Distributive justice for aggressors

The individualist nature of much contemporary just war theory means that we often discuss cases with single attackers. But even if war is best understood in this individualist way, in war combatants often have to make decisions about how to distribute harms among a plurality of aggressors: they must decide whom and how many to harm, and how much to harm them. In this paper, I look at simultaneous multiple aggressor cases in which more than one distribution of harm among aggressors is available. I show how such cases pose deep questions concerning the nature, role, and scope of the necessity principle, and its relationship to both liability and narrow proportionality. I argue that a hitherto unrecognised measure – ‘narrow proportionality shortfall’ – and its distribution is relevant in choosing how to distribute harms across aggressors. I then extend this analysis to show how this may help us with a puzzle concerning sequential attacks

Global issues and global values in foreign language education : selection and awareness-raising

The global education trend has recently been gaining in significance in education systems throughout the world. This paper discusses a number of issues regarding the possibility of incorporating a global perspective into foreign language education, and considering also some of the implications of this for language teacher education Firstly, I shall describe my former teaching context – a pre-service foreign language teacher training course at the Belarusian State Pedagogical University in Minsk, Belarus. Then, I shall briefly discuss the concept of global education and its particular relevance to foreign language teaching, focusing on global issues and values as ways of incorporating a global perspective into foreign language education. Next, I shall report on and discuss the findings of my 2001 study of EFL teachers’ attitudes to certain aspects of the incorporation of a global perspective into foreign language education

Harms and benefits associated with psychoactive drugs: findings of an international survey of active drug users.

There have been several recent efforts in the UK and the Netherlands to describe the harms of psychoactive substances based on ratings of either experts or drug users. This study aimed to assess the perceived benefits as well as harms of widely used recreational drugs, both licit and illicit, in an international sample of drug users. The survey was hosted at https://www.internationaldrugsurvey.org/ and was available in three languages. Residents reported their experience of 15 commonly used drugs or drug classes; regular users then rated their harms and benefits. In all, 5791 individuals from over 40 countries completed the survey, although the majority were from English speaking countries. Rankings of drugs differed across 10 categories of perceived benefits. Skunk and herbal cannabis were ranked consistently beneficial, whilst alcohol and tobacco fell below many classified drugs. There was no correlation at all between users' harm ranking of drugs and their classification in schedules of the USA or ABC system in the UK. Prescription analgesics, alcohol and tobacco were ranked within the top 10 most harmful drugs. These findings suggest that neither the UK nor US classification systems act to inform users of the harms of psychoactive substances. It is hoped the results might inform health professionals and educators of what are considered to be both the harms and benefits of psychoactive substances to young people

Managing Madness: The ethics of identifying and treating mental illness

This essay analyzes different contemporary models for defining mental illness and offers a new framework that promotes the use of normative values during the clinical diagnostic process. Although ethic centric models for identifying mental illness do currently exist, these accounts are limited. Specifically, these accounts acknowledge the relationship between mental illness labels and implied responsibility in making their argument to support a normative framework, yet do not explain what capacities are necessary for an agent to have full responsibility. Recognizing this shortcoming, this paper provides an enriched model for identifying mental illness by marrying a normative conception of psychiatric dysfunction to a differential model for assigning moral responsibility. To end this paper looks at how this model may be applied in clinical practice by working through a specific case study of Alcohol Dependence Disorder. Ultimately, I conclude that a normative conception of mental illness married to an account of responsibility is a more appropriate and comprehensive model for recognizing and treating psychiatric dysfunction in clinical practice. By carefully balancing normative and pragmatic considerations, physicians can create more effective and just therapeutic regimens that are tailored to individual patients’ circumstances and needs

Follow-up question handling in the IMIX and Ritel systems: A comparative study

One of the basic topics of question answering (QA) dialogue systems is how follow-up questions should be interpreted by a QA system. In this paper, we shall discuss our experience with the IMIX and Ritel systems, for both of which a follow-up question handling scheme has been developed, and corpora have been collected. These two systems are each other's opposites in many respects: IMIX is multimodal, non-factoid, black-box QA, while Ritel is speech, factoid, keyword-based QA. Nevertheless, we will show that they are quite comparable, and that it is fruitful to examine the similarities and differences. We shall look at how the systems are composed, and how real, non-expert, users interact with the systems. We shall also provide comparisons with systems from the literature where possible, and indicate where open issues lie and in what areas existing systems may be improved. We conclude that most systems have a common architecture with a set of common subtasks, in particular detecting follow-up questions and finding referents for them. We characterise these tasks using the typical techniques used for performing them, and data from our corpora. We also identify a special type of follow-up question, the discourse question, which is asked when the user is trying to understand an answer, and propose some basic methods for handling it

What has been the tax competition experience of the past 20 years?

This paper describes tax reforms in OECD countries over the last 20 years and how they are related to tax competition. Both individual countries? reforms and multilateralinitiatives and developments are covered. This is followed by an overview of theempirical evidence on tax competition. Our conclusion is that the evidence for someinterdependence in tax setting behaviour is strong, although the exact process driving thisremains unclear. While the most basic tax competition models fail to explain thedevelopment in OECD countries, there is more than one possible explanation for thereforms undertaken if more advanced models are considered. The multilateral initiativesthat were implemented however do not seem to be related to resource-based taxcompetition, instead they are about taxing rights. This paper describes tax reforms in OECD countries over the last 20 years and how they are related to tax competition. Both individual countries? reforms and multilateralinitiatives and developments are covered. This is followed by an overview of theempirical evidence on tax competition. Our conclusion is that the evidence for someinterdependence in tax setting behaviour is strong, although the exact process driving thisremains unclear. While the most basic tax competition models fail to explain thedevelopment in OECD countries, there is more than one possible explanation for thereforms undertaken if more advanced models are considered. The multilateral initiativesthat were implemented however do not seem to be related to resource-based taxcompetition, instead they are about taxing rights

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