Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 46, Issue 4, Page 384-418, Fall 2018.

"International and domestic laws commonly hold states responsible for their wrongdoings. States pay compensation for their unjust wars, and reparations for their historical wrongdoings. Some argue that states should incur punitive damages for their international crimes. But there is a troubling aspect to these practices: States are corporate agents, comprised of flesh and blood citizens. When the state uses the public purse to finance its corporate liabilities, the burden falls on these citizens, even if they protested against the state's policies, (...) did not know about them, or entirely lacked channels of political influence. How can this "distributive effect" of state-level responsibly be justified? The book develops an answer to this question, which revolves around citizens' participation in their state. It argues that citizenship can be a type of massive collective action, where citizens willingly orient themselves around the authority of their state, and where state policies are the product of this collective action. While most ordinary citizens are not to blame for their participation in their state, they nevertheless ought to accept a share of the remedial obligations that flow from their state's wrongful policies. However, the distributive effect cannot be justified in all states. Specifically, in non-democratic states most citizens are not participating in their state in the full sense, and should not pay for their state's wrongdoings. This finding calls then for a revision of the way we hold states responsible in both the domestic and international levels"--. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that when democratic states act wrongly, they should bear the costs of the harm they cause. However, since states are collective agents, their financial burdens pass on to their individual citizens. This fact raises important questions about the proper distribution of the state’s collective responsibility for its unjust policies. This article identifies two opposing models for sharing this collective responsibility in democracies: first, in proportion to citizens’ personal association with the unjust policy; second, by giving each (...) citizen an equal share of the costs. Proportional distribution is compatible with the principle of fairness. And yet, both in the literature and in political praxis we find many supporters for the equal sharing of the costs of unjust policies in democracies. How can equal distribution be defended on normative grounds? This article develops a defense that is grounded in citizens’ associative obligations. I argue that, at least in some democracies, one of the intrinsic values of the civic bond revolves around the joint formation and execution of worthy political goals. This social good generates the political associative obligation to accept an equal distribution of the costs of unjust policies. (shrink)

The principle of wrongful benefits prescribes that beneficiaries from wrongdoing incur duties towards the victims of the wrongdoing. The principle focuses on involuntary beneficiaries, demanding that they disgorge their tainted benefit. However, it overlooks the duties of beneficiaries who are not straightforwardly involuntary. The article addresses this gap in the literature. It explores the duties of ‘voluntary beneficiaries’, who could avoid receiving the tainted benefit; and the duties of ‘welcoming beneficiaries’, who cannot avoid receiving the tainted benefit but welcome it. (...) The article demonstrates that in both cases, the duties of the beneficiary towards the victim of the original wrongdoing are not limited to the disgorgement of the benefit. Rather, voluntary and welcoming beneficiaries are themselves involved in the commission of wrongdoing against the victim of the original wrongdoing, and hence may owe the victim compensation that exceeds the level of their own benefit. This argument has various practical implications, e.g. in specifying the duties of companies who benefit from human rights violations down their supply chain. (shrink)

Towards the end of her seminal work on the notion of representation Hanna Pitkin makes the following observation:At the end of the Second World War and during the Nuremberg trials there was much speculation about the war guilt of the German people. [...] Many people might argue the responsibility of the German people even though a Nazi government was not representative. We might agree, however, that in the case of a representative government the responsibility would be more clear-cut.2As Pitkin suggests (...) in this quotation, there is a common underlying assumption, both in academic writings and in popular perceptions of democracy, that a people living under a democratic government is ultimately responsible for that .. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the moral status of agents who innocently benefit from the wrongdoing of others. We commonly think that perpetrators should not benefit from their wrongdoings. But sometimes wrongdoings benefit third parties. Clearest examples are historical wrongdoings, such as colonialism and slavery, which have long lasting effects to this very day, benefitting some while harming others. Recent attempts to identify those who should address such wrongdoings suggest that their beneficiaries, even though they have done not taken part in the (...) original wrongdoing, have duties to relinquish the wrongful benefit and/or to compensate the victim. If correct, this view has important practical implications for identifying who should address pressing moral challenges such as climate change, reparations for slavery and global poverty. The chapter explores the normative underpinnings of the ‘principle of wrongful benefits’, and some of the theoretical and practical challenges to it. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 20 According to the fair play defense of political obligations citizens have a reciprocity-based duty to share the costs involved in the production of public goods. But sometimes, states produce collective goods through wrongdoing. For example, sometimes states’ wrongful immigration policies can contribute to the welfare of their own populations. Do citizens have duties of reciprocity in light of such wrongful benefits? I argue that the answer to this question is negative. Drawing on the observation that (...) beneficiaries of wrongdoing incur compensatory duties to the victims of that wrongdoing, I argue that, rather than having a duty of reciprocity for wrongful benefits, citizens have a duty to disgorge the benefits in compensation. Furthermore, the fair play defense of political obligations entails that citizens can be justified in disobeying the law in order to comply with their compensatory duties to victims of their state’s wrongdoing. (shrink)

Cosmopolitan justice calls for extensive institutional transformations at the international level. But in the absence of a global enforcing authority, such transformations are bound to be hampered by a range of obstacles, including non-compliance and coordination problems. What solutions can a cosmopolitan thinker offer to address these challenges? In answering this question, the paper focuses on the role that international cooperation between the world?s democracies can play in promoting cosmopolitan aspirations. It argues that such cooperation has a crucial role to (...) play in executing global justice reforms; and furthermore, that the world?s democracies have a moral duty to lead the way in implementing cosmopolitan justice. The paper then suggests that a ?League of Democracies? ? an intergovernmental organization which is open exclusively to the world?s democracies ? could potentially facilitate the type of democratic cooperation that is necessary for cosmopolitan justice. (shrink)

Cécile Fabre's monumental work Cosmopolitan Peace offers a thorough investigation of the responsibilities that agents incur through their involvement in armed conflict. However, her analysis fails to acknowledge the central role that states play in initiating and orchestrating acts of war. I argue that states are corporate moral agents, who are morally responsible for their own wrongdoings during an unjust war, and that this argument is compatible with Fabre's cosmopolitan premises. I then suggest that a systematic account of criminal liability (...) in the aftermath of a war should acknowledge the role that states play in orchestrating wars and committing war crimes. (shrink)

The article presents findings from three studies designed to validate and culturally adapt the Polish version of the Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire, a measure of the cognitive and emotional components of illness representations among oncology patients. The tool is conceptually based on Leventhal’s Self-Regulatory Model. The results of the study 1 show that it can be successfully used in a Polish cultural context as a reliable equivalent to its original English version. Analyses conducted in Study 2 provided good evidence for (...) construct and criterion validity as well as the internal reliability of the IPQ-R subscales. Study 3 revealed that the IPQ-R subscales present good test–retest reliability. Overall, the results show that the Polish version of the IPQ-R provides a comprehensive and psychometrically acceptable assessment of the representation of cancer and can be reliably used in studies involving Polish oncology patients. (shrink)

Different proprietary databases have been used extensively in research to assess the environmental performance and environmental risk of companies. This study explores the convergent validity of the environmental ratings of MSCI ESG STATS, Thomson Reuters ASSET4 and Global Engagement Services. The study shows that the ratings have common dimensions, but on aggregate, they do not converge. On the environmental opportunity side, KLD environmental strengths, and ASSET4 and GES environmental performance metrics correlate highly and provide convergent scores for US companies from (...) 2003–2011. On the environmental risk side, KLD environmental concerns converge with the GES environmental industry risk and company emissions from the ASSET4 database. Further analysis confirms that industry-related risks are drivers of company-specific environmental performance. (shrink)

Certain measurement-related constructions impose a requirement that the measure function used track the part-whole structure of the domain of measurement, so that a given entity or eventuality must have a larger measurement in the chosen dimension than any of its salient proper parts. I provide evidence from English and Chinese that these constructions can be used to measure the intensity of mental states like hatred and love, indicating that in the natural language ontology of such states, intensity correlates with part-whole (...) structure. A natural language metaphysics of psychological intensity meeting this requirement is then developed and integrated into the semantics. Further complications arise when looking at attitudes like want, wish, and regret, which also permit measurements of intensity in the relevant constructions. To account for such attitudes, the ontology and semantics are then enriched in a way that integrates ordering and quantification over possible worlds into the part-whole structure of attitude states, so that even in these more complicated cases, the constructions at hand have a unified compositional semantics. (shrink)

Stroke continues to be a leading cause of disability. Basic neurorehabilitation research is necessary to inform the neuropathophysiology of impaired motor control, and to develop targeted interventions with potential to remediate disability post-stroke. Despite knowledge gained from basic research studies, the effectiveness of research-based interventions for reducing motor impairment has been no greater than standard of practice interventions. In this perspective, we offer suggestions for overcoming translational barriers integral to experimental design, to augment traditional protocols, and re-route the rehabilitation trajectory (...) toward recovery and away from compensation. First, we suggest that researchers consider modifying task practice schedules to focus on key aspects of movement quality, while minimizing the appearance of compensatory behaviors. Second, we suggest that researchers supplement primary outcome measures with secondary measures that capture emerging maladaptive compensations at other segments or joints. Third, we offer suggestions about how to maximize participant engagement, self-direction, and motivation, by embedding the task into a meaningful context, a strategy more likely to enable goal-action coupling, associated with improved neuro-motor control and learning. Finally, we remind the reader that motor impairment post-stroke is a multidimensional problem that involves central and peripheral sensorimotor systems, likely influenced by chronicity of stroke. Thus, stroke chronicity should be given special consideration for both participant recruitment and subsequent data analyses. We hope that future research endeavors will consider these suggestions in the design of the next generation of intervention studies in neurorehabilitation, to improve translation of research advances to improved participation and quality of life for stroke survivors. (shrink)

In the present paper I present the metalinguistic solutions to the ‘lost disagreement’ problem proposed Sundell and Plunkett [2013] and Barker [2012]. I argue that metalinguistic negotiations about taste, even though successful in explaining the intuition of disagreement in a vast number of cases, are not an accurate solution to the disagreement problem in contextualism when it comes to the most paradigmatic case of “tasty”. I also argue against the account of faultless disagreement explained via vagueness of taste predicates [Barker, (...) 2012]. I believe that the notion of faultlessness employed in the discussion of vagueness [Wright, 1994] is a different notion than the one employed in the discussion of taste discourse [Kölbel, 2003]. (shrink)

The photographic apparatus whose emergence is located in the mid-nineteenth century has not been perfectly located within the history of technology, sometimes considered as a simple tool or instrument whose utility was mainly in the field of scientific research, other times giving it the status of machine, accentuating this time the automatism of its operation. Both visions seem insufficient to us since both one and the other present a certain partiality in the understanding of the apparatus, which should not be (...) reduced to its mere optical character or to its automatism, since this is also a form of recording, of memory. Our interest will focus on demonstrating how photography should be thought of as “apparatus”, that is, as a complex element within the history of technology; that not only was able to perfect our vision considered as deficient, but at the same time was able to grant a new temporality and a specific type of perception to an entire era. (shrink)

Vaesen suggests that motor control is not among the primary origins of the uniqueness of human tool use. However, recent findings show that cognitive processes involved in control of human limb movements may be much more sophisticated than it was believed previously. The sophistication of movement control may substantially contribute to the uniqueness of humans in tool use.

Статтю присвячено визначенню ролі цінностей у діалозі культур. Цінності, присутні в міжкультурному діалозі, є важливою складовою культурної ідентичності, здатною об’єднати учасників діалогу. Питання розгляду діалогу культур як діалогу цінностей актуалізується у світлі сучасного глобалізуючого світу та наукових визначень поняття «культура» через цінності. Надзвичайно важливо аналізувати діалог культур, представники яких діють саме з позиції носіїв цінностей, не зосереджуючись на проблемах мовного та етнічного вимірів ідентичності. Зрештою, універсальний характер індивідуальних цінностей має об’єднуючу силу загального прагнення людства до добра, краси, свободи, а отже, (...) сприяє діалогу більше, ніж інші типи спільноти; заохочує до формулювання питань та пошуку відповідей, що сприяють співіснуванню в нових умовах. На думку авторів, діалог уникає ситуації, коли при взаємодії певна культура воліє виступати єдиним носієм певних моральних істин. Сама ситуація діалогу встановлює моральні орієнтири, діючи в межах яких учасники діалогу реалізують принципи рівності, відкритості, відповідальності, ненасильства, толерантності, співучасті. Морально-етичні виміри діалогу не допомагають вирішити проблеми культурного співіснування назавжди. Культурні тенденції трансформуються під впливом змін культурних передумов, дискурсу з усіма соціальними інститутами та процесами. Діалог має на меті стати місцем виникнення відносин, які ґрунтуються на загальнолюдських, надкультурних морально-етичних принципах, що мають силу глобального об’єднання людей. Поряд з цим у статті зазначається, що деякі визначення поняття «культура» розкривають ціннісне ядро ​​самого розуміння феномена культури. Слід розуміти: цінності не є чимось відчуженим від буття, що накопичується в процесі людського розвитку. Історична ретроспектива демонструє нам, що цінності активно взаємодіють, «перевіряються на міцність», трансформуються за допомогою діалогу і, таким чином, сстановлять основу культури. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the color meaning in the film of the famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou "Hero", the conceptual understanding of color as the main semantic element of the artistic solution. The object of research is the techniques of visual solutions in cinema. The perception of color in the culture of different peoples differs in certain nuances and depends on many factors, including national traditions and historically established stereotypes. Films by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese filmmakers are interesting (...) from the point of view of color solutions, as they differ in artistic originality and often offer the Russian audience an extraordinary semantic solution of the idea not only at the level of comprehension of the content, but also at the level of a specific color palette. The author similarly examines the color symbolism of Zhang Yimou's film "Hero". The conceptual content of the visual-figurative series, the originality of the coloristic solution of the film is comprehended. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the study of the color symbolism of Zhang Yimou's film "Hero" in the aspect of the correlation between the perception of the coloristic solution of the visual series and the conceptual content of the film. The author comes to the conclusion that despite the ambivalence of perception of a particular color in visual art, the coloristic solution is predetermined by the conceptual content of each episode, so color becomes the leading semantic concept of Zhang Yimou's film "Hero". (shrink)

The concept of deliberation in the Ukrainian philosophical discourse is both underestimated and overestimated. Underestimated — as a self-sufficient category that is not reducible to another con- cept, even if it is the concept of consensus or the concept of democracy. Deliberation appears pri- marily as a careful weighing and selection of arguments when making an important decision. Collegiality may or may not be present here, as well as openness. Therefore, the concept of deliber- ation is somewhat overestimated as something (...) that necessarily improves the quality of democratic procedures, and therefore, supposedly, deliberation itself is something democratic in nature. American political philosopher Joshua Cohen drew attention to the fact that deliberation can be of at least three types: individual deliberation, jury deliberation, and oligarch deliberation. The article analyzes these three types of deliberation and found that the closest to the democratic type of government is individual deliberation, or rather, joint deliberation of responsible citizens. While the deliberation of the jury is mostly closed, it is naturally limited access to the extent of the necessary competence of its possible participants. The deliberation of the oligarchs is even more closed and often even secret. However, the article states that it is more appropriate to replace the name «oligarchs» with the term «captains of business»: then the deliberation of the oligarchs ceases to be a cartel conspiracy, and turns into a coordinated protection of the interests of the national economy. However, for this, de- liberation itself is not enough, so not procedural, but other, namely, value factors of decision-making are needed. Democracy benefits from deliberation when the latter is complemented by the liberal and patriotic values of the participants in the deliberation. Already John Locke convincingly argues the importance of citizens achieving a common conscious agreement in state matters. However, for Locke, the very fact of having property was important, while in practice, achieving an effective agreement requires mechanisms for reconciling the positions of owners with very different amounts of property. To some extent, this problem can be solved by John Rawls` concept of justice. (shrink)

I would first like to extend gratitude to Jinyu Sun, who has put together this symposium, and to all the contributors for their penetrating critiques. In my short response I cannot do justice to al...

In this paper we aim to think systematically about, formulate, and begin addressing some of the challenges to applying theories of moral responsibility to behaviors shaped by a particular subset of unsettling psychological complexities: namely, implicit biases.

Interview of Amina Khelufi, Kseniia Myroshnyk and Nataliia Reva with Natalia Viatkina.

Modern dialogue of society and science proceeds in the conditions of social media distribution and the convergence of scientific knowledge. This processes change system of mass information and communication channels between scientific actors, leaders of public opinion and organizers of public initiatives. The conflict between an elite normativity of a scientific discourse and an egalitarian normativity of a public discourse takes the new forms. Authors show how in large quantities extending practice of civil expertise, based on civil journalism (a blogosphere (...) and social networks), interrupt into procedures of scientific examination. Active inclusion of civil experts became an attribute of transdisciplinary science. The main feature of this type of science is operational decision making in the conditions of uncertainty. However transition of transdisciplinary science to a phase of the technoscience defines convergence borders of the formal and informal knowledge. Technoscience takes root into the vital world as a magic “black box” for the inhabitant. Authors believe that the transdialogue formed by transdisciplinary scientific experts and deprofessionalized leaders of civil journalism is complicated by deficiency of epistemological competence of civil experts. One of the problem is inclusion the electronic media practices in production and the social circulation of scientific knowledge. Using rather known, but not yet entered in the field of philosophical scientific research examples of direct influence of civil experts on processes which in a former communication order were intra scientific, authors realised a research of the new aspects of modern science expanding a traditional subject of philosophy of science and technology. (shrink)

Metazoan genomes contain thousands of protein‐coding and non‐coding RNA genes, most of which are differentially expressed, i.e., at different locations, at different times during development, or in response to environmental signals. Differential gene expression is achieved through complex regulatory networks that are controlled in part by two types of trans‐regulators: transcription factors (TFs) and microRNAs (miRNAs). TFs bind to cis‐regulatory DNA elements that are often located in or near their target genes, while miRNAs hybridize to cis‐regulatory RNA elements mostly located (...) in the 3′ untranslated region of their target mRNAs. Here, we describe how these trans‐regulators interact with each other in the context of gene regulatory networks to coordinate gene expression at the genome‐scale level, and discuss future challenges of integrating these networks with other types of functional networks. (shrink)

Membrane damage induced by haemolytic agents does not necessarily lead to lysis: the pores that are formed at low concentration of agent are formed at low concentration of agent are not large enough to allow leakage of cytoplasmic proteins, and in many instances the lesions become repaired with time. Quite different agents induce a similar type of lesion: in each case leakage is reduced at low ionic strenth, and is prevented by divalent cations such as Ca2+ or Zn2+, suggesting a (...) possible therapeutic approach to the containment of several membrane‐damaging diseases. (shrink)

How and why did we become who we are? In "What Makes Us Human?" some of theorld's most brilliant thinkers offer their answers to this perennial puzzle,ncluding Susan Blackmore, Robin Dunbar, Susan Greenfield, Richard Harries,enan Malik, Richard Wrangham, Ian Tattersall, and Lewis Wolpert. Together,hey draw on a broad spectrum of disciplines, from anthropology, biochemistry,edicine, and neuroscience, to philosophy, psychology, and religion, to askhat makes us distinctively human. Is it our cognitive abilities, or our usef tools, our story-telling, our beliefs, our (...) curiosity, our ability to cook,r our culture? Are we half-ape or half-angel? "What Makes Us Human?"xplains how and why our ancestors adapted to their surroundings to produceuch clever, talented, and unlikely progeny. It is for all to enjoy. (shrink)