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Multidimensional poverty measures require implicit, if not explicit, trade-offs between different dimensions. One of the central values that has to be weighed against other values in this context is the value of life, since this is a central part of multidimensional poverty measures—often proxied for by longevity or child mortality. Different ways of weighting value dimensions (even weighting dime
This case study illustrates how family members can assist in the care of teenagers with diabetes but that there are also serious risks actualized by such involvement. In particular, it highlights ethical complications that arise when the role of a family member is changed from ‘parent’ to ‘care provider’. The ‘counseling, self-care, adherence’ (CSA) approach offers a look at the role that family c
This chapter introduces a new framework for thinking about climate justice. Climate change and climate negotiations actualize equity considerations in at least three relevant dimensions: distributions of benefits and burdens across countries, within countries, and across individuals in the world. Our proposed framework enables researchers and policymakers to visualize and combine different equity
The debate around whether or not torture can be morally justified have been intense ever since September 11, 2001, and gained further actuality as the Obama administration in the U.S. released documents concerning interrogational techniques used by the C.I.A. In this chapter, I examine the notion of torture often used in these debates, within the field of academic philosophy as well as in the publ
This paper introduces incommensurability, its potential relevance to population-level bioethics, and thecontributions to the special issue. It provides an overview of recent research on incommensurability, outlines somereasons to believe in its possibility and relevance, and presents some problems and opportunities that arise onceone accepts that incommensurability is possible.
Context. Neutron-capture elements represent an important nucleosynthetic channel in the study of the Galactic chemical evolution of stellar populations. For stellar populations behind significant extinction, such as those in the Galactic centre and along the Galactic plane, abundance analyses based on near-infrared (NIR) spectra are necessary. Previously, spectral lines from the neutron-capture el
This article presents an approach to how to make reasonable social choices when independent criteria (e.g., prioritarianism, religious freedom) fail to fully determine what to do. The article outlines different explanations of why independent criteria sometimes fail to fully determine what to do and illustrates how they can still be used to eliminate ineligible alternatives, but it is argued that
This paper addresses how to think about the permissibility of introducing deadweight costs (so-called 'ordeals') on candidate recipients of goods in order to attain better outcomes. The paper introduces some distinctions between different kinds of value dimensions that should be taken into account when such judgements are made and draws from the literature on comparisons across different value dim
A notorious problem that has recently received increased attention in axiology, normative theory and population ethics is the apparent ubiquity of what can be generally called nondeterminacy. This paper illustrates how nondeterminacy can spawn cyclical rankings. So, accepting that practical reasons can admit of nondeterminacy challenges the widely held idea that ‘better than’ is transitive. As a r
This article shows that introducing the positive comparative relation parity only helps one block so-called “Spectrum Arguments” in order to avoid their unsavoury implications if one specifies parity in a specific way with respect to its persistence. The article illustrates how parity must both admit of persistency and be weakly non-persistent for parity to block Spectrum Arguments, and identifies
This paper introduces a condition for rational choice that states that accepting decision methods and normative theories that sometimes entail that the act of choosing a maximal alternative renders this alternative non-maximal is irrational. The paper illustrates how certain distributive theories that ascribe importance to what the status quo is violate this condition and argues that they thereby
This paper argues that decision problems and money-pump arguments should not be a deciding factor against accepting non-transitive better than relations. If the reasons to accept normative standpoints that entail a non-transitive better than relation are compelling enough, we ought to revise our decision method rather than the normative standpoints. The paper introduces the most common argument in
This article analyzes approaches to nondeterminacy (e.g., incommensurability, indeterminacy, parity) that suggest that one can make justified choices when primary criteria fail to fully determine a best alternative by introducing a secondary criterion. It is shown that these approaches (in the article called “two-step models”) risk violating Basic Contraction Consistency. Some ways of adjusting tw
How should states and international organizations allocate global health resources? This paper examines proposals for distributing these resources in the literature. First, we look at the literature on the metrics for measuring what matters and consider how they might be modified to avoid some common objections—e.g., that these measures discriminate against the disabled or fail to give due weight
In this paper, I argue that sufficientarian principles are indispensable in the set of principles that have bearing on issues in distributive ethics. I provide two arguments in favor of this claim. First, I argue that sufficientarianism is the only framework that allows us to appropriately analyze what sort of obligations we have toward individuals who are badly off due to their own faults and cho
This present contribution presents an approach to making rational choices in face of cluelessness, focusing on effective altruism. I begin by illustrating how effective altruism faces the challenge of cluelessness, which implies a particular kind of incompleteness I call practical incompleteness. I then argue that this is not a reason for proponents of effective altruists to become skeptics, but r
It is a common view that benefits to the worse off should be given priority when health benefits are distributed. This paper addresses how to understand who is worse off in this context when individuals are differently well off at different times. The paper argues that the view that this judgment about who is worse off should be based solely on how well off individuals are when their complete live
