Emergence of the novel pathogenic coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 and its rapid pandemic spread presents challenges that demand immediate attention. Here, we describe the development of a semi‐quantitative high‐content microscopy‐based assay for detection of three major classes (IgG, IgA, and IgM) of SARS‐CoV‐2 specific antibodies in human samples. The possibility to detect antibodies against the entire viral proteome together with a robust semi‐automated image analysis workflow resulted in specific, sensitive and unbiased assay that complements the portfolio of SARS‐CoV‐2 serological assays. Sensitive, specific (...) and quantitative serological assays are urgently needed for a better understanding of humoral immune response against the virus as a basis for developing public health strategies to control viral spread. The procedure described here has been used for clinical studies and provides a general framework for the application of quantitative high‐throughput microscopy to rapidly develop serological assays for emerging virus infections. (shrink)

In this article, we review approaches to modeling a connection between spatial and mathematical thinking across development. We critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of factor analyses, meta-analyses, and experimental literatures. We examine those studies that set out to describe the nature and number of spatial and mathematical skills and specific connections between these abilities, especially those that included children as participants. We also find evidence of strong spatial-mathematical connections and transfer from spatial interventions to mathematical understanding. Finally, we map (...) out the kinds of studies that could enhance our understanding of the mechanisms by which spatial and mathematical processing are connected and the principles by which mathematical outcomes could be enhanced through spatial training in educational settings. (shrink)

This paper examines two mistakes regarding David Lewis’ Principal Principle that have appeared in the recent literature. These particular mistakes are worth looking at for several reasons: The thoughts that lead to these mistakes are natural ones, the principles that result from these mistakes are untenable, and these mistakes have led to significant misconceptions regarding the role of admissibility and time. After correcting these mistakes, the paper discusses the correct roles of time and admissibility. With these results in hand, the (...) paper concludes by showing that one way of formulating the chance–credence relation has a distinct advantage over its rivals. (shrink)

Evidential Uniqueness is the thesis that, for any batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that a subject with that evidence should have. One of the most common kinds of objections to views that violate Evidential Uniqueness are arbitrariness objections – objections to the effect that views that don’t satisfy Evidential Uniqueness lead to unacceptable arbitrariness. The goal of this paper is to examine a variety of arbitrariness objections that have appeared in the literature, and to assess the extent (...) to which these objections bolster the case for Evidential Uniqueness. After examining a number of different arbitrariness objections, I’ll conclude that, by and large, these objections do little to bolster the case for Evidential Uniqueness. (shrink)

Codes of conduct are a conspicuous feature of modern business organization, but doubts have been raised regarding their efficacy in ensuring high standards of behavior. Although some of the issues involved have been discussed at some length in the business ethics literature, the amount of systematic empirical evidence on the impact of codes is very limited. This paper seeks to make a contribution to that body of knowledge by studying the policies and procedures of a sample of banks which have (...) signed a statement on banking and the environment promulgated by the United Nations Development Programme. Although some differences are found when compared with a sample of banks which did not sign the Statement, they are not extensive. The implications of the findings, for codes of conduct and for future empirical studies, are then discussed. (shrink)

Recent debate on the relationship between cyber threats, on the one hand, and both strategy and ethics on the other focus on the extent to which ‘cyber war’ is possible, both as a conceptual question and an empirical one. Whether it can is an important question for just war theorists. From this perspective, it is necessary to evaluate cyber measures both as a means of responding to threats and as a possible just cause for using armed kinetic force. In this (...) paper, I shift the focus away from ‘war’ as such in order to ask whether some cyber threats might justifiably be characterized as a form of ‘violence.’ Some theorists argue that the term violence ought to be defined so as to encompass things like ‘structural’ harm or harm by neglect and thereby question implicitly the focus of just war theorists on armed force. This paper draws on a theory of violence I developed elsewhere as a defence of just war theory’s narrow understanding of violence. According to the ‘Double-Intent’ theory, a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category of violence while partly accounting for the peculiar moral connotations of the term. Here, I argue that the resulting definition of violence reshapes the category in a way that includes some forms of cyber-attack. This may help us to see where cyber might fit in relation to just war theory and the ethics of kinetic attack. (shrink)

The rapid rise in interest in geoengineering the climate as a response to global warming presents a clear and significant challenge to environmental ethics. The paper articulates what I call the 'presumptive argument' against geoengineering from environmental ethics, a presumption strong enough to make geoengineering almost 'unthinkable' from within that tradition. Two rationales for suspending that presumption are next considered. One of them is a 'lesser evil' argument, the other makes connections between the presumptive argument, ecofacism, and the anthropocentrism/non-anthropocentrism debate. (...) The discussion is designed to prompt reflection on how environmental ethicists should orient themselves to the rapidly moving geoengineering debate and what they should think about the moral significance of the earth's large-scale biogeochemical processes compared to the moral significance of individuals, species, and ecosystems. (shrink)

John Rawls’s articulation of what makes for justice in war includes one of his most interesting, yet least discussed, assessments of religion and state coercion. Rawls claims that “the duties of the statesman in political liberalism” are incompatible with adherence to “the Catholic doctrine of double effect” when that doctrine precludes the deliberate targeting of innocent and harmless human beings in a “supreme emergency.” I explicate Rawls’s argument in favor of that claim, articulate various theological objections, and assess some proposed (...) restrictions on the justificatory role of religious reasons in the light of that disagreement. (shrink)

For many Americans, the election of Barack Obama as the country's first black president signaled that we had become a post-racial nation - some even suggested that race was no longer worth discussing. Of course, the evidence tells a very different story. And while social scientists are fully engaged in examining the facts of race, normative political thought has failed to grapple with race as an interesting moral case or as a focus in the expansive theory of social justice. Political (...) thought's under participation in the debate over the status of blacks in American society raises serious concerns since the main academic task of political theory is to adjudicate discrepancies between the demands of ideal justice and social realities. Christopher J. Lebron contends that it is the duty of political thought to address the moral problems that attend racial inequality and to make those problems salient to a democratic polity. Thus, in The Color of Our Shame, he asks two major questions. First, given the success of the Civil Rights Act and the sharp decline in overt racist norms, how can we explain the persistence of systemic racial inequality? Second, once we have settled on an explanation, what might political philosophy have to offer in terms of a solution? In order to answer these questions Lebron suggests that we reconceive of racial inequality as a condition that marks the normative status of black citizens in the eyes of the nation. He argues that our collective response to racial inequality ought to be shame. While we reject race as a reason for marginalizing blacks on the basis of liberal democratic ideals, we fail to live up to those ideals - a situation that Lebron sees as a failure of national character. Drawing on a wide array of resources including liberal theory, virtue ethics, history, and popular culture, Lebron proposes a move toward a "perfectionist politics" that would compel a higher level of racially relevant moral excellence from individuals and institutions and enable America to meet the democratic ideals that it has set for itself. (shrink)

A number of cases involving self-locating beliefs have been discussed in the Bayesian literature. I suggest that many of these cases, such as the sleeping beauty case, are entangled with issues that are independent of self-locating beliefs per se. In light of this, I propose a division of labor: we should address each of these issues separately before we try to provide a comprehensive account of belief updating. By way of example, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order (...) to accommodate these issues. Then, putting these other issues aside, I sketch some ways of extending Bayesianism in order to accommodate self-locating beliefs. Finally, I propose a constraint on updating rules, the "Learning Principle", which rules out certain kinds of troubling belief changes, and I use this principle to assess some of the available options. (shrink)

We describe an infinitary logic for metric structures which is analogous to Lω1,ω. We show that this logic is capable of expressing several concepts from analysis that cannot be expressed in finitary continuous logic. Using topological methods, we prove an omitting types theorem for countable fragments of our infinitary logic. We use omitting types to prove a two-cardinal theorem, which yields a strengthening of a result of Ben Yaacov and Iovino concerning separable quotients of Banach spaces.

The ability of international ethics and political theory to establish a genuinely critical standpoint from which to evaluate uses of armed force has been challenged by various lines of argument. On one, theorists question the narrow conception of violence on which analysis relies. Were they right, it would overturn two key assumptions: first, that violence is sufficiently distinctive to merit attention as a category separate from other modes of human harming; second, that it is troubling in a special way that (...) makes acts of violence peculiarly hard to justify. This paper defends a narrow understanding of violence and a special ethics governing its use by arguing that a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category while partly accounting for the fearful connotations of the term. Violent Agency is defined first by a double intention (1) to inflict harm using a technique chosen (2) to eliminate or evade the target’s means of escaping it or defending against it. Second, the harms it aims at are destructive (as opposed to appropriative). The analysis offered connects the concept of violence to themes in international theory such as vulnerability, security, and domination, as well as the ethics of war. (shrink)

We give a plausible-sounding conjecture involving the number of n-equivalence classes of structures of size m which would imply that the complement of a spectrum is also a spectrum.

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between revolution and violence in Marxism and in a series of texts drawing on Marxian theory. Part 1 outlines the basic normative frameworks which determine the outer limits of permissible violence in Marxism. Part 2 presents a critical analysis of a series of later discussions - by Sorel, Fanon and Žižek - which transformed the terms in which violence was discussed by developing one particular aspect of Marxist thought. By teasing (...) out the implications of revolutionary theory for the commission and permission of violence, it is possible to specify those points at which it tends towards excess. This in turn points towards limits that an adequate normative theory of revolutionary violence should establish. (shrink)

Extinction is usually associated with the death of the last remaining individual of a species, taxon, or population of organisms. Here I ask the question of whether extinction might also be applied to cases where individuals of the relevant category remain alive. Global impacts in the Anthropocene suggest extinction may be broader than typically thought. Technologies available in the emerging ‘synthetic age’ alter taxa in ways that may appropriately be characterized as extinction. The core of the more traditional account of (...) extinction remains valuable. Losing the last few individuals of a taxon matters. But emerging types of loss may demand a broader understanding of extinction. This broader understanding could capture more of what humans are doing to the biosphere. (shrink)

In spite of its commercial importance and signs of clear concern in public policy arenas, trade credit has not been subjected to systematic, extended analysis in the business ethics literature, even where suppliers as a stakeholder group have been considered. This paper makes the case for serious consideration of the ethics of trade credit and explores the issues surrounding slow payment of debts. It discusses trade debt as a kind of promise, but—noting that not all promises are good ones—goes on (...) to develop an analysis of the ethics of trade credit grounded in an understanding of its fundamental purpose. Making a distinction between “operating” trade credit and “financial” trade credit, the paper provides an account of the maximum period for which it is appropriate for one company to delay payment to another from which it has purchased goods or services. The concern of commentators and policy makers that companies should not take too long to pay their debts is affirmed, but the understanding of what timely payment means is significantly finessed, with one conclusion being that, if debts have not already been settled according to acceptable standard terms of trade, cash should pass quickly back along the supply chain once the customer in the final product market has paid. The analysis has implications not only for companies that take credit but also for external parties that seek to rate companies or set regulations according to speed of payment—an approach that is shown to be misleadingly simplistic, albeit well intentioned. A corresponding important responsibility for suppliers, not to extend excessive credit, also follows from the analysis developed. Having provided a novel analysis of an important business problem, the paper then discusses some of the related practical issues and makes suggestions for further research. (shrink)

_Justice and the Just War Tradition_ articulates a distinctive understanding of the reasons that can justify war, of the reasons that cannot justify war, and of the role that those reasons should play in the motivational and attitudinal lives of the citizens, soldiers, and statesmen who participate in war. Eberle does so by relying on a robust conception of human worth, rights, and justice. He locates this theoretical account squarely in the Just War Tradition. But his account is not merely (...) theoretical: _Justice and the Just War Tradition_ has a variety of practical aims, one of the most important of which is to serve as an aid to moral formation. The hope is that citizens, soldiers, and statesmen whose emotions and aspirations have been shaped by the Just War Tradition will be able to negotiate violent communal conflict in ways that respect the demands of justice. So _Justice and the Just War Tradition_ articulates a theoretically satisfying and practically engaging account of the reasons that count in favor of war. Moreover, Eberle develops that account by engaging contemporary theorists, both philosophical and theological, by according due deference to venerable contributors to the Just War Tradition, and by integrating insights from military memoire, the history of war, and the author's experience of teaching ethics at the United States Naval Academy. (shrink)

Do dissociations imply independent systems? In the memory field, the view that there are independent implicit and explicit memory systems has been predominantly supported by dissociation evidence. Here, we argue that many of these dissociations do not necessarily imply distinct memory systems. We review recent work with a single-system computational model that extends signal-detection theory (SDT) to implicit memory. SDT has had a major influence on research in a variety of domains. The current work shows that it can be broadened (...) even further in its range of application. Indeed, the single-system model that we present does surprisingly well in accounting for some key dissociations that have been taken as evidence for independent implicit and explicit memory systems. (shrink)

Notoriously, most philosophers write for other philosophers. Most philosophy books are designed for students of philosophy, students who can be assumed to have signed up and remained in the subject voluntarily, and therefore to have a certain interest in the subject and a certain understanding of the point of it all. In this paper I want to consider the philosopher’s engagement with those who, living in the ‘real world’, have had neither interest in nor exposure to philosophy beyond the stereotypes (...) of popular culture.1 By ‘engagement’ I have in mind formal pedagogical encounters such as compulsory teaching sessions in professional schools, public discussions and television talk-shows where the speaker is introduced as a ‘philosopher’, but above all the informal conversations that a philosopher inevitably has with his family, neighbours, doctor, accountant, his child’s teachers, his priest etc., where he is not so much teaching philosophy as explaining what the subject is. I’m hoping this is not of merely anthropological concern, but that this exploration can reveal something important about teaching the subject to philosophy students as well, even if for reasons of space it will have to be a bit polemical. (shrink)

The doctrine of restraint is the claim that citizens and legislators ought to restrain themselves from making political decisions solely on religious grounds. That doctrine is normally construed as a general constraint on religious arguments: an exclusively religious rationale "as such" is an inappropriate basis for a political decision, particularly a coercive political decision. However, the most common arguments for the doctrine of restraint fail to show that citizens and legislators ought to obey the doctrine of restraint, as we can (...) see by reflecting on those arguments as they bear on the Agapic Pacifist's rationale for denying that even legitimate political authorities may use lethal military force. (shrink)

Advances in the neurosciences have many implications for a collective understanding of what it means to be human, in particular, notions of the self, the concept of volition or agency, questions of individual responsibility, and the phenomenology of consciousness. As the ability to peer directly into the brain is scientifically honed, and conscious states can be correlated with patterns of neural processing, an easy—but premature—leap is to postulate a one-way, brain-based determinism. That leap is problematic, however, and emerging findings in (...) neuroscience can even be seen as compatible with some of the basic tenets of existentialism. Given the compelling authority of modern “science,” it is especially important to question how the findings of neuroscience are framed, and how the articulation of research results challenge or change individuals’ perceptions of themselves. Context plays an essential role in the emergence of human identity and in the sculpting of the human brain; for example, even a lack of stimuli (“nothing”) can lead to substantial consequences for brain, behavior, and experience. Conversely, advances in understanding the brain might contribute to more precise definitions of what it means to be human, including definitions of appropriate social and moral behavior. Put another way, the issue is not simply the ethics involved in framing neurotechnology, but also the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into a richer understanding of human ethical (and existential) functioning. (shrink)

The act/omission distinction is likely to lead to biases and be used as a moral heuristic. However, it is frequently difficult to determine whether this act/omission distinction is responsible for a judgment outside the lab. Further, more encompassing theories of omission bias are needed to make progress in dealing with its harmful consequences. One such theory is briefly presented.

John Hick uses a distinction between the formal and the substantial properties of the Real an sich, the noumenal God. Hick claims that substantial properties, such as 'being good' or 'being personal', cannot be ascribed to the Real an sich. On the other hand, according to Hick, formal properties -- such as 'being such that none of our concepts apply' -- can be predicated of the Real an sich. I argue, first of all, that many of the properties Hick ascribes (...) to the Real an sich are hard to interpret as anything but substantial, unless we adopt a highly arbitrary substantial/formal distinction. Secondly, I argue that it is never possible to ascribe only formal properties to the Real an sich, since the correct framing and application of formal properties involves a prior knowledge of some substantial properties. I show that the predication of formal properties involves having more knowledge than we need for the application of substantial properties. I conclude that Hick's practice is better than his theory, and that by dispensing with the formal/substantial distinction, he would enable his doctrine of God to stand on more respectable and theological grounds. (shrink)

A decision was made at the UNFCCC, COP-18 meeting in Doha in 2012 to create a work programme on loss and damage. Part of this programme was to include the production of a technical paper to enhance the general understanding of non-economic losses from climate change. The following article looks carefully at that paper in order to discover whether it provides an adequate conceptual understanding of non-economic losses. Several shortcomings of the paper’s conceptualization of these losses are identified. An alternative (...) ethical framework with methods better suited for capturing a fuller range of non-economic losses is considered. This framework is likely to be most useful if used prospectively for the purpose of devising better adaptation policies to head off potential future losses rather than if used retrospectively for quantifying losses that have already occurred for the purposes of providing compensation. (shrink)

Attempts to simplify ethics in war by claiming exclusive legitimate authority for the law of armed conflict underestimate the moral complexities facing soldiers. Soldiers risk wrongdoing if they refuse moral guidance that can independently evaluate their legal permissions. State soldiers need to know when to object to a legal duty to fight; nonstate fighters need to know when to disregard legal prohibitions against fighting. And both might sometimes best discharge their moral duties by following a bespoke rule departing from noncombatant (...) immunity in a principled way that has been designed for a particular conflict by an authoritative leadership. (shrink)

In the rapidly expanding literature on the ethics of climate engineering, a lot has been made of the fact that stratospheric aerosol injection would for the first time create a world whose climate had been intentionally shaped by deliberate human decisions. Intention has always mattered in ethics. Due to the importance of intention in assigning culpability for harms, one might expect that the moral responsibility for any harms created during an attempt to reconstruct the global climate using stratospheric aerosols would (...) be considerable. This article investigates such an expectation by making a comparison between the culpability for any unintended harms resulting from stratospheric aerosol injection and culpability for the unintended harms already taking place due to carbon emissions. To make this comparison, both types of unintended harms are viewed through the lens of the doctrine of double effect. The conclusion reached goes against what many might expect. The article closes by suggesting that a good way to read this surprising conclusion is that it points toward the continuing moral importance of prioritizing emission reductions. (shrink)

At present there is an enormous discrepancy between our nanotechnological capabilities (particularly our nanobiotechnologies), our social wisdom, and consensus on how to apply them. To date, cost considerations have greatly constrained our application of nanotechnologies. However, novel advances in microsystem platform technologies are about to greatly diminish that economic constraint while developing new industries. Properly used in a solid legal and ethical framework, within an educated population, these advances will vastly enrich our quality of life without being intrusive. Improperly used, (...) these technologies could lead to a modern-day Luddism, social turmoil, or possibly even to emulating those societies described in the darkest of novels. These technologies must be developed in tandem with the social and legal frameworks needed to ensure that they improve both individuals and our society. To ensure that this occurs, we need to have the ethical, legal, scientific, and engineering experts working together and with the public. (shrink)