Lara Buchak argues for a version of rank-weighted utilitarianism that assigns greater weight to the interests of the worse off. She argues that our distributive principles should be derived from the preferences of rational individuals behind a veil of ignorance, who ought to be risk averse. I argue that Buchak’s appeal to the veil of ignorance leads to a particular way of extending rank-weighted utilitarianism to the evaluation of uncertain prospects. This method recommends choices that violate the unanimous preferences (...) of rational individuals and choices that guarantee worse distributions. These results, I suggest, undermine Buchak’s argument for rank-weighted utilitarianism. (shrink)

Weight-gain in psychiatric populations is a common clinical challenge. Many patients suffering from mental disorders, when exposed to psychotropic medications, gain significant weight with or without other side-effects. In addition to reducing the patients' willingness to comply with treatment, this weight-gain may create added psychological or physiological problems that need to be addressed. Thus, it is critical that clinicians take precautions to monitor and control weight-gain and take into account and treat all problems facing an individual. (...) In this review, we examine some of the key issues surrounding weight-gain in individuals suffering from mental disorders for contemporary practitioners in community clinics. We describe some factors known to make certain patients more susceptible to treatment-induced weight-gain and mechanisms implicated in this process. We also highlight a few psychological and pharmacological interventions that have proven effective in weight management. Importantly, we provide critical steps for management and prevention of weight-gain and related issues in the clinical practice of psychopharmacology. (shrink)

_The Weight of Things_ explores the hard questions of our daily lives, examining both classic and contemporary accounts of what it means to lead 'the good life'. Looks at the views of philosophers such as Aristotle, the Stoics, Mill, Nietzsche, and Sartre as well as contributions from other traditions, such as Buddhism Incorporates key arguments from contemporary philosophers including Peter Singer, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Nozick, John Finnis, and Susan Wolf Uses examples from biography, literature, history, movies and media, and (...) the news Gives a fresh perspective on the hard questions of our daily lives An engaging read; an excellent book for both students and general readers. (shrink)

Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is ‘excessive’ in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight’s proposal and prioritarianism. More specifically, I defend a multi-threshold view which gives weighted priority to benefits directly above (...) and below its thresholds, but gives benefits below the lowest threshold lexical priority over benefits above the highest threshold. (shrink)

This paper addresses the two extensional objections to the Humean Theory of Reasons—that it allows for too many reasons, and that it allows for too few. Although I won’t argue so here, manyof the other objections to the Humean Theoryof Reasons turn on assuming that it cannot successfully deal with these two objections.1 What I will argue, is that the force of the too many and the too few objections to the Humean Theorydepend on whether we assume that Humeans are (...) committed to a thesis about the weight of reasons—one I call Proportionalism. In particular, I’ll show how a version of the Humean Theorythat rejects Proportionalism can reasonablyhope to escape both the too many and the too few objections. This will constitute my defense of this version of the Humean Theory. But then, separately, I will argue that this defense of the Humean Theoryis not ad hoc. I’ll argue that Humeans have no reason to accept Proportionalism in the first place. Or at least, no weightyone. There are three parts to the paper. In Part 1 we introduce the Humean Theoryand the too few reasons objection. I’ll first layout the objection, and then layout the basis for a response on behalf of myfavored version of the Humean Theory. There will be an obvious objection to my defense— but it will turn out to depend on the assumption of Proportionalism. This will constitute myargument that the susceptibilityof the Humean Theoryto.. (shrink)

Alison Bailey’s The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance examines how whiteness misshapes our humanity, measuring the weight of whiteness in terms of its costs and losses to collective humanity. People of color feel the weight of whiteness daily. The resistant habits of whiteness and its attendant privileges, however, make it difficult for white people to feel the damage. White people are more comfortable thinking about white supremacy in terms of what privilege (...) does for them, rather than feeling what it does to them. The first half of the book focuses on the overexposed side of white privilege, the side that works to make the invisible and intangible structures of power more visible and tangible. Bailey discusses the importance of understanding privileges intersectionally, the ignorance-preserving habits of “white talk,” and how privilege and ignorance circulate in educational settings. The second part invites white readers to explore the underexposed side of white dominance, the weightless side that they would rather not feel. The final chapters are powerfully autobiographical. Bailey engages readers with a deeply personal account of what it means to hold space with the painful weight of whiteness in her own life. She also offers a moving account of medicinal genealogies, which helps to engage the weight she inherits from her settler colonial ancestors. The book illustrates how the gravitational pull of white ignorance and comfort are stronger than the clean pain required for collective liberation. The stakes are high: Failure to hold the weight of whiteness ensures that white people will continue to blow the weight of historical trauma through communities of color. -/- All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. -/- -/- . (shrink)

Perceptual learning is an enduring change in the perceptual system – and our resulting perceptions – due to practice or repeated exposure to a perceptual stimulus. It is involved in the acquisition of perceptual expertise: the ability to make rapid and reliable high-level categorizations of objects unavailable to novices. Attentional weighting is one process by which perceptual learning occurs. Advancing our understanding of this process is of particular importance for understanding what is learned in perceptual learning. Attentional weighting seems to (...) favour the hypothesis that what experts learn is simply to better direct their attention to elements of the stimulus relevant to making post-perceptual categorizations. Here I argue against this hypothesis. Attentional weighting is an integral component of the process that allows experts to come to represent high-level properties in perceptual experience. (shrink)

According to Stephen Finlay, ‘A ought to X’ means that X-ing is more conducive to contextually salient ends than relevant alternatives. This in turn is analysed in terms of probability. I show why this theory of ‘ought’ is hard to square with a theory of a reason’s weight which could explain why ‘A ought to X’ logically entails that the balance of reasons favours that A X-es. I develop two theories of weight to illustrate my point. I first (...) look at the prospects of a theory of weight based on expected utility theory. I then suggest a simpler theory. Although neither allows that ‘A ought to X’ logically entails that the balance of reasons favours that A X-es, this price may be accepted. For there remains a strong pragmatic relation between these claims. (shrink)

This article critically explores the tension between perceptions of weight loss surgery as a last resort and as a tool. This tension stems from patients’ doubt and insecurity whether expectations for a healthy life will come through. Thus, even after surgery, traditional weight loss methods, including diets and exercise, are considered paramount. Drawing on a series of interviews with Norwegian women, we argue that the commercialization of weight loss surgeries as well as the moral stigmas attached to (...) such operations serve to perpetuate this tension. More specifically, the women were advised to leave their old habits behind, and embrace a healthier and more active lifestyle. In such a climate, we argue that undergoing surgery without subsequently embodying dietary and exercise norms is hardly an option. On the contrary, these become a moral obligation that modern women need to relate to—and perhaps negotiate—in order to repudiate stigmas attached to weight loss surgeries as a quick fix for those incapable of losing weight in the “proper” manner. (shrink)

Although the concept of corporate social responsibility is fundamentally multidimensional, most studies use composite scores to assess corporate social performance. How relevant are such composite scores? How the CSR dimensions are weighted? Should the weighting scheme be the same across sectors? This article proposes an original weighting scheme of CSR strengths and concerns, at the sector level, which is proportional to media and nongovernmental organizations scrutiny. The authors show that previous CSP assessments underweight environmental and corporate governance concerns. Moreover, findings (...) suggest that firms that are exposed to the closest scrutiny are usually criticized on one single dimension: for instance, banks for bad corporate governance, and basic-resource firms for environmental damage. Composite scores based on equal weights hence misrepresent CSP and the difference in CSR between sectors. (shrink)

Weighted voting involves weighting representatives’ votes by the populations that they represent. Such systems have been adopted in some legislative bodies as a remedy for malapportionment, and are sometimes used to elect candidates for the executive branch of government. But they receive little attention. This note observes the neglected vices of weighted voting systems: they violate intuitive conditions of monotonicity and participation. These vices count significantly against the use of weighted voting, and reflecting on why they arise improves our understanding (...) of axioms in social choice theory. (shrink)

In this provocative book, Susan Bordo untangles the myths, ideologies, and pathologies of the modern female body. Bordo explores our tortured fascination with food, hunger, desire, and control, and its effects on women's lives.

We defend our multifactorial weighting model of the sense of agency and our critique of the comparator model against the critiques that have been brought forward by and . Building on the specification of our model that emerges from this response, we will suggest a distinct mechanism how weighting of different agency factors might work: internal and external agency cues are constantly weighted according to their reliability in a given situation. Thus, the weighting process underlying the sense of agency might (...) follow the principles of optimal cue integration. We review recent empirical evidence for this hypothesis, demonstrating that the multifactorial weighting model is not only testable, but has in fact already received first empirical support. (shrink)

In this research, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model was developed and tested to predict Birth Weight. A number of factors were identified that may affect birth weight. Factors such as smoke, race, age, weight (lbs) at last menstrual period, hypertension, uterine irritability, number of physician visits in 1st trimester, among others, as input variables for the ANN model. A model based on multi-layer concept topology was developed and trained using the data from some birth cases in (...) hospitals. The evaluation of testing the dataset shows that the ANN model is capable of correctly predicting the birth weight with 100% accuracy. (shrink)

Faced with a choice between saving one stranger and saving a group of strangers, some people endorse weighted lotteries, which give a strictly greater chance of being saved to the group of strangers than the single stranger. In this paper I attempt to criticize this view. I first consider a particular version of the weighted lotteries, Frances Kamm's procedure of proportional chances, and point out two implausible implications of her proposal. Then, I consider weighted lotteries in general, and claim (1) (...) that the correct thing to distribute is not the chance of being saved but the good of being saved, (2) that assigning some chance to the single stranger is not the only way to give a positive (and equal) respect to the people concerned, and (3) that the weighted lottery appears to be deceptive since it would show the respect to the single stranger in a negligible way. (shrink)

We describe a prediction method called "Attractivity Weighting" (AW). In the case of cue-based paired comparison tasks, AW's prediction is based on a weighted average of the cue values of the most successful cues. In many situations, AW's prediction is based on the cue value of the most successful cue, resulting in behavior similar to Take-the-Best (TTB). Unlike TTB, AW has a desirable characteristic called "access optimality": Its long-run success is guaranteed to be at least as great as the most (...) successful cue. While access optimality is a desirable characteristic, concerns may be raised about the short-term performance of AW. To evaluate such concerns, we here present a study of AW's short-term performance. The results suggest that there is little reason to worry about the short-run performance of AW. Our study also shows that, in random sequences of paired comparison tasks, the behavior of AW and TTB is nearly indiscernible. (shrink)

The allocation of vaccines and therapeutics for Covid‐19 obviously raises ethical questions, and physicians and ethicists have begun to address them. Writers have identified various criteria that should guide allocation decisions, but the criteria often conflict and need to be balanced against one another. This article proposes a model for thinking about how different considerations that are relevant to the distribution of vaccines and scarce treatments for Covid‐19 could be integrated into an allocation procedure. The model employs the construct of (...) a weighted lottery, which is a construct that has been employed in other contexts that involve the distribution of scarce resources. The article highlights the advantages of applying a weighted lottery to the Covid‐19 context and offers an illustration for how it might work in practice. The primary aim of the article is to articulate the structural features of a weighted lottery for this context and to bring out its advantages over other methods for allocating Covid‐19 medications. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine how different types of sports rules place unique demands upon athletes with regard to their weight and how these demands condition different strategies of weight management. We categorized sports rules into three main categories according to their relationship to weight: 1) sports with weight-prescribing rules; 2) sports rules that advantage lean light bodied athletes; and 3) sports rules that advantage lean robust muscular athletes. This enabled us to provide (...) a more complex view than has been presented by authors in sports sciences, whose emphasis is usually on researching athletes’ body composition, sometimes establishing the ‘desired body’, or addressing the problematic aspects of athletes’ weight-controlling practices within ‘weight-sensitive sports’. We advocate a change of focus from ‘weight-sensitive sports’ to risk groups, since not all athletes in a sport are equally affected by weight issues raised by the sporting test. Thus, this approach offers an athlete-centred approach to weight management in sport, rather than an emphasis on certain types of sports. (shrink)

Some empirical findings seem to show that people value health benefits differently depending on the age of the beneficiary. Health economists and philosophers have offered justifications for these preferences on grounds of both efficiency and equity. In this paper, I examine the most prominent examples of both sorts of justification: the defence of age-weighting in the WHO's global burden of disease studies and the fair innings argument. I argue that neither sort of justification has been worked out in satisfactory form: (...) age should not be taken into account in the framework of the burden of disease measure, and on the most promising formulations of the fair innings argument, it turns out to be merely an indicator of some other factor. I conclude by describing the role of age in theories of justice of healthcare resource allocation. (shrink)

Probability weighting is a marked feature of decision-making under risk. For poor people in rural areas of developing countries, how probabilities are evaluated matters for livelihoods decisions, especially the probabilities associated with losses. Previous studies of risky choice among poor people in developing countries seldom consider losses and do not offer a refined tracking of the probability-weighting function. We investigate probability weighting among smallholder farmers in Uganda, separately for losses and for gains, using a method that allows refined tracking of (...) the PWF for a population with low levels of literacy. For losses, we find marked probability weighting near zero, which is in line with evidence found in Western labs. For gains, the absence of probability weighting is remarkable, particularly its absence near 100%. We also find marked differences in probability weighting for traditional farmers which are in line with the observed livelihoods strategies in the study area. (shrink)

, whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more important than proximate ones; several different causes can each be responsible for most of an effect; small causes need (...) not be less important than big ones; and non-additive interactive effects between causes present no particular difficulty. Key Words: causation • explanation • history • interaction • proximate • underlying. (shrink)

We initiate an account of Shelah’s notion of “strong dependence” in terms of generically stable measures, proving a measure analogue of the fact that a stable theory $T$ is “strongly dependent” if and only if all types have almost finite weight.

The book develops, defends, and applies a "Dual Scale" model of weighing reasons to resolve various issues in ethics. It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons and probably a lot of stuff you didn't want to know too. It addresses, among other things, what the general issue of weighing reasons is; what it is to weigh reasons correctly; whether reasons have more than one weight value (e.g., justifying, requiring, and/or commending weight); whether (...) class='Hi'>weight values are context sensitive; how to tell what the weights of reasons are; how reasons for are related to reasons against; and how the weights of reasons aggregate. After addressing such issues, it explains a number of puzzling phenomena in ethics, such as the All or Nothing Problem, the normative significance of small improvements, and the intransitivity of the makes-it-permissible-to-act-against relation. (shrink)

In this article I argue against Schroeder's account of the weight of normative reasons. It is shown that in certain cases an agent may have reasons she cannot know about without them ceasing to be reasons, and also reasons she cannot know about at all. Both possibilities are troubling for Schroeder's view.

Harmonic Grammar (HG) and Optimality Theory (OT) are closely related formal frameworks for the study of language. In both, the structure of a given language is determined by the relative strengths of a set of constraints. They differ in how these strengths are represented: as numerical weights (HG) or as ranks (OT). Weighted constraints have advantages for the construction of accounts of language learning and other cognitive processes, partly because they allow for the adaptation of connectionist and statistical models. HG (...) has been little studied in generative linguistics, however, largely due to influential claims that weighted constraints make incorrect predictions about the typology of natural languages, predictions that are not shared by the more popular OT. This paper makes the case that HG is in fact a promising framework for typological research, and reviews and extends the existing arguments for weighted over ranked constraints. (shrink)

Weights of evidence and logistic regression are two loglinear methods for mineral potential mapping. Both models are limited by their respective basic assumptions in application. Ideally, WofE indicator patterns have the property of conditional independence with respect to the point pattern of mineral deposits to be predicted; in LR, there supposedly are no interactions between the point pattern and two or more of the indicator patterns. If the CI assumption is satisfied, estimated LR coefficients become approximately equal to WofE contrasts (...) and the two methods produce similar results; additionally, bias then is avoided in that the sum of all estimated posterior probabilities becomes approximately equal to the number of observed discrete events. WofE allows construction of input layers that have missing data as a separate category in addition to known presence-absence type input, while logistic regression as such is not capable of handling missing data. As an improved WofE model based on LR, modified weights of evidence inherit the advantages of both LR and WofE, i.e., eliminates bias due to lack of CI and can handle missing data as well. Pixel or unit area input for MWofE consists of positive and negative weights for presence and absence of a pattern plus zeros for missing data. MWofE first is illustrated by application to simple examples. Next, it is applied to a study area with 20 known gold occurrences in southwestern Nova Scotia in relation to four input layers based on geological and lake geochemical data. Assuming that geochemical data were missing for the northern part of the study area, MWofE, like WofE but unlike LR, provides posterior probabilities for the entire area. (shrink)

Shortages of new therapeutics to treat coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have forced clinicians, public health officials, and health systems to grapple with difficult questions about how to fairly allocate potentially life-saving treatments when there are not enough for all patients in need (1). Shortages have occurred with remdesivir, tocilizumab, monoclonal antibodies, and the oral antiviral Paxlovid (2) -/- Ensuring equitable allocation is especially important in light of the disproportionate burden experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic by disadvantaged groups, including Black, Hispanic/Latino and (...) Indigenous communities, individuals with certain disabilities, and low-income persons. However, many health systems have resorted to first-come, first-served approaches to allocation, which tend to disadvantage individuals with barriers in access to care (3). There is mounting evidence of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in access to medications for COVID-19 (4, 5). -/- One potential method to promote equitable allocation is to use a weighted lottery, which is an allocation strategy that gives all eligible patients a chance to receive the scarce treatment while also allowing the assignment of higher or lower chances according to other ethical considerations (6). We sought to assess the feasibility of implementing a weighted lottery to allocate scarce COVID-19 medications in a large U.S. health system and to determine whether the weighted lottery promotes equitable allocation. (shrink)

How should we respond to cases of disagreement where two epistemic agents have the same evidence but come to different conclusions? Adam Elga has provided a Bayesian framework for addressing this question. In this paper, I shall highlight two unfortunate consequences of this framework, which Elga does not anticipate. Both problems derive from a failure of commutativity between application of the equal weight view and updating in the light of other evidence.

Jeffrey conditioning tells an agent how to update her priors so as to grant a given probability to a particular event. Weighted averaging tells an agent how to update her priors on the basis of testimonial evidence, by changing to a weighted arithmetic mean of her priors and another agent’s priors. We show that, in their respective settings, these two seemingly so different updating rules are axiomatized by essentially the same invariance condition. As a by-product, this sheds new light on (...) the question how weighted averaging should be extended to deal with cases when the other agent reveals only parts of her probability distribution. The combination of weighted averaging and Jeffrey conditioning is a comprehensive updating rule to deal with such cases, which is again axiomatized by invariance under embedding. We conclude that, even though one may dislike Jeffrey conditioning or weighted averaging, the two make a natural pair when a policy for partial testimonial evidence is needed. (shrink)

The testimonia concerning weight in early Greek atomism appear to contradict one another. Some reports assert that the atoms do have weight, while others outright deny weight as a property of the atoms. A common solution to this apparent contradiction divides the testimonia into two groups. The first group describes the atoms within a κόσμος, where they have weight; the second group describes the atoms outside of a κόσμος, where they are weightless. A key testimonium for (...) proponents of this solution is Aëtius 1.3.18. It apparently denies weight as a property of the atoms, and supposedly describes the atoms when they are outside of a κόσμος. I argue against this interpretive solution by demonstrating, first, that Aëtius 1.3.18 does not deny that weight is a property of the atoms. Second, I argue that the report does not describe the atoms when they are outside of a κόσμος. Although these are largely negative conclusions, I contend that we are not left without a solution to the present interpretive difficulty. Once our testimonia concerning weight in early Greek atomism are examined thoroughly, it is clear that there is no conflict among them. (shrink)

In many scientific, economic and policy-related problems, pieces of information from different sources have to be aggregated. Typically, the sources are not equally competent. This raises the question of how the relative weights and competences should be related to arrive at an optimal final verdict. Our paper addresses this question under a more realistic perspective of measuring the practical loss implied by an inaccurate verdict.

Weight systems on chord diagrams play a central role in knot theory and Chern-Simons theory; and more recently in stringy quantum gravity. We highlight that the noncommutative algebra of horizontal chord diagrams is canonically a star-algebra, and ask which weight systems are positive with respect to this structure; hence we ask: Which weight systems are quantum states, if horizontal chord diagrams are quantum observables? We observe that the fundamental gl(n)-weight systems on horizontal chord diagrams with N (...) strands may be identified with the Cayley distance kernel at inverse temperature beta=ln(n) on the symmetric group on N elements. In contrast to related kernels like the Mallows kernel, the positivity of the Cayley distance kernel had remained open. We characterize its phases of indefinite, semi-definite and definite positivity, in dependence of the inverse temperature beta; and we prove that the Cayley distance kernel is positive (semi-)definite at beta=ln(n) for all n=1,2,3,... In particular, this proves that all fundamental gl(n)-weight systems are quantum states, and hence so are all their convex combinations. We close with briefly recalling how, under our "Hypothesis H", this result impacts on the identification of bound states of multiple M5-branes. (shrink)

Weight of the Nation is a national forum for obesity prevention leaders who are “game changers” — those who are leading the field of innovative obesity prevention practice — to provide opportunities to expand and advance evidence-based and emerging solutions to the epidemic and brainstorm on collaborative efforts to apply these solutions in settings that reach individuals across the lifespan. WON is hosted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center (...) for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. WON is unique for its conference style which focuses participants on population-level approaches that can be implemented in select settings and sectors and in its use of social media and long-distance training to increase participation and information dissemination. (shrink)

Abstract:One view of practical reasoning is that it involves the weighing of reasons. It is not clear, however, how the weights of reasons combine, especially given the logical and substantive relations among different reasons. Nor is it clear how the weighing of reasons relates to decision theoretic maximization of expected value. This paper constructs a formal model of reasons and their weight in order to shed light on these issues. The model informs philosophical debates about reasons, such as the (...) question of whether reasons or values are more fundamental and the opposing doctrines of atomism and holism about reasons. (shrink)

Particularists in ethics emphasize that the normative is holistic, and invite us to infer with them that it therefore defies generalization. This has been supposed to present an obstacle to traditional moral theorizing, to have striking implications for moral epistemology and moral deliberation, and to rule out reductive theories of the normative, making it a bold and important thesis across the areas of normative theory, moral epistemology, moral psychology, and normative metaphysics. Though particularists emphasize the importance of the holism of (...) the normative, however, it is not something that they have been able to explain. In this paper I’ll show how to use a small number of simple and, I’ll argue, independently compelling assumptions in order to both predict and explain the holistic features of the normative with respect to the non-normative. The basic idea of the paper is simple. It is that normative claims are holistic because they are general, rather than because they defy generalization. (shrink)

We consider a setting where a decision maker’s uncertainty is represented by a set of probability measures, rather than a single measure. Measure-by-measure updating of such a set of measures upon acquiring new information is well known to suffer from problems. To deal with these problems, we propose using weighted sets of probabilities: a representation where each measure is associated with a weight, which denotes its significance. We describe a natural approach to updating in such a situation and a (...) natural approach to determining the weights. We then show how this representation can be used in decision making, by modifying a standard approach to decision making—minimizing expected regret—to obtain minimax weighted expected regret. We provide an axiomatization that characterizes preferences induced by MWER both in the static and dynamic case. (shrink)

The study of Enrici et al. (2023) in Ecology and Society [1] is one of a few in-depth discussions of the significance of money on how people (including academics, politicians, and residents) understand the impact of humans on the environment. These insights are critical, especially given the urgency of understanding anthropogenic influences on the ecosystem in the face of the unpredictable dangers of climate catastrophe.

Interest in the Keynesian concept of evidential weight has led to divergent views concerning the burden of proof in adjudication. It is argued that Keynes's concept is properly engaged only in the context of one special kind of decision, the decision whether or not the evidence is ripe for a decision on the underlying merits, whether the latter decision is based on probability, relative plausibility, coherence or otherwise. As a general matter, this question of ripeness is appropriately assigned to (...) the judiciary for resolution as part of the burden of production, rather than to the jury or other factfinder as part of the burden of persuasion. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how the ‘weight’ or ‘strength’ of normative reasons is best understood. We argue that, given our preferred analysis of reasons as sources of normative support, this question has a straightforward answer: the weight of a normative reason is simply a matter of how much support it provides. We also critically discuss several competing views of reasons and their weight. These include views which take reasons to be normatively fundamental, views which analyze (...) reasons as evidence concerning what one ought to do, views which analyze reasons in terms of good reasoning, and views which analyze reasons as explanations of ought-facts, fittingness-facts, or goodness-facts. (shrink)

Weighted lottery proposals give guidance in rescue dilemma situations by balancing the demands of comparative and absolute fairness. While they do not advocate for saving the greater number outright, they are responsive to absolute fairness insofar as they show a certain sensitivity to the numbers involved. In this paper we investigate what criterion of absolute fairness we should demand weighted lotteries to fulfill. We do so by way of critically examining what is probably the most sophisticated weighted lottery on the (...) market: Gerard Vong's Exclusive Composition-Sensitive (EXCS) lottery. We find that both the standard that seems most common in the debate, and a different standard Vong uses to criticize Jens Timmermann's Individualist Lottery are in contradiction to basic demands placed upon weighted lotteries and are therefore unsuitable as necessary conditions for absolute fairness. We instead propose a purely gradual understanding of absolute fairness. (shrink)

We consider weighted o-minimal hybrid systems, which extend classical o-minimal hybrid systems with cost functions. These cost functions are “observer variables” which increase while the system evolves but do not constrain the behaviour of the system. In this paper, we prove two main results: optimal o-minimal hybrid games are decidable; the model-checking of WCTL, an extension of CTL which can constrain the cost variables, is decidable over that model. This has to be compared with the same problems in the framework (...) of timed automata where both problems are undecidable in general, while they are decidable for the restricted class of one-clock timed automata. (shrink)