Les Arts et les Images se veut une introduction aux principaux terrains d’investigation de Dominic McIver Lopes, philosophe canadien contemporain, figure incontournable de l’esthétique et de la philosophie de l’art en langue anglaise au cours des vingt dernières années. Il ouvre une réflexion sur les méthodes employées en esthétique et philosophie de l’art aujourd’hui, qu’on soit un philosophe dit « analytique » ou bien « continental », Lopes cherchant à penser le lien entre les deux traditions. -/- À travers leur (...) textes respectifs, Laure Blanc-Benon, Jacques Morizot et Frédéric Pouillaude instaurent un dialogue avec Dominic McIver Lopes, sur plusieurs de ses livres : Understanding Pictures (1996), ouvrage de référence sur la question philosophique des images et de la représentation, Beyond Art (2014), livre qui traite de la question classique au XXe siècle de la définition de l’œuvre d’art, et Four Arts of Photography (2016) dans lequel Dominic Lopes met en avant une nouvelle philosophie de la photographie. À ce dialogue s’ajoutent trois textes de Lopes inédits en français, portant sur la méthode de l’esthétique et de la philosophie de l’art et également sur la question de la beauté et de la valeur esthétique. (shrink)

Payoff dominance, a criterion for choosing between equilibrium points in games, is intuitively compelling, especially in matching games and other games of common interests, but it has not been justified from standard game-theoretic rationality assumptions. A psychological explanation of it is offered in terms of a form of reasoning that we call the Stackelberg heuristic in which players assume that their strategic thinking will be anticipated by their co-player(s). Two-person games are called Stackelberg-soluble if the players' strategies that maximize (...) against their co-players' best replies intersect in a Nash equilibrium. Proofs are given that every game of common interests is Stackelberg-soluble, that a Stackelberg solution is always a payoff-dominant outcome, and that in every game with multiple Nash equilibria a Stackelberg solution is a payoff-dominant equilibrium point. It is argued that the Stackelberg heuristic may be justified by evidentialist reasoning. (shrink)

[David Charles] Aristotle, it appears, sometimes identifies well-being with one activity, sometimes with several, including ethical virtue. I argue that this appearance is misleading. In the Nicomachean Ethics, intellectual contemplation is the central case of human well-being, but is not identical with it. Ethically virtuous activity is included in human well-being because it is an analogue of intellectual contemplation. This structure allows Aristotle to hold that while ethically virtuous activity is valuable in its own right, the best life available for (...) humans is centred around, but not wholly constituted by, intellectual contemplation. /// [Dominic Scott] In Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8, Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of eudaimonia, primary and secondary. The first corresponds to contemplation, the second to activity in accordance with moral virtue and practical reason. My task in this paper is to elucidate this distinction. Like Charles, I interpret it as one between paradigm and derivative cases; unlike him, I explain it in terms of similarity, not analogy. Furthermore, once the underlying nature of the distinction is understood, we can reconcile the claim that paradigm eudaimonia consists just in contemplation with a passage in the first book requiring eudaimonia to involve all intrinsic goods. (shrink)

Dominic Scott compares the Republic and Nicomachean Ethics from a methodological perspective. He argues that Plato and Aristotle distinguish similar levels of argument in the defence of justice, and that they both follow the same approach: Plato because he thinks it will suffice, Aristotle because he thinks there is no need to go beyond it.

In cognitive science, creative ideas are defined as original and feasible solutions in response to problems. A common proposal is that creative ideas are generated across dedicated cognitive pathways. Only after creative ideas have emerged, they can be enacted to solve the problem. We present an alternative viewpoint, based upon the dynamic systems approach to perception and action, that creative solutions emerge in the act rather than before. Creative actions, thus, are as much a product of individual constraints as they (...) are of the task and environment constraints. Accordingly, we understand creative motor actions as functional movement patterns that are new to the individual and/or group and adapted to satisfy the constraints on the motor problem at hand. We argue that creative motor actions are promoted by practice interventions that promote exploration by manipulating constraints. Exploration enhances variability of functional movement patterns in terms of either coordination or control solutions. At both levels, creative motor actions can emerge from finding new and degenerate adaptive motor solutions. Generally speaking, we anticipate that in most cases, when exposed to variation in constraints, people are not looking for creative motor actions, but discover them while doing an effort to satisfy constraints. For future research, this paper achieves two important aspects: it delineates how adaptive (movement) variability is at the heart of (motor) creativity, and it sets out methodologies toward stimulating adaptive variability. (shrink)

Who should decide how a machine will decide what to do when it is driving a car, performing a medical procedure, or, more generally, when it is facing any kind of morally laden decision? More and more, machines are making complex decisions with a considerable level of autonomy. We should be much more preoccupied by this problem than we currently are. After a series of preliminary remarks, this paper will go over four possible answers to the question raised above. First, (...) we may claim that it is the maker of a machine that gets to decide how it will behave in morally laden scenarios. Second, we may claim that the users of a machine should decide. Third, that decision may have to be made collectively or, fourth, by other machines built for this special purpose. The paper argues that each of these approaches suffers from its own shortcomings, and it concludes by showing, among other things, which approaches should be emphasized for different types of machines, situations, and/or morally laden decisions. (shrink)

Empirical research on aesthetic response poses two challenges to philosophy. The more familiar challenge is that scientific explanations of aesthetic responses debunk what we take to be our reasons for those responses. One reaction to this challenge is an accommodation strategy that seeks to reconcile the scientific findings with an improved understanding of our normative reasons. This paper presents a more fundamental challenge: a well-established body of research in social psychology indicates that we routinely confabulate the reasons we give for (...) our aesthetic response. This challenges the accommodation strategy and suggests that philosophy should adopt a more radical naturalism about aesthetic response. (shrink)

Dominic LaRochelle | : Les religions ne constituent pas des monolithes immuables et inchangés dans le temps. Elles évoluent au fil de l’histoire humaine, changent au gré des transformations culturelles et sociales des communautés dans lesquelles elles s’implantent, négocient avec les instances séculières et religieuses leur pertinence et leur droit d’exister ; bref, elles innovent constamment pour s’assurer une place dans un monde lui aussi en constant changement. Cet article propose deux outils pour analyser les innovations au sein des traditions (...) religieuses : les théories de la réception, inspirées des travaux de Hans Robert Jauss, et l’invention des traditions, inspirée du célèbre ouvrage d’Eric J. Hobsbawm et Terence O. Ranger. L’intérêt de l’utilisation de ces outils en histoire est qu’ils permettent, entre autres choses, de dépasser les oppositions classiques tradition/modernité et authenticité/innovation en analysant les religions du point de vue des ruptures et des transformations à l’intérieur de celles-ci. Ces outils seront appliqués à un cas particulier, celui de la réception et de la réinvention du taoïsme dans les sociétés occidentales au XXe siècle. Cette tradition religieuse chinoise vieille de plusieurs siècles a en effet été réinventée en Occident et transformée en une tradition spirituelle universelle répondant aux attentes des Occidentaux en matière de spiritualité contemporaine. | : Religions are not immutable monoliths that remain unchanged over time. They evolve over the course of human history ; changing according to the cultural and social transformations of the communities in which they are established and negotiating with secular and religious authorities for their relevance and right to exist. In short, they continually innovate to secure a place in a constantly changing world. This article proposes two tools to analyze innovations within religious traditions : reception theories, inspired by the works of Hans Robert Jauss, and the invention of tradition, inspired by the celebrated work of Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger. The interest of using these tools in a historical approach is that they allow us, among other things, to overcome the traditional oppositions of tradition vs. modernity and authenticity vs. innovation by analyzing religions from a rupture and transformation point of view. These tools will be applied to a particular case, namely the reception and reinvention of Taoism in Western societies in the twentieth Century. This centuries-old Chinese religious tradition has been reinvented in the West and transformed into a universal spiritual tradition that meets the expectations of Westerners for contemporary spirituality. (shrink)

Pictures are principally descriptive. Advertising images highlight features of potential purchases; cartoons open portals to scenes in fictional worlds; snapshots in the family photo album remind us of our past selves and landmark events in our personal histories; works of pictorial art express thoughts or feelings about depicted scenes. In addition, pictures serve a directive or action-guiding function that, though not taken into account by theorists, deserves no less attention than their descriptive one. Theories of depiction and the appreciation of (...) pictures stand to benefit by taking "directive pictures" into account, as do theories of representation in general and mental representation in particular. (shrink)

Certain representations are bound in special ways to our sensory capacities; consider, for instance, pictures, sound recordings, and the various forms of mental sensory imagery. What do these representations have in common, and what makes them different from representations of other kinds? Dominic Gregory employs novel ideas on perceptual states and sensory perspectives to explain the special nature of the contents of distinctively sensory representations. The book contains extensive discussions of e.g. perceptual imagination, pictorial representation, and memories.

Accession Number: ATLA0001788471; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 26-43.; Physical Description: diag, table ; Language(s): English; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic raises a host of challenging ethical questions at every level of society. However, some of the most acute questions relate to decision making in intensive care. The problem is that a small but significant proportion of patients develop severe viral pneumonitis and respiratory failure. It now seems likely that the number of critically ill patients will overwhelm the capacity of intensive care units (ICUs) within many health systems, including the National Health Service in the UK. The (...) experience of Northern Italy—a couple of weeks ahead of the UK, suggests that it will simply not be possible to provide mechanical ventilation to every patient who might need it. When the crunch comes, the unpalatable question facing clinicians is which patient to save. There are some obvious strategies to avoid or reduce the problem—through measures to increase intensive care capacity, and via society-level interventions to reduce the spread of the virus. These are vitally important, but unfortunately they are unlikely to prevent the problem of demand outstripping supply from occurring. What, then, should clinicians do? How should they allocate the scarce resource of intensive care—particularly over the coming weeks as the crisis escalates? There are different values at stake in triage decisions, but at a basic level the key values are those of benefit and …. (shrink)

Provides an account of what it is for works of academic philosophy to be beautiful in their content or in their mode of expression.

What you see can shape how you feel, and the route from seeing to feeling sometimes involves empathy – as you might empathize with a woman you see grieving the death of her child. But empathy also comes from what you see in pictures. Bellini's Pieta? is one among many paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs that evoke empathy – and are designed to do so. Going further, it seems that episodes of empathy triggered by pictures can help build up a (...) person's capacity for empathic response. Indeed, they do so by fortifying the link between seeing and empathy in a distinctive way. To establish this thesis, we need a broad conception of empathic response and also the right conception of what we see in pictures. (shrink)

The concept of dominance is used in the behavioral and biological sciences to describe outcomes in a variety of competitive interactions. In some taxa, a history of agonistic encounters among individuals modifies the course of future agonistic encounters such that the existence of a certain type of relationship can be inferred. If one is to characterize such relationships as dominance, however, then they must be distinguished from other kinds of interaction patterns for which the term tends to be (...) used, as well as from factors such as territoriality and "trained" winners and losers, which may also influence the expression of agonistic behavior. Operational definitions based on causal, functional, evolutionary, and ontogenetic considerations have been proposed. Reliability and validity problems have been discussed, but the dominance concept has proved useful despite methodological difficulties. The confusion of dominance relationships (which involve two or more individuals) with dominance ranks (which are assigned to a single individual) has obscured the possible evolutionary basis of dominance relationships. If benefits accrue to dominant members of pairs, then those attributes which allow an animal to establish dominance can be selected. Dominance per se and dominance ranks, on the other hand, cannot be genetically transmitted since they constitute relationships with other individuals rather than absolute attributes. Dominance rankings in particular may be useful for describing behavioral patterns within a group, but they may reflect our own ability to count rather than any important variable in social organization. (shrink)

Given its brevity, Plato's Meno covers an astonishingly wide array of topics: politics, education, virtue, definition, philosophical method, mathematics, the nature and acquisition of knowledge and immortality. Its treatment of these, though profound, is tantalisingly short, leaving the reader with many unresolved questions. This book confronts the dialogue's many enigmas and attempts to solve them in a way that is both lucid and sympathetic to Plato's philosophy. Reading the dialogue as a whole, it explains how different arguments are related to (...) one another and how the interplay between characters is connected to the philosophical content of the work. In a new departure, this book's exploration focuses primarily on the content and coherence of the dialogue in its own right and not merely in the context of other dialogues, making it required reading for all students of Plato, be they from the world of classics or philosophy. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 10, October 2019, Page 61-63.

The representation of color by pictures raises worthwhile questions for philosophers and psychologists. Moreover, philosophers and psychologists interested in answering these questions will benefit by paying attention to each other's work. Failure to recognize the potential for interdisciplinary cooperation can be attributed to tacit acceptance of the resemblance theory of pictorial color. I argue that this theory is inadequate, so philosophers of art have work to do devising an alternative. At the same time, if the resemblance theory is false, then (...) color depiction has interesting implications for color science. Empirical researchers must rethink the widespread assumption that color recognition requires color constancy. I suggest that a neuropsychological account of color recognition will be instrumental to completing the philosophical task, but by the same token scientists might do well not to proceed without casting an eye to the work of philosophers of art. (shrink)

Limiting dangerous climate change is now widely believed to require negative emissions, a prospect some believe to be unjust and unacceptably risky. While NETs are not risk-free, I argue tha...

Precautionary Principles are often said to be appropriate for decision-making in contexts of uncertainty such as climate policy. Contexts of uncertainty are contrasted to contexts of risk depending on whether we have probabilities or not. Against this view, I argue that the risk-uncertainty distinction is practically irrelevant. I start by noting that the history of the distinction between risk and uncertainty is more varied than is sometimes assumed. In order to examine the distinction, I unpack the idea of having probabilities, (...) in particular by distinguishing three interpretations of probability: objective, epistemic, and subjective probability. I then claim that if we are concerned with whether we have probabilities at all—regardless of how low their epistemic credentials are—then we almost always have probabilities for policy-making. The reason is that subjective and epistemic probability are the relevant interpretations of probability and we almost always have subjective and epistemic probabilities. In contrast, if we are only concerned with probabilities that have sufficiently high epistemic credentials, then we obviously do not always have probabilities. Climate policy, for example, would then be a case of decision-making under uncertainty. But, so I argue, we should not dismiss probabilities with low epistemic credentials. Rather, when they are the best available probabilities our decision principles should make use of them. And, since they are almost always available, the risk-uncertainty distinction remains irrelevant. (shrink)

In the case of Re M, summarised in the paper by Julian Sheather, Justice Baker faced the difficult task of weighing up objectively whether or not it was in Mâs best interests to withdraw artificial feeding and to let her die.1 The judge concluded that M was ârecognisably aliveâ, and that the advantages of continued life outweighed the disadvantages. He compared her minimally conscious state favourably to that of a persistent vegetative state .2 It was clear that artificial feeding would (...) have been withdrawn if she had been in a PVS , but because she was in fact minimally conscious, the judge decided that treatment must continue. But does it make sense to treat MCS differently from PVS in this way? Is it better to be minimally conscious than unconscious? Similar questions have been raised before.3 In 2006, scientists reported results of sophisticated neuroimaging studies which suggested that some patients in persistent vegetative state , long thought to be unaware, had evidence of minimal consciousness.4 The question then was on the moral significance of this level of consciousness, and whether the presence of such evidence meant that treatment such as artificial nutrition must be continued.5 ,6There are several potential reasons why the presence of minimal consciousness might warrant continuing life-sustaining treatment. The first is that patients in minimally conscious state might have a better prognosis than those who are in PVS. There are relatively few studies …. (shrink)

Why me? -- Sticks and stones -- Hammer of God -- God is great -- The problem of atheists -- Guardian angels -- Nations under God -- God knows.

Virtue ethics interprets human action as pursuing good ends through practices that develop qualities internal to those final goals. The philosophical approach has been identified as critical of economics, leading in turn to the innovative response that by viewing the market as mutually beneficial exchange, economic practice is in fact defendable on virtue ethics grounds. This defends economics using arguments drawn from virtue ethics, but there is a need also to explore space for virtue ethics within economic theory. Examining key (...) contributions of Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya Sen and Elinor Ostrom, the article notes that virtue ethics’ appreciation of persons’ communicability of ends is increasingly being relied upon within economics, though sometimes under different names. Its strength to interdisciplinary work between economics and philosophy lies in presenting a methodology able to capture how human beings are capable of, though not fixated on, cooperation. (shrink)

Hypotheses in aesthetics should explain appreciative failure as well as appreciative success. They should state the general conditions under which people fail to understand and value works as works of art. This stricture is all the more important when the typical response to conceptual art is one of resistance. Some philosophers explain this by claiming that conceptual art violates traditional theories of art. Others say that it violates folk ontologies of art. In fact, the appreciative failure to which conceptual art (...) is prone is a consequence of the fact that it is not visual art, as it appears to be; rather it is an entirely new art form. Works in new art forms pose special challenges to appreciation. Identifying these challenges enriches theorizing about art. (shrink)

This issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics features a special symposium on ‘elective ventilation’ . EV ) was originally described in the 1990s by doctors working in Exeter in the UK.1 At that time there was concern about the large shortfall in organs for transplantation. Patients could become organ donors if they were diagnosed as being brain dead, but this only ever occurred in patients on breathing machines in intensive care who developed signs of brainstem failure. Doctors wondered if (...) there were patients dying outside intensive care who, if they were ventilated, could become brain dead and hence eligible to donate their organs. They embarked on a process of identifying patients who were dying who would not normally be taken to intensive care because their prognosis was judged to be too poor, and then ‘electing’ to insert breathing tubes when they stopped breathing.1 With the consent of family members the patients were supported in intensive care until they were diagnosed as having signs of brain death, or until the family and doctors together judged that this was unlikely to occur.1 The Exeter team saw a 50% increase in their numbers of organs for transplantation.Box 1 Definition of elective ventilation Elective ventilation is the provision to a patient of intensive medical treatment with the sole purpose of facilitating organ donation, in the absence of an expected medical benefit.EV was a controversial practice at the time. There were a number of papers written from points of view defending2 ,3 and criticising it.4 A Department of Health guideline in 1994 concluded that EV was not in the best interests of patients and was therefore unlawful5; subsequently, the practice effectively ceased.2 However, debate about EV has not …. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphysical status of Ezumezu logic in the direction of logical realism. While presenting Ezumezu logic as a prototype of African logic, Chimakonam makes statements that somewhat entail logical monism. Using the method of critical analysis of related literature, the paper argues that presenting Ezumezu logic as one of the prototypes of African logic while at the same time making claims that elevate it to a hegemonic status, gives rise to what is regarded in the paper as (...) the monist-pluralist paradox. Drawing lessons from Abakedi’s ID paradox, the paper argues that a monist logical foundation for African logic cannot be consistently defended without paradoxes. The paper proposes that different African philosophies should be grounded by different African logics such that one need not be trained in one particular prototype such as Ezumezu logic or argue in conformity to it to qualify as an African professional or scholar. (shrink)

In the case that triggered this round-table discussion there are three separate factors that contribute to moral uncertainty.1 First, the infant, baby T, is extremely premature with suspected brain injury and potentially poor prognosis. Second, the gestational mother is critically unwell herself and her outlook is guarded. Third, as linked commentaries make clear, the legal status of the intended parents is complex and ambiguous.2 3 Any of these factors on their own would be enough to generate ethical complexity and distress (...) in the neonatal intensive care unit. The combination of the three is likely to be highly stressful for all concerned.4 Commentaries on the case emphasise the complex legal questions and the potential need to involve the court. One resource that is not mentioned is the potential value of clinical ethics input in such a case. This is complementary to the need for legal advice. Its aim would be to help think through the specifically ethical, rather than legal questions. There are several things that I would aim to clarify if chairing a clinical ethics discussion on the case. First, it may be useful to draw on the concept of the …. (shrink)

Mental illness affects every aspect of life and society, from relationships between individuals and within families, to small communities and entire polities. People with serious mental illness die decades before those without. Mentally ill people suffer daily as they struggle to function in societies that are unforgiving and uninterested in their pain. Those with serious mental illness may be incarcerated because of their sickness, they may be passed over or fired from jobs, subjected to ridicule and mockery, given little treatment (...) or safe shelter, and violently victimized. As a result, persons with mental illness are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. And while the world is focused on the COVID-19... (shrink)

In _ Psychiatry in the Scientific Image, _Dominic Murphy looks at psychiatry from the viewpoint of analytic philosophy of science, considering three issues: how we should conceive of, classify, and explain mental illness. If someone is said to have a mental illness, what about it is mental? What makes it an illness? How might we explain and classify it? A system of psychiatric classification settles these questions by distinguishing the mental illnesses and showing how they stand in relation to one (...) another. This book explores the philosophical issues raised by the project of explaining and classifying mental illness. Murphy argues that the current literature on mental illness -- exemplified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -- is an impediment to research; it lacks a coherent concept of the mental and a satisfactory account of disorder, and yields too much authority to commonsense thought about the mind. He argues that the explanation of mental illness should meet the standards of good explanatory practice in the cognitive neurosciences, and that the classification of mental disorders should group symptoms into conditions based on the causal structure of the normal mind. (shrink)

This article proposes a Social Determinants of Health framework as a counter to the prominence of bio-determinist tropes in understandings of the relationship between concussion and later life neurodegenerative conditions in athletic populations. It is argued that debates about concussion (or repetitive head impacts) causing CTE have been particularly influenced by broader social trends towards neuro-essentialism. This paradigm reduces complex social behaviour to brain matter and continues to dominate the field despite the recent diversification of evidence from autopsy-based studies of (...) neuropathology to epidemiological studies comparing recorded causes of death among former elite athletes. In contrast, this article explores the ‘causes of causes’ of neurodegenerative conditions. It outlines the ways in which the distinct dynamics of: a) employment, b) education, income and wealth, c) health systems and services, and d) social environment and public safety relate to the specific occupational conditions of elite sport and likely negatively shape health outcomes of athletic populations. The article concludes by arguing that to more effectively address these particular health harms we must move beyond narrow, mono-causal models and evoke a cultural change that extends beyond making rule changes and adjusting psychological attitudes and behavioural norms, to redress the social structural parameters of elite sports participation. The continuation of narrower, neuro-centric and reductionist paradigms obscures the causes of the causes of neurodegenerative decline and limits the scope for change. (shrink)

In diesem Open-Access-Buch wird Marc Richirs Projekt einer Neugründung der Phänomenologie untersucht, das unter dem Leitfaden der Spannung des konkreten Leibes und der subjektiven Leiblichkeit als Weltbezüglichkeit das Phänomen als Phänomen in den Blick zu bekommen versucht. Das Selbst fällt für Richir weder mit dem Leib (dem Phänomenologischen) noch mit dem Körper (dem Symbolischen) zusammen. Zwischen beiden Registern besteht ein unvermeidlicher Abstand, der auf den Überschuss der Erfahrung, das Abenteuer der Sinnbildung in ihrer unendlichen Mannigfaltigkeit hindeutet. Die These der Studie (...) ist, dass der Überschuss des Leibes und der Leiblichkeit im Überschuss des Sprachphänomens bezeugt ist und dass die Spannung zwischen der phänomenologischen Darstellung des Leibes bzw. der Leiblichkeit und ihrer symbolischen Bestimmung im Sprachlichen aufgezeigt werden kann. Zudem wird die interdisziplinäre Anschlussfähigkeit des Ansatzes Richirs profiliert. Der Autor Dr. Dominic Nnaemeka Ekweariri studierte an der Päpstlichen Universität Urbaniana Rom, an der Imo State University Nigeria sowie an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum und erhielt seinen Ph.D. von der Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Er ist Mitglied des Marc Richir Archivs am Institut für Transzendentalphilosophie und Phänomenologie an der Bergischen Universität Wuppertal, wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl für Fundamentaltheologie und Religionsphilosophie an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität in Münster und Postdoktorand am Institut Catholique de Paris in Frankreich. (shrink)

Clinical guidelines summarise available evidence on medical treatment, and provide recommendations about the most effective and cost-effective options for patients with a given condition. However, sometimes patients do not desire the best available treatment. Should doctors in a publicly-funded healthcare system ever provide sub-optimal medical treatment? On one view, it would be wrong to do so, since this would violate the ethical principle of beneficence, and predictably lead to harm for patients. It would also, potentially, be a misuse of finite (...) health resources. In this paper, we argue in favour of permitting sub-optimal choices on the basis of value pluralism, uncertainty, patient autonomy and responsibility. There are diverse views about how to evaluate treatment options, and patients’ right to self-determination and taking responsibility for their own lives should be respected. We introduce the concept of cost-equivalence, as a way of defining the boundaries of permissible pluralism in publicly-funded healthcare systems. As well as providing the most effective, available treatment for a given condition, publicly-funded healthcare systems should provide reasonable suboptimal medical treatments that are equivalent in cost to the optimal treatment. We identify four forms of cost-equivalence, and assess the implications of CE for decision-making. We evaluate and reject counterarguments to CE. Finally, we assess the relevance of CE for other treatment decisions including requests for potentially superior treatment. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer a (...) hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore three separate questions that are relevant to assessing the prudential value of life in infants with severe life-limiting illness. First, what is the value or disvalue of a short life? Is it in the interests of a child to save her life if she will nevertheless die in infancy or very early childhood? Second, how does profound cognitive impairment affect the balance of positives and negatives in a child’s future life? Third, if the life of (...) a child with life-limiting illness is prolonged, how much suffering will she experience and can any of it be alleviated? Is there a risk that negative experiences for such a child will remain despite the provision of palliative care? We argue that both the subjective and objective components of well-being for children could be greatly reduced if they are anticipated to have a short life that is affected by profound cognitive impairment. This does not mean that their overall well-being will be negative, but rather that there may be a higher risk of negative overall well-being if they are expected to experience pain, discomfort, or distress. Furthermore, we point to some of the practical limitations of therapies aimed at relieving suffering, such that there is a risk that suffering will go partially or completely unrelieved. Taken together, these considerations imply that some life-prolonging treatments are not in the best interests of infants with severe life-limiting illness. (shrink)

In early 2020, a number of countries developed and published intensive care triage guidelines for the pandemic. Several of those guidelines, especially in the UK, encouraged the explicit assessment...