In response to commentators, we argue that whether waiving patent rights will meaningfully improve access to COVID-19 vaccines for low income and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in the short term, is an empirical matter. We also reject preferentially allocating vaccines to countries that hosted trials because doing so unethically favours those with research infrastructure, rather than those facing the worst burdens from COVID-19.

In his recent Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen mounts a sustained critique of coerced labour, against the background of a radical egalitarian conception of distributive justice. In this article, I argue that Cohenian egalitarians are committed to holding the talented under a moral duty to choose socially useful work for the sake of the less fortunate. As I also show, Cohen's arguments against coerced labour fail, particularly in the light of his commitment to coercive taxation. In the course (...) of defending those claims, I claim that Cohen's remarks on freedom of occupational choice and taxation exhibit partiality towards the interests of the better-off to the detriment of the less fortunate – a partiality which is in tension with his commitment to equality. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public (...) health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: having developed a vaccine, raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions. (shrink)

— No 1, mars : S. Chollet et D. Valentin, Le degré d’expertise a-t-il une influence sur la perception olfactive ? Quelques éléments de réponse dans le domaine du vin ; G. Molina et J.-M. Fabre, Norme et contexte : influence d’une dichotomisation du matériel et de l’évaluation sur la contextualisation de jugements catégoriels ; S. Nicolas, J. Ségui..

I. Prosopographie délienne et épitaphes : l'identification de diverses personnes, proposée par M.-Fr. BasLez dans son étude sur les cultes orientaux à Délos, est fragile, car elles portent des noms très banals. Il faut noter que le corpus publié des stèles funéraires de Délos ne comprend qu'une très faible proportion (l/10e?) des monuments de la nécropole. II. Affranchis d'après les inscriptions de Délos et de Rhénée : corrections et ajouts divers à l'étude de G. Fabre sur les patrons et les (...) affranchis à la fin de la République. Le peu de rigueur avec laquelle les règles de l'onomastique romaine sont appliquées dans les épitaphes rend délicate l'identification du statut de plusieurs défunts. III. Stèles errantes : publication d'une stèle inédite de Délos et de photos de stèles à Avignon, Trieste et Naples. (shrink)

What should maximin egalitarians think about seniority privileges? We contrast a good-specific and an all-things-considered perspective. As to the former, inertia and erasing effects of a seniority-based allocation of benefits from employment are identified, allowing us to spot the categories of workers and job-seekers made involuntarily worse off by such a practice. What matters however is to find out whether abolishing seniority privileges will bring about a society in which the all-things-considered worst off people are better off than in the (...) seniority rule's presence. An assessment of the latter's cost-reduction potential is thus needed, enabling us to bridge a practice taking place within a firm with its impact on who the least well off members of society are likely to be. Three accounts of the profitability of seniority privileges are discussed: the “(firm specific) human capital”, the “deferred compensation” and the “knowledge transfer” ones. The respective relevance of “good-specific” and “all-things-considered” analysis is discussed. It turns out that under certain circumstances, a maximin egalitarian case for seniority privileges could be made. Senior: Do you know that they are planning layoffs? Of course, it is only fair that they lay-off the newcomers first! After all, I have been loyal to the company for many years. Junior: Did I choose to be a newcomer? Footnotes1 Many thanks to two anonymous referees, to P.-M. Boulanger, B. Cockx, C. Fabre, L. Jacquet, E. Lazear, I. Robeyns, G. Vallée, Y. Vanderborght, Ph. Van Parijs, V. Vansteenberghe and J. de Wispelaere for their help and critical comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented in Louvain-la-Neuve, Ghent, Montevideo and London. I am very grateful to these audiences. Special thanks to G. Brennan for his extensive and extremely valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. (shrink)

This article focuses mainly on (1) the policy of Delft University of Technology since 1992 as regards the university-wide introduction of a compulsory course on ethics and engineering, and (2) the ideal structure of such a course, including the educational goals of the course.

This paper forms an introduction to this issue, the contents of which arose directly or indirectly from a conference in May 2001 on Corruption of scientific integrity? — The commercialisation of academic science. The introduction, in recent decades, of business culture and values into universities and research institutions is incompatible with the openness which scientific and all academic pursuit traditionally require. It has given rise to a web of problems over intellectual property and conflict of interest which has even led (...) to corporate sponsors’ suppressing unfavourable results of clinical trials, to the detriment of patients’ health. Although there are those who see the norms of science developing to recognise the importance of instrumental science aiming at specific goals and of knowledge judged by its value in a context of application, none justifies the covert manipulation of results by vested interest. Public awareness of these problems is growing and creating a climate of opinion where they may be addressed. We suggest a way forward by the introduction of nationally and internationally-accepted guidelines for industrial collaboration which contain proper protections of the core purposes of universities and of the independence of their research. Some codes suggested for this purpose are discussed. We note that some universities are moving to adopt such codes of conduct, but argue the need for strong support from the government through its funding bodies. (shrink)

This paper introduces a generalization of Reiter’s notion of “extension” for default logic. The main difference from the original version mainly lies in the way conflicts among defaults are handled: in particular, this notion of “general extension” allows defaults not explicitly triggered to pre-empt other defaults. A consequence of the adoption of such a notion of extension is that the collection of all the general extensions of a default theory turns out to have a nontrivial algebraic structure. This fact has (...) two major technical fall-outs: first, it turns out that every default theory has a general extension; second, general extensions allow one to define a well-behaved, skeptical relation of defeasible consequence for default theories, satisfying the principles of Reflexivity, Cut, and Cautious Monotonicity formulated by D. Gabbay. (shrink)

The proliferation of computers in the business realm may lead to ethical problems between individual and societal rights, and the organization's need to control costs. In an attempt to explore the causes of this potential conflict, this study examined the varying levels of sensitivity 223 respondents assigned to different types of information typically stored in computer-based human resource information systems. It was found that information most directly related to the job — pay rate, fringe benefits, educational history — was considered (...) to be the most sensitive. Participants, however, were more concerned about certain types of individuals/groups accessing these systems than about the kinds of information contained in them. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Environmental holism and environmental individualism are based on incompatible notions of moral considerability, and yield incompatible results. For Schopenhauer, every intelligible character--every irreducible instance of formative nature---defines a distinct moral patient, and for hirn both holistic entities and the individual members of higher species have distinguishable intelligible characters. Schopenhauer’s neglected metaethics thus can be used to generate an environmental ethics which is complete in the sense of synthesizing holism and individualism while simultaneously meeting TomRegan’s (implicit) demand that an environmental ethics (...) make moral patients of natural objects. (shrink)

Intentionality in Interaction revisits some of the classical questions to be found in the original programme for second-personal studies as established in Thompson's 2001 JCS issue and sheds new light on them, witnessing the evolving dynamics of such a programme over the last decade. The contributions in this issue approach the questions of how persons share intentions, emotions, and experiences, of how interaction is shaped by and transforms affection, emotion, and cognition, and of how such interactions develop over time and (...) provide important insights into the development of human capacities in general, both in normal and pathological cases. In this introduction, we situate the special issue in the context of social cognition in general and second-personal studies in particular. We propose an outline of a new framework to approach questions regarding interaction and its development and evolution, a framework based on a novel understanding of interaction in terms of engagement between persons. (shrink)

2011 Reprint of 1943 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "St. Thomas Aquinas" is enriched by the author's unique ability to see the world through the saint's eyes, a fresh and animated view that shows us Aquinas as no other biography has. Acclaimed as the best book ever written on Aquinas by such outstanding Thomists as Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Anton Pegis, this brilliant biography will completely capture the reader and leave him (...) desirous of reading Aquinas' own monumental work. (shrink)

— No 1, mars : S. Chollet et D. Valentin, Le degré d’expertise a-t-il une influence sur la perception olfactive ? Quelques éléments de réponse dans le domaine du vin ; G. Molina et J.-M. Fabre, Norme et contexte : influence d’une dichotomisation du matériel et de l’évaluation sur la contextualisation de jugements catégoriels ; S. Nicolas, J. Ségui..