Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest public health crises of our time. The natural biological process that causes microbes to become resistant to antimicrobial drugs presents a complex social challenge requiring more effective and sustainable management of the global antimicrobial commons—the common pool of effective antimicrobials. This special issue of Health Care Analysis explores the potential of two legal approaches—one long-term and one short-term—for managing the antimicrobial commons. The first article explores the lessons for antimicrobial resistance that can be (...) learned from recent climate change agreements, and the second article explores how existing international laws can be adapted to better support global action in the short-term. (shrink)

Neuromarketing is an emerging field in which academic and industry research scientists employ neuroscience techniques to study marketing practices and consumer behavior. The use of neuroscience techniques, it is argued, facilitates a more direct understanding of how brain states and other physiological mechanisms are related to consumer behavior and decision making. Herein, we will articulate common ethical concerns with neuromarketing as currently practiced, focusing on the potential risks to consumers and the ethical decisions faced by companies. We argue that the (...) most frequently raised concerns—threats to consumer autonomy, privacy, and control—do not rise to meaningful ethical issues given the current capabilities and implementation of neuromarketing research. But, we identify how potentially serious ethical issues may emerge from neuromarketing research practices in industry, which are largely proprietary and opaque. We identify steps that can mitigate associated ethical risks and thus reduce the threats to consumers. We conclude that neuromarketing has clear potential for positive impact on society and consumers, a fact rarely considered in the discussion on the ethics of neuromarketing. (shrink)

Most proposals for new international agreements aim to address important global challenges. If the goal is to solve problems, then the value of these agreements depends on their ability to influence the world — to shape norms, constrain behavior, facilitate cooperation, and mobilize action. A recent review of empirical studies has suggested that many international agreements fail to achieve their aspirations. The review indicates that the form in which states make commitments to each other — through an international legal agreement (...) or through other means — may not be as important as commonly thought. It is the content of the commitments and how these are supported by mechanisms to encourage implementation that matter the most. When developing proposals for new international agreements, like the one that has recently been proposed to address antibiotic resistance, attention to implementation mechanisms should therefore be equal to if not greater than the attention paid to its form. (shrink)

Naturalism - the thesis that all facts are natural facts, that is the facts that can be recognised and explained by a natural science - plays a central role in contemporary analytical philosophy. Yet many philosophers reject the claims of naturalism. The essays in this anthology explore the difficulties of naturalism by revealing the ambiguities surrounding it, as well as the tensions that exist among its critics.

The aim of this collection is not to reject evolutionary psychology but to open up new vistas which students and researchers can use to ensure that evolutionary ...

The music learning environment is a context in which fundamental forces and values underlying human musicality may be evident. Social bonding within music-making groups is characterized by a high degree of complexity whereas issues of clarity, accuracy, and coordination remain the focus of learning. Physical and cognitive impairments that compromise music learning opportunities offer a critical test of music's link to social bonding.

New natural law advocates are somewhat notorious for their loose action theory, having a track record of counterintuitive claims. In response to criticisms, advocates have entrenched, further defending their questionable action theory. This paper first rehearses the basic criticism against the new natural law action theory. It then examines four recent attempts to revive this action theory and finds these attempts wanting. Within these attempts, certain patterns arise. Given a certain means A to a goal C, a search is made (...) to determine whether any middle means B is implied by A. The standards of this search vary wildly, however. By some standards, a middle means can be found; by others, every middle means can be easily swept aside. The same author will sometimes use both kinds of standards, depending upon the situation. One great weakness of the action theory, then, is a lack of consistency in applying a universal standard. (shrink)

Issues that arise in using game theory to model national security problems are discussed, including positing nation-states as players, assuming that their decision makers act rationally and possess complete information, and modeling certain conflicts as two-person games. A generic two-person game called the Conflict Game, which captures strategic features of such variable-sum games as Chicken and Prisoners'' Dilemma, is then analyzed. Unlike these classical games, however, the Conflict Game is a two-stage game in which each player can threaten to retaliate (...) — and carry out this threat in the second stage — if its opponent chose noncooperation in the first stage.Conditions for the existence of different pure-strategy Nash equilibria, or stable outcomes, are found, and these results are extended to situations in which the players can select mixed strategies (i.e., make probabilistic threats or choices). Although the Conflict Game sheds light on the rational foundations underlying arms races, nuclear deterrence, and other strategic situations, more detailed assumptions are required to tie this generic game to specific conflicts. (shrink)

Growth mindset is an important aspect of children’s socioemotional development and is subject to change due to environmental influence. Orchestral music education may function as a fertile context in which to promote growth mindset; however, this education is not widely available to children facing economic hardship. This study examined whether participation in a program of orchestral music education was associated with higher levels of overall growth mindset and greater change in levels of musical growth mindset among children placed at risk (...) by poverty. After at least 2 years of orchestral participation, students reported significantly higher levels of overall growth mindset than their peers; participating students also reported statistically significant increases in musical growth mindset regardless of the number of years that they were enrolled in orchestral music education. These findings have implications for future research into specific pedagogical practices that may promote growth mindset in the context of orchestral music education and more generally for future studies of the extra-musical benefits of high-quality music education. (shrink)

Martin Rhonheimer’s The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics offers a bold summary of Thomistic virtue ethics, laid upon some not-so-Thomistic foundations, culminating in questionable, perhaps even dangerous, conclusions concerning actions evil in themselves. As anintroduction to ethical thought, the book covers a wide range of topics, including happiness, freedom, the nature of human actions, the moral virtues, conscience, the principles of practical reason, consequentialism, Kantian ethics, and much more. For some of these topics Rhonheimer provides a (...) helpful summary of the ethics of Aquinas, sprinkled with thoughtful reflections for the modern age. For other topics Rhonheimer introduces questionable interpretations and developments of Aquinas, written with obscurity and lack of precision. This article provides some suggested alternatives to Rhonheimer’s account, especially with regard to the origin of the first practical principles. (shrink)

The identity conception of truth holds that a thinkable is true just in case it is a fact. As such, it sets itself against correspondence theories of truth, while respecting the substantive role played by truth in respect of enquiry. In this article, I motivate and develop that view, and, in so doing, promote a particular conception of sense. This allows me to defend the view from two substantial criticisms. First, that the identity conception of truth is incoherent in respect (...) of its treatment of objects in the realm of reference, and, second, that it is committed to a view of the world in which ordinary objects have no place. (shrink)

John Finnis claims that in order to judge actions we must approach them from the perspective of the acting person, so that the moral evaluation of actions appears to become private. This paper examines Elizabeth Anscombe’s claim that interior intentions can be discovered through exterior actions. Because deliberation is shaped by the causal features of the world, these causal structures can, when viewed from the outside, serve as a window into the private life of the mind. Therefore, we can usually (...) determine someone’s intention through his observable actions, so that the moral character of actions can become public by way of signs. Causal connections are both effects of intention and causes of intention. Neither of these relations by itself serves as an adequate sign of intention, but the combination of these two (causal structures both as effects and as causes of intention) can serve as signs of intention. (shrink)

This article aims to defend the thesis—originally defended by Alan Donagan but rejected by Philippa Foot and most others—that the doing/allowing distinction is based upon the difference between acting and failing to act. The paper restricts its focus to the second aspect of this thesis: that every allowing is most fundamentally a failure to act. Foot rejects the thesis because of cases of ‘enabling harm’—such as removing a respirator—in which the agent allows some harm by way of doing something. The (...) troubling aspect of these cases, however, disappears when two points are better understood. First, an independent sequence must be understood in relation to the agent's own actions. Second, sometimes an agent has ongoing actions, such as the use of a respirator. (shrink)

We report the results of an experimental test of whether preaching the normative appeal of the sure-thing principle leads decision-makers to make choices that satisfy it. We use Allais-type decision problems to observe the incentive-compatible choices of 147 subjects, which either violate the sure-thing principle or adhere to it. Subjects are presented with normative arguments that support the counterfactual behaviour and then repeat their decisions. We observe violations of the sure-thing principle are robust to its normative justification. This result replicates (...) a famous small-sample observation using hypothetical tasks that was published by Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky almost half a century ago. We argue that this finding is as relevant now as it was then and that their design can be usefully applied to address contemporary issues in behavioural economics. (shrink)

Poetic translation of Tibullus Elegy I.3.

This paper analyzes criteria of fair division of a set of indivisible items among people whose revealed preferences are limited to rankings of the items and for whom no side payments are allowed. The criteria include refinements of Pareto optimality and envy-freeness as well as dominance-freeness, evenness of shares, and two criteria based on equally-spaced surrogate utilities, referred to as maxsum and equimax. Maxsum maximizes a measure of aggregate utility or welfare, whereas equimax lexicographically maximizes persons' utilities from smallest to (...) largest. The paper analyzes conflicts among the criteria along with possibilities and pitfalls of achieving fair division in a variety of circumstances. (shrink)

This paper reports on the design and implementation of a multi-phase interactive process among a set of scientists, policy makers, land managers, and community representatives, so as to facilitate communication, mutual understanding, and participative decision making. This was part of the Ecosystem Services Project in Australia. The project sought to broaden public understanding about the natural ecosystems in Australia. The study reported here pertains to one of the project sites--the Goulburn Broken catchment, a highly productive agricultural watershed in the south-east (...) of Australia. The paper demonstrates how, starting from a condition of diversity of ideas and interests among the participants, systematic dialogue and mutual learning could be generated, leading to identification of options for more sustainable land management practices. The concept of "ecosystem services" was used as an integrative tool across disciplines and community perspectives. The concept of scenarios was used to encourage future-focussed thinking among the participants. The idea of "stakeholder jury" was used to promote deliberation. A process of multi-criteria evaluation was used to facilitate convergence of viewpoints, through informed trade-offs and compromises. This experience led to the development of a process for integration research, which helped in harmonising across diverse understandings and values in a transparent and structured manner. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the applicability of the theory of projection for Anthropological hypotheses. The claim is made that Goodman's classic statement of the problem does not apply in its entirety to actual Anthropological hypotheses. The recent Freeman-Mead debate is employed as a framework for the discussion, illustrating that the issue of projectibility, while central for the social sciences, is best used as a backdrop to illustrate several important methodological problems. For Anthropology, and other related social (...) sciences, the central methodological problem, which is directly related to the projectibility one, is the development and justification of evidence-rules that can be used for a theory of confirmation. A preliminary attempt is then made to articulate the nature of these rules within the general Hempelian framework of qualitative confirmation. (shrink)