their health. (shrink)

The most well-known goal of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is still to determine whether or not a fetus has trisomy 21. Since women often terminate the pregnancy upon a positive result, there is concern that the use of NIPT contributes to discrimination against persons with disabilities. If this concern is justified, it could have an impact on the wider social acceptability of existing testing practices and their potential further expansion. This paper demonstrates four different versions of the discrimination (...) worry, indicates how international policy papers have reacted to them, and identifies the ethically most relevant feature of the concern. (shrink)

Heloise Robinson argues that pregnant women have a higher moral status than non-pregnant persons and that, for this reason, pregnant women ought to be treated ‘noticeably’ better than non-pregnant persons.1 In this commentary, we present two challenges to Robinson’s argument. First, the compounding disadvantage objection: treating involuntarily, non-pregnant women worse than voluntarily pregnant women unjustly compounds their disadvantage. Second, the identity objection: treating non-pregnant people worse than pregnant people amounts to pro tanto wrongful discrimination based on a fundamental aspect (...) of people’s identity. We conclude that either pregnant persons do not have a higher moral status than non-pregnant persons, or they do, but higher moral status so grounded does not justify better treatment. According to the standard view of moral status: (1) most human beings are persons; (2) persons have a higher moral status than non-persons; and (3) persons have an equal moral status. Many believe: (1) is true because most human beings have a sufficiently high level of personhood-generating psychological capacities; (2) is true because moral status is tied to personhood; and (3) is true because variations in the level of personhood-generating psychological capacities do not matter to an individual’s moral status once that individual’s level surpasses the threshold required for personhood.2 (3) is significant …. (shrink)

One popular criticism of affirmative action is that it discriminates against those who would otherwise have been offered jobs without it. This objection must rely on the non- consequentialist distinction between what we do and what we merely allow to claim that doing nothing merely allows people to be harmed by the discrimination of others, while preferential programs actively harm those left out. It fails since the present effects of past discrimination result from social arrangements which result from (...) actions of ours. We can be responsible for the effects of past discrimination, even without having discriminated, if we are responsible for that discrimination having those effects. (shrink)

Anti‐discrimination laws draw a distinction between two kinds of discrimination by non‐state actors. Intimate choices are protected even if they are morally wrong. For example, even if it is morally wrong to discriminate on the basis of race in deciding whom to date, marry or befriend, anti‐discrimination laws permit these acts. By contrast, commercial decisions are commonly regulated. I argue that the reasons for regulating commercial decisions also extend to an intermediate case, commercial facilitators of marriage choices. (...) In the context of the caste system, I argue that commercial facilitators should be banned from allowing customers to filter by caste. The argument is based on two considerations. First, this could mitigate the harmful effects of such discriminatory marriages choices in the (re)production of the oppressive caste system. Second, even if the ban fails in changing behaviour, it serves as an expressive goal of communicating the state's opposition to the caste system. (shrink)

A wide array of species throughout the animal kingdom has shown the ability to distinguish between quantities. Aside from being important for optimal foraging decisions, this ability seems to also be of great relevance in group-living animals as it allows them to inform their decisions regarding engagement in between-group conflicts based on the size of competing groups. However, it is often unclear whether these animals rely on numerical information alone to make these decisions or whether they employ other cues that (...) may covary with the differences in quantity. In this study we used a touch screen paradigm to investigate the quantity discrimination abilities of two closely related group-living species, wolves and dogs, using a simultaneous visual presentation paradigm. Both species were able to successfully distinguish between stimuli of different quantities up to 32 items and ratios up to 0.80, and their results were in accordance with Weber's law (which predicts worse performances at higher ratios). However, our controls showed that both wolves and dogs may have used continuous, non-numerical cues, such as size and shape of the stimuli, in conjunction with the numerical information to solve this task. In line with this possibility, dogs' performance greatly exceeded that which they had shown in other numerical competence paradigms. We discuss the implications these results may have on these species' underlying biases and numerical capabilities, as well as how our paradigm may have affected the animals' ability to solve the task. (shrink)

The increasing implementation of and reliance on machine-learning (ML) algorithms to perform tasks, deliver services and make decisions in health and healthcare have made the need for fairness in ML, and more specifically in healthcare ML algorithms (HMLA), a very important and urgent task. However, while the debate on fairness in the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) and in HMLA has grown significantly over the last decade, the very concept of fairness as an ethical value has not yet been sufficiently (...) explored. Our paper aims to fill this gap and address the AI ethics principle of fairness from a conceptual standpoint, drawing insights from accounts of fairness elaborated in moral philosophy and using them to conceptualise fairness as an ethical value and to redefine fairness in HMLA accordingly. To achieve our goal, following a first section aimed at clarifying the background, methodology and structure of the paper, in the second section, we provide an overview of the discussion of the AI ethics principle of fairness in HMLA and show that the concept of fairness underlying this debate is framed in purely distributive terms and overlaps with non-discrimination, which is defined in turn as the absence of biases. After showing that this framing is inadequate, in the third section, we pursue an ethical inquiry into the concept of fairness and argue that fairness ought to be conceived of as an ethical value. Following a clarification of the relationship between fairness and non-discrimination, we show that the two do not overlap and that fairness requires much more than just non-discrimination. Moreover, we highlight that fairness not only has a distributive but also a socio-relational dimension. Finally, we pinpoint the constitutive components of fairness. In doing so, we base our arguments on a renewed reflection on the concept of respect, which goes beyond the idea of equal respect to include respect for individual persons. In the fourth section, we analyse the implications of our conceptual redefinition of fairness as an ethical value in the discussion of fairness in HMLA. Here, we claim that fairness requires more than non-discrimination and the absence of biases as well as more than just distribution; it needs to ensure that HMLA respects persons both as persons and as particular individuals. Finally, in the fifth section, we sketch some broader implications and show how our inquiry can contribute to making HMLA and, more generally, AI promote the social good and a fairer society. (shrink)

To claim that companies should not discriminate on the basis of race, gender or religion seems almost as trivial as stating that they should not use forced labor or dump radioactive waste into the local river. Among other things, non-discrimination seems to imply that companies recognize and respect a range of religious preferences, including allowing religious clothing, e.g., by allowing Muslim women to wear headscarves. However, many companies do not believe that employees generally should be allowed to wear the (...) kind of clothes they please. In this paper, we discuss the asymmetry between the status of religious and secular clothing. We conclude that religious exemptions to dress codes can discriminate wrongfully. To solve this problem, companies should not ban religious clothing. Instead, companies should liberalize their dress codes, so that employees would be allowed to wear secular and religious types of clothing on an equal footing. (shrink)

Here, we provide an ethical analysis of discrimination in private insurance to guide the application of non-discriminatory algorithms for risk prediction in the insurance context. This addresses the need for ethical guidance of data-science experts, business managers, and regulators, proposing a framework of moral reasoning behind the choice of fairness goals for prediction-based decisions in the insurance domain. The reference to private insurance as a business practice is essential in our approach, because the consequences of discrimination and predictive (...) inaccuracy in underwriting are different from those of using predictive algorithms in other sectors. Here we focus on the trade-off in the extent to which one can pursue indirect non-discrimination versus predictive accuracy. The moral assessment of this trade-off is related to the context of application—to the consequences of inaccurate risk predictions in the insurance domain. (shrink)

Discrimination against particular groups has existed throughout history and in all types of societies. Few would challenge the idea that inequality of income based on discrimination is unjust. The more problematic issues are the extent to which discrimination is in fact a significant source of inequality and whether such discrimination-based inequality is inherent in a capitalist system. There is little doubt that discrimination can affect a group's income. But the link is by no means automatic (...) or certain. Thus, the incomes of blacks, particularly in past decades, seem surely to have been lowered by discrimination. Yet other examples are less clear. Jewish and Japanese Americans, for instance, have had incomes substantially above those of white non-Jewish groups, despite evidence of discrimination against them. (shrink)

Biological self reference idioms in brain-centered or nervous-system-centered self determination of the consious Self reveal an interesting contrast with biological self-determination by immunological self/non-self discrimination. This contrast is both biological and epistemological. In contrast to the consciousness conscious of itself, the immunological self-determination imposes a protective mechanism against self-recognition (Coutinho et al. 1984), which adds to a largely unconscious achievement of the biological Self (Popper 1977; Medawar 1959). The latter viewpoint is in contrast with the immunological Self-determination as an (...) essentially cognitive process as expressed in the analysis of Tauber (1994). Comparison of the immune system in vertebrates and invertebrates, according to new biological insights, has contributed to a better understanding of the relative role of innate (or inherited) immunity versus immunity acquired during each individual life. Also in this respect, immunological self-achievement shows both a striking analogy and a fundamental discrepancy with the activity of the nervous system. The analysis of immunological Self/non-self discrimination versus brain-centered self-determination adds to the understanding of the function paradigm in biological self-reference idioms, especially when regarding the importance of the connectivity notion in both systems. Adopting functional explanatory schemes for understanding immunological self-non-self discrimination, as well as for the understanding of functional mapping of the brain at (conscious) activity (Friston et al. 1993; Frith et al. 1995), forwards the notion of effective/functional connectivity. Network connectivity not only is a primary question in solving the dimensionality question for immunological ‘idiotypic networks’ (Jerne 1974a, b; 1984), it may also have an important value in describing phase transitions in the development of both immune and nervous systems. (shrink)

It is generally accepted that morally justified healthcare rationing must be non-discriminatory and cost-effective. However, given conventional concepts of cost-effectiveness, resources spent on disabled people are spent less cost-effectively, ceteris paribus, than resources spent on non-disabled people. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that standard cost-effectiveness discriminates against the disabled. Call this thedisability discrimination problem.Part of the disability discrimination involved in cost-effectiveness stems from the way in which health-related quality of life is accounted for and measured. This paper (...) offers and defends a patient-sensitive account of health-related quality of life, which can effectively make cost-effectiveness less discriminatory against the disabled and thus more morally justified. (shrink)

The science and technology of genetic testing is rapidly advancing with the consequences that genetic testing may well offer the prospect of being able to detect the onset of future disabilities. Some recent research also indicates that certain behavioural profiles may have a strong genetic basis, such as the determination to succeed and win or the propensity for risk-taking, which may be of interest to third parties. However, as this technology becomes more prevalent there is a danger that the genetic (...) information may be misused by entities such as employers, insurance companies, educational facilities, and finance companies and that people with particular genetic profiles may be discriminated against.This book explores the different types and the potential uses of genetic testing. The book highlights the ethical and legal dilemmas and the challenges arising as a result of emerging and rapidly advancing genetic science. Chapters in the book assess the importance and impact of the US Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act (GINA) in the employment and health insurance contexts asking whether it is proving to be an effective tool in addressing the issue of genetic discrimination and alleviating individuals' fears of discrimination. The book then goes on to make the case for regulation at the European Union level in order to protect the privacy of genetic information and to prevent the discriminatory use of genetic information in Europe. It considers what can be learnt from the experience of the US in addressing ethical and legal issues as well as the impact that the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is having on this debate within the EU. (shrink)

Most contemporary conflicts can be characterized as ‘wars or conflicts amongst the people’. International military forces deployed in such conflicts are confronted with complex operational environments where the distinction between combatants and non-combatants is often impossible to make. At the same time, there is a moral requirement imposed on Western coalition forces to perform in a humane manner and to keep casualties to a minimum. Non-lethal weapons are expected to enable military forces to accomplish their mission without having to kill (...) or destroy. The extent to which these weapons meet that promise in real world conditions is the subject of debate. A defence technology assessment of non-lethal weapons is proposed that validates their utility and moral implications by considering the user, the weapon and the target in the context of the deployment situation. It will be illustrated that the technical parameters of the non-lethal weapons are no guarantee that the weapons will perform as intended as the user and target introduce many factors of uncertainty in real world situations. Although such uncertainties undermine the moral acceptability of non-lethal weapons, it is argued that the principle of non-lethality is compliant with the Just War Tradition principle of proportionality. The principles of non-combatant immunity and discrimination need to be re-calibrated given the human-centricity of many military intervention operations. (shrink)

The article analyses the concept of indirect discrimination, arguing first that existing conceptualisations are unsatisfactory and second that it is best understood as equal treatment that is disadvantageous to the discriminatees because of their group-membership. I explore four ways of further refining the definition, arguing that only an added condition of moral wrongness is at once plausible and helpful, but that it entails a number of new problems that may outweigh its benefits. Finally, I suggest that the moral wrongness (...) of indirect discrimination is best accounted for in terms of the harm it does to discriminatees, and sketch three ways in which it may do so. I conclude that the analysis provides both a clearer understanding of the concept of indirect discrimination as well as indirect support for a harm-based account of the wrongness of discrimination, while suggesting that our moral obligations qua non-discrimination may be more extensive than is frequently assumed. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the relations between trust, agency and latent forms of discrimination. Its main argument is in social philosophy, and it articulates considerations from moral psychology and the philosophy of language. The aim is to provide a better insight into the deflated level of trustworthiness that members of stigmatized categories are credited with. Identity prejudice determining low levels of credibility for its victims has received substantial philosophical attention in the wake of the epistemic injustice literature. Instead (...) of the standard cognitive concept of trust usually brought in, I apply a moral (or agential) account of trust (drawing on Domenicucci and Holton 2017) to discriminatory issues. We can fail to trust the trustworthy (Jones 2013) in a variety of ways. When it comes to the members of discriminated categories, I argue in the first part, this happens because they are refused a necessary condition of trust: a presumption of agency. This presumption of agency, prima facie attributed to human adults, is precisely what goes wrong for the members of stigmatized groups. Not recognised as individual agents, but as mere quasi-agents, the discriminatees cannot be trusted: their trustworthiness actually becomes unthinkable. The very possibility to give reasons for or against out-group members’ trustworthiness is thus dismissed. Articulating documentality and feminist philosophy of language, the second part shows that members of stigmatized categories have their conduct described and recorded through a non-agential grammar. Once widespread and socially dominant, non-agential descriptions of their action give the discriminatees a peculiar moral status that jeopardizes the very possibility of their being recognised as trustworthy. (shrink)

A discriminator logic is the 1 -assertional logic of a discriminator variety V having two constant terms 0 and 1 such that V ⊨ 0 1 iff every member of V is trivial. Examples of such logics abound in the literature. The main result of this research announcement asserts that a certain non-Fregean deductive system SBPC, which closely resembles the classical propositional calculus, is canonical for the class of discriminator logics in the sense that any discriminator logic S can be (...) presented as an axiomatic extension of SBPC by a set of extensional logical connectives taken from the language of S. The results outlined in this research announcement are extended to several generalisations of the class of discriminator logics in the main work. (shrink)

Our understanding of the decisions made under scenarios where both descriptive and experience-based information are available is very limited. Underweighting of small probabilities was observed in the gain domain when both description and experience were provided. The divergence observed from the prospect theory suggests a need for a separate or modified theory of decision making under risk. Recent studies suggest a possible role of probability weighting in the choice behaviour under risk. We investigated both gain and loss domains with and (...) without feedback for small and large probability conditions. We characterized the shape of the probability weighting function by a two-parameter functional form representing discriminability (concave-convex shape) and attractiveness (level of absolute weights relative to objective probability). We replicated four-fold pattern of risk attitude on non-WEIRD population. We find that feedback leads to underweighting of small probabilities and overweighting of large probabilities in the gain domain and overall underweighting of probabilities in the loss domain. We find that underweighting of small probabilities is driven by changes in discriminability and attractiveness components in the gain domain and changes in the attractiveness component in the loss domain. We have interpreted the results by proposing an updated belief-based account of decisions under uncertainty in which feedback, when available, influences the probability weighting mediating the choice behaviour. (shrink)