Ever since the Harsanyi-Sen debate, it is controversial whether someone's welfare should be measured by her von-Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) utility, for instance when analysing welfare intensity, social welfare, interpersonal welfare comparisons, or welfare inequality. We prove that natural working hypotheses lead to a different welfare measure. It addresses familiar concerns about VNM utility, by faithfully capturing non-ordinal welfare features such as welfare intensity, despite resting on purely ordinal evidence such as revealed preferences or self-reported welfare comparisons. Using this (...) welfare measure instead of VNM utility alters social welfare analysis -- for instance, Harsanyi's `utilitarian theorem' now effectively supports prioritarianism. VNM utility is shown to be a hybrid object, determined by an interplay of two factors: welfare and attitude to intrinsic risk, i.e., to risk in welfare rather than outcomes. (shrink)

We examine the link between the growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility at the organizational level and beliefs about social responsibility at work (SRW) expressed by individuals. Drawing from theories of professionalism and diffusion of innovations (including practices and beliefs), we advance hypotheses about beliefs of managers and non-managers in 11 countries at two time periods, and use a unique international data set to test our hypotheses. Our general prediction that managers would score higher than non-managers on a measure (...) of SRW was not supported. However, further analysis revealed a more complex relationship moderated by the contextual factors of time frame and country inequality level. We discuss implications and extensions for future research. (shrink)

Any inquiry into the meaning and implications of the prolongation of the human lifespan requires an investigation of its metaphysical basis and its ethical outcomes. This chapter explains a series of metaphysical and ethical claims about lifespan extension. It highlights a number of arguments that are typically put forward against these claims, and shows the ways in which they are mistaken. Two such claims given in the chapter are: (1) aging and life stages are neither wholly constituted by biological givens, (...) nor wholly understandable in terms of biological parameters; instead, aging and life stages are, in crucial ways, socially constructed; and (2) death is bad, and other things being equal, a longer life is a better life. (shrink)

Discovering high-utility itemsets (HUIs) consists of finding sets of items that yield a high profit in customer transaction databases. An important limitation of traditional high-utility itemset mining (HUIM) is that only the utility measure is used for assessing the interestingness of patterns. This leads to finding several itemsets that have a high profit but contain items that are weakly correlated. To address this issue, this paper proposes to integrate the concept of correlation in HUIM to find (...) profitable itemsets that are highly correlated, using the all-confidence and bond measures. An efficient algorithm named FCHM (fast correlated high-utility itemset miner) is proposed to efficiently discover correlated high-utility itemsets (CHIs). Two versions of the algorithm are proposed: FCHM|$_{all\text{-}confidence}$| and FCHM|$_{bond}$|⁠, which are based on the all-confidence and bond measures, respectively. An experimental evaluation was done using four real-life benchmark datasets from the HUIM literature: mushroom, retail, kosarak and foodmart. Results show that FCHM is efficient and can prune a huge amount of weakly CHIs. (shrink)

As this article is published, Robert Larmer and I have been engaged in a debate that is now eighteen years long, often with gaps of many years between ripostes, about the nature and significance of miracles. The Larmer/overall oeuvre now includes six works, including the two published here. I am grateful to the editors of Dialogue for giving me the opportunity to respond to Larmer’s most recent entry in the debate.

When Amartya Sen defends his capability theory of well-being he contrasts it with the utility theory advocated by the classical utilitarians, including John Stuart Mill. Yet a closer examination of the two theories reveals that they are much more similar than they appear. Each theory can be interpreted in either a subjective or an objective way. When both are interpreted subjectively the differences between them are slight, and likewise for the objective interpretations. Finally, whatever differences may remain are less (...) important than they might seem, since the two theories are developed by Sen and Mill for different purposes and are in that sense not genuine rivals. (shrink)

A TRADITIONAL VIEW OF UTILITY AND RIGHTS According to a conventional view, no project could be more hopelessly misconceived than the enterprise of attempting a utilitarian derivation of fundamental rights. We are all familiar – too familiar, perhaps – with the arguments that support this conventional view, but let us review them anyway. We may begin by recalling that, whereas the defining value of utilitarianism – pleasure, happiness or welfare – contains no mention of the dignity or autonomy of (...) human beings, it is this value which utilitarianism in all its standard forms invokes as the criterion of right action. Worse, insofar as utilitarian policy must have as its goal the maximization of welfare conceived as an aggregate summed over the utilities of everyone affected, legal and political utilitarianism seems bound to have a collectivist bias, trading on the dangerous fiction of a social entity and ignoring the distinctness of separate selves with their several incommensurable claims. It seems that, if individuals can appear in the utilitarian calculus at all, it will only be as ciphers, abstract place-holders for units of welfare. For, as an aggregative value, utility must be indifferent to distribution, and insensitive to the preeminently distributive considerations marked by claims about rights. So, if whatever has utility can be broken down into units or elements which are subject to measurement or at least comparison by a common standard, then it will always be possible that a very great loss of welfare for one man or a few men can be justified if it produces a great many small increments of welfare for a vast multitude of men. (shrink)

We consider future cash flows that are contingent both on dates in time and on uncertain states. The decision maker (DM) values the cash flows according to its decision criterion: Here, the payoffs’ expectation with respect to a capacity measure. The subjective measure grasps the DM’s behaviour in front of the future, in the spirit of de Finetti’s (1930) and of Yaari’s (1987) Dual Theory in the case of risk. Decomposition of the criterion into two criteria that represent (...) the DM’s preferences on uncertain payoffs and time contingent payoffs are derived from Ghirardato’s (1997) results. Conditional Choquet integrals are defined by dynamic consistency (DC) requirements and conditional capacities are derived, under some conditions on information. In contrast with other models referring to DC, ours does not collapse into a linear one because it violates a weak version of consequentialism. (shrink)

Quantum entanglement is a key resource, which grants quantum systems the ability to accomplish tasks that are classically impossible. Here, we apply Feynman's sum-over-histories formalism to interacting bipartite quantum systems and introduce entanglement measures for bipartite quantum histories. Based on the Schmidt decomposition of the matrix comprised of the Feynman propagator complex coefficients, we prove that bipartite quantum histories are entangled if and only if the Schmidt rank of this matrix is larger than 1. The proposed approach highlights the (...) class='Hi'>utility of using a separable basis for constructing the bipartite quantum histories and allows for quantification of their entanglement from the complete set of experimentally measured sequential weak values. We then illustrate the nonclassical nature of entangled histories with the use of Hardy's overlapping interferometers and explain why local hidden variable theories are unable to correctly reproduce all observable quantum outcomes. Our theoretical results elucidate how the composite tensor product structure of multipartite quantum systems is naturally extended across time and clarify the difference between quantum histories viewed as projection operators in the history Hilbert space and those viewed as chain operators and propagators in the standard Hilbert space. (shrink)

In recent years, several authors have called to ground descriptive and normative decision theory on neuro-psychological measures of utility. In this paper, I combine insights from the best available neuro-psychological findings, leading philosophical conceptions of welfare and contemporary decision theory to rebut these prominent calls. I argue for two claims of general interest to philosophers, choice modellers and policy makers. First, severe conceptual, epistemic and evidential problems plague ongoing attempts to develop accurate and reliable neuro-psychological measures of utility. (...) And second, even if these problems are solved, neuro-psychological measures of utility lack the potential to inform welfare analyses and policy evaluations. (shrink)

People often judge it unacceptable to directly harm a person, even when this is necessary to produce an overall positive outcome, such as saving five other lives. We demonstrate that similar judgments arise when people consider damage to owned objects. In two experiments, participants considered dilemmas where saving five inanimate objects required destroying one. Participants judged this unacceptable when it required violating another’s ownership rights, but not otherwise. They also judged that sacrificing another’s object was less acceptable as a (...) means than as a side-effect; judgments did not depend on whether property damage involved personal force. These findings inform theories of moral decision-making. They show that utilitarian judgment can be decreased without physical harm to persons, and without personal force. The findings also show that the distinction between means and side-effects influences the acceptability of damaging objects, and that ownership impacts utilitarian moral judgment. (shrink)

Two distinct and perhaps mutually exclusive understandings of utilitarianism have emerged in the ethics literature. Utilitarianism is typically regarded as an approach to determine ethicality by focusing on whether or not actions produce the greater good, but has also been conceptualized as a set of traits to which individuals might be predisposed. This paper is designed to clarify the meaning and implications of such utilitarian traits as “results-oriented,” “innovative,” and “a winner.” Although the Janus-headed model of ethical theory from which (...) these traits emerged had been acknowledged by its developer as possibly misrepresenting typical views of utilitarianism, much research using these traits appears to have been conducted without clear recognition of this. If the conceptual foundation underpinning hypothesis development is disconnected from the measure used to test them, then little support for relevant predictions should emerge. A review of the literature which featured utilitarian traits generally confirmed this. This paper also explored the origins and emergence of these traits and suggested that existing evidence that these measure utilitarian ethical predispositions is not especially persuasive. Understanding what utilitarian traits do not assess is critical in order for knowledge about this potentially useful measure to advance. (shrink)

Little is known about people’s perceived benefits and risks of sports, despite their role in shaping people’s intentions to engage in them. Here, we developed and tested a scale to measure perceived physical, emotional, cognitive, and social benefits as well as aggression-related risks of karate and football. Additionally, we compared these perceptions within and between these two sports, as well as among undergraduates with current/former participation in different types of physical activity. After a literature review, we created a 5-factor (...) scale with 20 items administered to 184 undergraduates, along with questions about physical activity participation. After removing five items, confirmatory factor analyses supported the factor structure of the scale. Factor loadings and reliability indices were acceptable, though less than desirable results were found concerning the average variance extracted of all benefits dimensions and the reliability of the social benefits dimension. Analyses of variance showed that: physical benefits were seen as the salient outcomes of karate and football, though martial artists perceived karate’s physical, emotional, and social benefits to the same extent; in comparison to football, karate was perceived to bring more emotional and cognitive benefits and to entail less aggressiveness risks; karate and football perceptions varied as a function of participant’s involvement in physical activity. This study presents a promising instrument to gather information on people’s perceptions about karate and football, which can be used to foster people’s engagement in them. (shrink)

The common law's approach in the law of unjust enrichment is to enumerate specific «unjust factors» as permissible causes of action in claims for restitution. This approach has come under attack, inter alia, for being unnecessarily complicated. The claim is that the civilian approach, with its single ground of absence of legal cause for the transfer, is preferable since the operative unjust factor in any particular case is irrelevant to the restitutionary response. In defence of the common law's approach, (...) this article tenders four aspects of the restitutionary response which, it is claimed, are illuminated by reference to the nature, context, and effect of the operative unjust factor in any particular case. They are: (i) the availability of the defence of change of position; (ii) the justifiability of certain «bars» on rescission and the permissible mode of mutual restitution on rescission; (iii) the appropriate measure of enrichment where restitution is, or must be, effected in money; and (iv) two possible justifications for the controversial remedy of partial rescission. (shrink)

In contemporary Western society, people are more often called upon to justify the choice not to have children than they are to supply reasons for having them. In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, (...) class='Hi'>Overall offers a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. After considering a series of ethical approaches to procreation, and finding them inadequate or incomplete, Overall offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship -- which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral -- she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child. (shrink)

Aspiring Minds Computer Adaptive Test (AMCAT) is a computer adaptive test used widely in India to assess the employability skill level of engineering students. Prefinal and final year students belonging to different streams take up this online test. The present study investigates the perception of students regarding the conduct of AMCAT. Furthermore, the study explores the benefits that they obtain through the test. The comparison is made among the students belonging to the two different streams, engineering and computer science. The (...) conclusion drawn facilitates the readers to understand the utility of AMCAT. (shrink)

: Public toilets are a key part of the urban environment. This paper examines and evaluates the pervasive sex segregation, throughout North America, of public toilets. The issue is situated within a larger context—the design and management of the urban environment; larger assumptions about sexuality, reproduction, and privacy that govern that environment; and continuing compulsory sex identification and segregation which still define key areas of "public" space. I examine seven groups of arguments in favor of sex segregation, arguing that all (...) of them are inadequate. I then present reasons showing why ending the sex segregation of public toilets is justified. (shrink)

We revisit classical Utilitarianism by connecting and generalizing two ideas. The first is that there is a representation theorem possible for hedonic value similar to, but also importantly different from, the one provided by von Neumann and Morgenstern to measure decision utility. The idea is to use objective time, in place of objective chance, to measure hedonic value. This representation for hedonic value delivers a stronger kind of scale than von Neumann–Morgenstern utility, a ratio scale rather (...) than merely an interval scale. The second idea is that measurement on a ratio scale allows the meaningful aggregation of utilities over a group. This is aggregation by product rather than sum. Aggregation by product is known to have interesting Prioritarian consequences. Aggregation becomes complicated when the two approaches are mixed, when hedonic value is mixed with uncertainly. It becomes problematic when pain as well as pleasure is taken into account. (shrink)

Alex Voorhoeve and Marc Fleurbaey have developed a novel theory of distributive ethics, which incorporates a concern for inequality in both outcomes and life chances. This article demonstrates that their attempt to measure life chances is problematic for two reasons. First, it cannot be generalized to variable population cases without inheriting the problems of average utilitarianism. Second, it does not consistently respect the very ideas that were used to motivate the proposal.

In his classic paper ‘Transparent Pictures: On the Nature of Photographic Realism’, Kendall Walton highlights the special sense of contact with their subjects that photographs typically engender and argues that we must postulate photographic transparency in order to explain their capacity to do so. He also downplays the epistemic advantages historically associated with the medium and instead finds the source of our medium-specific appreciation of photographs largely in their transparency. I argue that Walton errs in both these respects. I offer (...) a simpler, deflationary means of explaining the contact phenomenon, one that does not mandate that we see through photographs, and I show how an epistemic advantage associated with the medium can be brought together with this deflationary understanding to yield a two-factor analysis of our experiences in looking at photographs. I conclude with an application of this two-factor approach to an iconic photograph from the modernist canon. (shrink)

Malgré leurs nombreuses différences, la Norvège et l’Inde ont adopté des politiques de régulation sociale similaires, visant à l’emploi des personnes handicapées depuis les années 1990. Des pays peuvent adopter des politiques de régulation sociale, telles que des dispositions anti-discrimination, en raison de multiples facteurs. Cet article met en évidence deux facteurs communs menant à une convergence des politiques dans le cadre des réformes de la réglementation sociale visant à l’emploi des personnes handicapées en Norvège et en Inde. Une étude (...) de cas qualitative exploratoire a été menée, au cours de laquelle 25 experts en politique (11 de Norvège et 14 d’Inde) ont été interrogés. Les résultats des entretiens avec des experts indiquent que la convergence des politiques observée est liée à deux tendances qui peuvent être détectées à la fois en Norvège et en Inde. La première concerne l’influence des traités internationaux; la seconde concerne la mobilisation populaire des personnes handicapées et de leurs organisations. Les résultats indiquent une internationalisation croissante des politiques de régulation sociale et ces développements politiques transcendent la fracture entre le Nord et le Sud. (shrink)

New reproductive technology permits a distinction between two different aspects of abortion: (1) the (premature) emptying of the uterus (the expulsion of the fetus) and (2) causing the death of the fetus. The paper argues that the fetus has not right to occupancy of its mother's (or any other woman's) uterus, And that the mother (or anyone else) has not right to kill the fetus. Some implications of these claims are discussed.

As members of the most evolutionarily developed species on earth, most of us share the common-sensical belief that our treatment of animals should be based more or less on moral grounds. However, it is also an undeniable fact that for more than two millennia, from the appearance of the first moral theories in Ancient Greece until almost the last quarter of the 20th century, this traditional moral concern for animals has gone hand in hand with their systematic exclusion from the (...) moral community of human beings, which deprives them of basic protective rights against moral abuse and mistreatment. A radical paradigm shift in ethics emerges, especially in the last quarter of the 20th century, when some philosophers begin to question this anthropocentric conception of ethics and the “otherness” of animals in terms of their traditional location outside the ethical discourse. Peter Singer, who is a utilitarian, and Tom Regan, who defends the “rights view” against Singer’s utilitarianism, are two prominent representatives of this new ethical approach. After showing how Singer and Regan reject speciesism, this paper focuses on Regan’s critique of Singer’s account and adds new objections that show that utilitarianism has serious general defects even if it is restricted to human beings. Moreover, these defects give rise to more complicated problems when utilitarianism is applied to animals. After pointing to some weak aspects in Regan’s theory, the paper spells out the sketch of an alternative account that points to the possibility of a synthesis of utility principle and right principle. Accordingly, Regan’s worse-off principle deduced from the rights view is interpreted as a formal principle, while the utility principle as the material content of it is accepted: as long as there is no violation of the worse-off principle, one ought to deduce particular commands to maximize utility for specific cases out of the application of the utility principle. In this context, the worse-off principle has only a negative and formal function that prevents the utility principle from overriding individual rights by giving it its obligatory form. (shrink)

The fields of positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and goal-setting have all demonstrated that individuals can modify their beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors to improve their subjective happiness. But which ethical beliefs affect happiness positively? In comparison to ethical belief systems such as deontology, consequentialism, and altruism, rational egoism appears to be alone in suggesting that an individual’s long-term self-interest and subjective happiness is possible, desirable, and moral. Albeit an important theoretical foundation of the rational egoism philosophy, the relationship (...) between rational egoism and subjective happiness has yet to be investigated empirically. Using (Overall and Gedeon, Business and Professional Ethics. 38:43–78, 2018) 24-item rational egoism scale, we test this relationship on a random sample of 534 full-time American workers using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Consistent with rational egoism theory, the main contribution to knowledge of this research is finding a statistically significant relationship between rational egoism and subjective happiness. Implications for practice and areas for future study are suggested. (shrink)

After a brief discussion of the terms "monogamy" and "nonmonogamy," I evaluate explanations offered by different theorists for the pain that nonmonogamy can cause to the partner (especially a female partner) of a nonmonogamous person (of either sex). My suggestion is that the self, especially the female self, is conventionally defined in terms of sexual partners. I present and reply to a possible objection to this explanation, and then discuss my theory's normative implications.

In late-nineteenth-century economics, there was an epoch-defining shift from the labour theory of value to the marginal utility theory of value. According to the latter, the economic value of some circumstance (obtaining some good, some service, and so on) is its subjective utility at the margin. Thus, while there is an absolute sense in which I prefer having water to having diamonds, at the present moment I value one more unit of diamonds more than I value one more (...) unit of water. That is why I am willing to pay a higher price for a bowl of diamonds than a bowl of water of the same size, even though water is ‘more valuable’ in a sense. While the marginalists resolved a large array of anomalies that had troubled the labour theory of value, they also believed that utility should be measurable if their theory was to be scientifically respectable. Taking this shift as his starting point, Ivan Moscati has provided a well-written, thorough, and insightful account of the history of utility measurement from 1870 to 1985. (shrink)

Several authors have argued that act–utilitarianism cannot provide an adequate critique of buying meat because a single meat purchase will not actually cause more farm animals to be raised or slaughtered. Thus, regardless of whether or not the production of meat is inhumane to animals, someone who buys meat is doing nothing wrong. This argument fails to show that meat purchases are morally permissible, however, because it assumes that act–utilitarians would use actual utility in their decision to buy or (...) not to buy meat. I show that act–utilitarians cannot use actual utility as a decision procedure and must instead use expected utility to prescribe or proscribe actions. I then demonstrate how expected utility can be applied to cases of contributory causation, where many people seem morally responsible for causing something to happen. Buying meat is one case of contributory causation where the probability of any single individual's affecting meat production is slight, but the expected disutility of affecting that production is substantial. Thus, in its expected utility form, act–utilitarianism defeats the ‘causal inefficacy’ defence of buying meat [1]. (shrink)

Climate change, energy price spikes, and concerns about energy security have reignited interest in state and local efforts to promote end-use energy efficiency, customer-sited renewable energy, and energy conservation. Government agencies and utilities have historically designed and administered such demand-side measures, but innovative third-party administrative models present new options to finance, market, and deliver sustainable energy services to energy end-users. This study outlines the concept of a new third-party administrative model, a sustainable energy utility (SEU), with the potential to (...) achieve deep energy efficiency savings and a high penetration of customer-sited renewable energy. An SEU is characterized by central coordination, comprehensive programs, flexible incentives, financial self-sufficiency, competitive procurement, and a focus on delivering energy services rather than commodity energy. (shrink)

A serious moral weakness of reproductive ‘surrogacy’ is that it can be harmful to the children who are created. This article presents a proposal for mitigating this weakness. Currently, the practice of commercial ‘surrogacy’ operates only in the interests of the adults involved , not in the interests of the child who is created. Whether ‘surrogacy’ is seen as the purchase of a baby, the purchase of parental rights, or the purchase of reproductive labor, all three views share the same (...) significant flaws. They endorse the transfer, for a fee, of the infant from the woman who gestated it to those who commissioned it, but without justifying such a transfer; they fail to demonstrate that the commissioners have any entitlement to the infant, or, for that matter, suitability to be the infant's parents; and they fail to take any notice of the infant's needs, interests, and wellbeing. A mere genetic connection is not enough to establish that the commissioners are entitled to receive the baby or that they are competent to raise it. Their good intentions, however caring, are not enough. Therefore, just as in the practice of adoption, there should be a formal institutionalized system for screening and licensing the prospective social parents, which would make the infant's needs, interests, and wellbeing paramount. I reply to several potential objections to this proposal, including the objection that genetic parents who raise their own child are not screened and licensed. (shrink)

Practices of concept-revision among scientists seem to indicate that concepts can be improved. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union revised the concept "Planet" so that it excluded Pluto, and insisting that the result was an improvement. But what could it mean for one concept or conceptual scheme to be better than another? Here we draw on the theory of epistemic utility to address this question. We show how the plausibility and informativeness of beliefs, two features that contribute to their (...) utility, have direct correlates in our concepts. These are how inclusive a concept is, or how many objects in an environment it applies to, and how homogeneous it is, or how similar the objects that fall under the concept are. We provide ways to measure these values, and argue that in combination they can provide us with a single principle of concept utility. The resulting principle can be used to decide how best to categorize an environment, and can rationalize practices of concept revision. (shrink)

Management scholars have paid close attention to the construct of organizational or corporate reputation, particularly in the applied business ethics and corporate social responsibility fields. Extant research demonstrates that CR is one of the key mediators between CSR and important organizational outcomes, which ultimately improve organizational performance. Yet, hitherto the research focused on CR construct has been plagued by multiple definitions, conflicting conceptualizations, and unclear operationalizations. The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical ground for positioning of CR as (...) an assessment construct that is modeled as a second-order factor affecting individual first-order dimensions, and to provide methodological and empirical support toward such conceptualization. We assert that intangible, socially complex, and causally ambiguous CR can be accurately estimated through its individual measurable dimensions. Using survey data from Peru, we empirically test the hypothesized second-order reflective model within a hierarchy of nested and non-nested models, and compare its model fit and predictive power with alternative conceptualizations. Modeling CR as a second-order reflective construct relies on a set of theoretical propositions and yields several methodological advantages, including strong conceptual interpretability and parsimony when tested within a nomological context. We explicitly demonstrate positive organizational outcomes of CR: customer trust, corporate identification, in-role behavior, and extra-role behavior. Then, we demonstrate that the shorter scales of CR can be used as a good proxy for the full construct measure. The paper concludes by highlighting theoretical insights, and methodological and managerial implications of the findings. (shrink)

Hibbing et al. (2014) contend that individual differences in political ideology can be substantially accounted for in terms of differences in a single psychological factor, namely, strength of negativity bias. We argue that, given the multidimensional structure of ideology, a better explanation of ideological variation will take into account both individual differences in negativity bias and differences in empathic concern.

Who owns frozen human embryos? Are "surrogate motherhood" arrangements dangerous for women? Should access to in vitro fertilization be limited or increased? With the development of complex reproductive technologies and the ensuing controversies in reproductive ethics, there is an urgent need for more careful examination of moral principles, current practices, and social policies pertaining to reproduction. The issues examined in this collection of nine papers focusing of the Canadian experience include abortion, the cryopreservation of embryos, the selective termination of fetuses (...) within multiple pregnancies, social policy for gestational "surrogacy," and the regulation of in vitro fertilization. Adopting a feminist perspective, the book places reproductive autonomy at the center of debates about the control of reproduction. (shrink)

Philosophers often assume that we can somehow quantitatively measure how good things are for people. But what does such talk mean? And what are the measures? In *Weighing Goods* John Broome offers one treatment of these questions. In his later *Weighing Lives* he offers a different treatment. This article discusses both positions but advocates a third. But while the three positions disagree about matters of meaning, they agree about the form of the measures. Roughly speaking, they are such that (...) the goodness of a lottery for an individual is equal to its expected goodness for her. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between positive orientation defined as a basic predisposition to perceive and evaluate positive aspects of life, the future and oneself and the Five-Factor Model of personality. Hypotheses postulated positive correlations between PO and extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness; a negative correlation was predicted between PO and neuroticism. Two hundred Polish students completed the following measures: SES, SWLS, LOT-R and NEOFFI. The results confirmed correlations between PO and extraversion, conscientiousness, and (...) neuroticism; correlations with openness and agreeableness were not supported. According to canonical correlations, PO shows a clear affinity to the FFM. (shrink)

This paper will explore some moral and conceptual aspects of the practice of surrogate motherhood. Although I put forward a number of criticisms of existing ideas about this subject, I do not claim to offer a fully developed position. Instead what I have tried to do is to call into question what seem to be some generally accepted assumptions about surrogate motherhood, and to lend plausibility to my view that surrogate motherhood may be morally troubling for reasons not always fully (...) recognized by other writers on this issue. These reasons go beyond the fairly obvious consequentialist concerns about its effects on the persons - particularly the child — involved. A concern for the well being of a child produced by a surrogate is, I believe, entirely justified, but my focus in this paper will be upon the surrogate mother herself. (shrink)

Heterosexuality, which I define as a romantic and sexual orientation toward persons not of one's own sex, is apparently a very general, though not entirely universal, characteristic of the human condition. In fact, it is so ubiquitous a part of human interactions and relations as to be almost invisible, and so natural-seeming as to appear unquestionable. Indeed, the 1970 edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘heterosexual’ as ‘pertaining to or characterized by the normal relation of the sexes.’.

Despite the best efforts of utilitarians, justice remains a serious problem for consequentialism. Many counterexamples have been described which show that an agent may be obligated to do a gross injustice, according to hedonic utilitarianism, just because it maximizes utility. Fred Feldman attempts to avoid this result by adjusting utility for justice.In this paper, I examine Feldman’s axiology and his normative theory of world utilitarianism, and show that, ultimately, he is not successful in his endeavor. Though Feldman’s theories (...) may not fall prey to exactly the same counterexamples that others do, they are still susceptible to versions of them. (shrink)

La relazione tra bellezza e utilità in architettura appare più complicata nel presente che nel passato. In particolare, nella cultura contemporanea si manifesta un antagonismo paradossale tra la prima e la seconda: più nascondiamo, e addirittura neghiamo, la dimensione dell’utilità di un oggetto architettonico più abbiamo la possibilità di aumentare la dimensione della sua bellezza. Ragionare sul significato della nozione di forma, articolata in morphe (la forma concreta, reale) ed eidos (la forma astratta, ideale), può portarci verso una soluzione possibile, (...) secondo la quale parlare di un eidos, che è eteronomo e referenziale e risponde ai bisogni e alle aspirazioni degli esseri umani, significa parlare di un eidos che include, e non esclude, l’idea che l’oggetto architettonico sia utile alle richieste umane – in particolare, a qualcosa che potremmo chiamare “misura umana ideale”. Allora, un oggetto architettonico può essere bello se la sua dimensione estetica afferma, e non nega, la sua utilità, perché affermare la sua utilità significa affermare una parte essenziale del suo statuto identitario. In ultimo, la relazione tra morphe ed eidos può essere istruttiva anche a proposito di altri due casi: il primo riguarda una morphe che sembra generare un eidos inedito; il secondo riguarda l’utilità di un elemento ornamentale. (shrink)

Animal ethics is generating growing interest both within academia and outside it. This book focuses on ethical issues connected to animals who play an extremely important role in human lives: companion animals, with a special emphasis on dogs and cats, the animals most often chosen as pets. Companion animals are both vulnerable to and dependent upon us. What responsibilities do we owe to them, especially since we have the power and authority to make literal life-and-death decisions about them? What kinds (...) of relationships should we have with our companion animals? And what might we learn from cats and dogs about the nature and limits of our own morality? The contributors write from a variety of philosophical perspectives, including utilitarianism, care ethics, feminist ethics, phenomenology, and the genealogy of ideas. The eighteen chapters are divided into two sections, to provide a general background to ethical debate about companion animals, followed by a focus on a number of crucial aspects of human relationships to companion animals. The first section discusses the nature of our relationships to companion animals, the foundations of our moral responsibilities to companion animals, what our relationships with companion animals teach us, and whether animals themselves can act ethically. The second part explores some specific ethical issues related to crucial aspects of companion animals' lives-breeding, reproduction, sterilization, cloning, adoption, feeding, training, working, sexual interactions, longevity, dying, and euthanasia. (shrink)

Biomedical experimentation on animals is justified, researchers say, because of its enormous benefits to human being. Sure an imals die a nd suffer , but that is m orally insignificant since the benefits of research incalculably outweigh the evils. Although this utilitarian claim appears straightforward and uncontroversial, it is neither straightforw ard n ot uncontroversial. This defense of animal experimentation is like ly to succeed only by rejecting three widely held moral presumptions. W e identify those presumptions and explain their (...) relevance to the justification of animal experimentation. We argue that even if non-human animals have con side rable less moral worth than humans, experimentation is justified only if its benefits are overwhelming. By building on arguments offered in earlier papers, we show that research ers c ann ot substantiate their claims of behalf of animal research. We conclude that there is currently no acceptable utilitarian defense of animal experimentation. Moreover, it is unlikely that they could be one. Since most apologists of animal experimentation rely on utilitarian justifications of their practice, it appears that biomedical experimentation on animals is not morally justified. (shrink)

We introduce an expected-value theory of linguistic modality that makes reference to expected utility and a likelihood-based confirmation measure for deontics and epistemics, respectively. The account is a probabilistic semantics for deontics and epistemics, yet it proposes that deontics and epistemics share a common core modal semantics, as in traditional possible-worlds analysis of modality. We argue that this account is not only theoretically advantageous, but also has far-reaching empirical consequences. In particular, we predict modal versions of reasoning fallacies (...) from the heuristics and biases literature. Additionally, we derive the modal semantics in an entirely transparent manner, as it is based on the compositional semantics of Korean modal expressions that are morphosyntactically decomposed into a conditional and an evaluative predicate. (shrink)

“Utility,” in plain English, means usefulness. In Australia, a ute is a useful vehicle. Jeremy Bentham specialized the meaning to a particular sort of usefulness. “By utility,” he said, “is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered”. The “principle of utility” is the principle that actions are to be judged (...) by their usefulness in this sense: their tendency to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness. When John Stuart Mill spoke of the “perfectly just conception of Utility or Happiness, considered as the directive rule of human conduct,” he was using “Utility” as a short name for this principle. “The greatest happiness principle” was another name for it. People who subscribed to this principle came to be known as utilitarians. (shrink)

Conventional sacrificial moral dilemmas propose directly causing some harm to prevent greater harm. Theory suggests that accepting such actions (consistent with utilitarian philosophy) involves more reflective reasoning than rejecting such actions (consistent with deontological philosophy). However, past findings do not always replicate, confound different kinds of reflection, and employ conventional sacrificial dilemmas that treat utilitarian and deontological considerations as opposite. In two studies, we examined whether past findings would replicate when employing process dissociation to assess deontological and utilitarian inclinations independently. (...) Findings suggested two categorically different impacts of reflection: measures of arithmetic reflection, such as the Cognitive Reflection Test, predicted only utilitarian, not deontological, response tendencies. However, measures of logical reflection, such as performance on logical syllogisms, positively predicted both utilitarian and deontological tendencies. These studies replicate some findings, clarify others, and reveal opportunity for additional nuance in dual process theorist’s claims about the link between reflection and dilemma judgments. (shrink)

Background: Depressive disorder is one of the main health problems worldwide. Many risk factors have been associated with this pathology. However, while the association between risks factors and adult depression is well established, the mechanisms behind its impact remains poorly understood. A possible, yet untested explanation is the mediating impact of levels of personality functioning, i.e., impairments with regard to self and interpersonal.Method: Around 162 patients were assessed at the beginning of their therapy, with regard to risk (...) class='Hi'>factors, such as sociodemographic, physical, hereditary, and adverse childhood experiences. Depressive symptoms and personality functioning were also measured. Associations between the related variables as well as other possible covariates were examined by means of zero-order correlations and bootstrapping-based mediation analysis.Results: Of all the risk factors taken into account, level of education and physical illness were associated with depression. On the other hand, the most significant predictor of depressive symptomatology was ACE, and this relationship was mediated by personality functioning. This indicates that patients presenting adverse childhood experiences are more likely to develop deficiencies in personality functioning, which in turn increases their likelihood of developing depressive symptomatology.Conclusion: These results reaffirm the importance of incorporating risk and vulnerability factors such as personality functioning in understanding depression. (shrink)

Despite the prevalence of the terms utilitarianism and utilitarian in the health care and health policy literature, anecdotal evidence suggests that authors are often not fully aware of the diversity of utilitarian theories, their principles, and implications. Further, it seems that authors often categorically reject utilitarianism under the assumption that it violates individual rights. The tendency of act utilitarianism to neglect individual rights is attenuated, however, by the diminishing marginal utility of wealth and the disutility of a protest by (...) those who are disadvantaged. In practice, act utilitarians tend to introduce moral rules and preserve traditional rules. At the same time, the tenability of rule utilitarianism is limited because it ultimately collapses into act utilitarianism or a deontological theory. Negative utilitarianism is a viable utilitarian variant only if we accept complete aversion to suffering, ie, if we disregard any forgone opportunities to increase pleasure. Finally, the adoption of preference utilitarianism requires us to accept the subjectivity of individual claims which may be perceived as unfair. (shrink)

An infinite future thus threatens to paralyze utilitarianism. Utilitarians need principled ways to determine which possible infinite futures are better or worse. In this article, I discuss a recent suggestion of Peter Vallentyne and Shelly Kagan. I conclude that the best way forward for utilitarians is, in fact, to by-pass the infinite utility debate altogether. (edited).

The core idea of libertarianism, considered as a basic moral theory, is that people have certain negative rights and that those rights determine morally right action. Libertarianism is supposed to provide robust explanations to some of our intuitions, such as that it is wrong to steal, kill, rape or enslave other people. However, its exclusive focus on negative rights (i.e., rights to non-interference) makes it incapable of explaining some other intuitions, such as that the utterly rich should help the utterly (...) poor. Although libertarianism can explain why we should never do bad to others, it cannot explain why we should sometimes do good to others. For this reason, libertarianism is not satisfactory as it stands. A natural suggestion, therefore, is that we should either abandon libertarianism in favor of some of its better faring rivals, or revise the theory in order to get rid of the features that make it unsatisfactory. This paper proposes a new libertarian theory of morality: a theory that endorses a utilitarian proviso for use of external resources. I call this theory mid-libertarianism. The basic idea of mid-libertarianism is that individuals are free to do as they want as long as they do not violate the rights of others, given that they maximize utility whenever they use external resources. The paper is divided into four main sections. In this frst section, I introduce mid-libertarianism as a normative ethical theory. In the second main section, I put forward the key arguments for mid-libertarianism, which are, roughly, that it maintains the main explanatory powers of existing versions of libertarianism, while it avoids some of the most severe problems that these theories face. In the third section, I answer some potential objections to midlibertarianism. In the fourth section, I conclude that mid-libertarianism deserves to be taken seriously as a new contender in the normative ethics debate. (shrink)