75 research outputs found
THE DEMOCRATIC BOUNDARY PROBLEM RECONSIDERED
Quem deve ter direito a participar em que decisĂ”es no processo democrĂĄtico? Este âproblema da delimitaçãoâ Ă© uma questĂŁo central para a democracia, e tem importĂąncia tanto teĂłrica como prĂĄtica. Todas as diferentes noçÔes de democracia tĂȘm, pelo menos, uma coisa em comum: uma referĂȘncia a uma comunidade de indivĂduos, âum povoâ, que toma decisĂ”es de forma democrĂĄtica. No entanto, que uma decisĂŁo seja tomada de acordo com um mĂ©todo democrĂĄtico por um determinado grupo de pessoas nĂŁo Ă© suficiente para que a decisĂŁo seja democrĂĄtica ou satisfatĂłria numa perspectiva democrĂĄtica. O grupo tem tambĂ©m de ser o grupo certo. Mas o que Ă© que faz com que um grupo seja o grupo certo? Tem sido surpreendentemente difĂcil determinar os critĂ©rios com os quais devemos identificar os membros do povo que tĂȘm o direito de participar em decisĂ”es colectivas. Neste artigo, irei revisitar alguns dos problemas discutidos no meu artigo de 2005 Ă luz de crĂticas recentes e da discussĂŁo da minha posição na literatura, e abordarei algumas questĂ”es novas.Who should have a right to take part in which decisions in democratic decision making? This âboundary problemâ is a central issue for democracy and is of both practical and theoretical import. If nothing else, all different notions of democracy have one thing in common: a reference to a community of individuals, âa peopleâ, who takes decision in a democratic fashion. However, that a decision is made with a democratic decision method by a certain group of people doesnât suffice for making the decision democratic or satisfactory from a democratic perspective. The group also has to be the right one. But what makes a group the right one? The criteria by which to identify the members of the people entitled to participate in collective decisions have been surprisingly difficult to pin down. In this paper, I shall revisit some of the problems discussed in my 2005 paper in light of some recent criticism and discussion of my position in the literature, and address a number of new issues
Population Ethics under Risk
Population axiology concerns how to evaluate populations in terms of their moral goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations âis better thanâ and âis as good asâ. The task has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. So far, this field has largely ignored issues about uncertainty and the conditions that have been discussed mostly pertain to the ranking of risk-free outcomes. Most public policy choices, however, are decisions under uncertainty, including policy choices that affect the size of a population. Here, we shall address the question of how to rank population prospectsâthat is, alternatives that contain uncertainty as to which population they will bring aboutâby the relations âis better thanâ and âis as good asâ. We start by illustrating how well-known population axiologies can be extended to population prospect axiologies. And we show that new problems arise when extending population axiologies to prospects. In particular, traditional population axiologies lead to prospect-versions of the problems that they praised for avoiding in the risk-free settings. Finally, we identify an intuitive adequacy condition that, we contend, should be satisfied by any population prospect axiology, and show how given this condition, the impossibility theorems in population axiology can be extended to (non-trivial) impossibility theorems for population prospect axiology
Value and Unacceptable Risk: Temkin's Worries about Continuity Reconsidered
Consider a transitive value ordering of outcomes and lotteries on outcomes, which satisfies substitutivity of equivalents and obeys âcontinuity for easy casesâ, i. e., allows compensating risks of small losses by chances of small improvements. Temkin (2001) has argued that such an ordering must also - rather counter-intuitively - allow chances of small improvements to compensate risks of huge losses. In this paper, we show that Temkin's argument is flawed but that a better proof is possible. However, it is more difficult to determine what conclusions should be drawn from this result. Contrary to what Temkin suggests, substitutivity of equivalents is a notoriously controversial principle. But even in the absence of substitutivity, the counter-intuitive conclusion is derivable from a strengthened version of continuity for easy cases. The best move, therefore, might be to question the latter principle, even in its original simple version: As we argue, continuity for easy cases gives rise to a sorites
On Millian Discontinuities
Suppose one sets up a sequence of less-and-less valuable objects such that each object in the sequence is only marginally worse than its immediate predecessor. Could one in this way arrive at something that is dramatically inferior to the point of departure? It has been claimed that if there is a radical value difference between the objects at each end of the sequence, then at some point there must be a corresponding radical difference between the adjacent elements. The underlying picture seems to be that a radical gap cannot be scaled by a series of steps, if none of the steps itself is radical. We show that this picture is incorrect on a stronger interpretation of value superiority, but correct on a weaker one. Thus, the conclusion we reach is that, in some sense at least, abrupt breaks in such decreasing sequences cannot be avoided, but that such unavoidable breaks are less drastic than it has been suggested
Extraterrestrial Life: Life on Mars - Then and Now
The recent claim to have identified possible signs of ancient life on Mars has been widely publicized and discussed. The authors conceded that none of the half-dozen pieces of evidence adduced in their paper individually provided strong support for extraterrestrial life, though they argued that the pieces added up to a case worth considering. Most - perhaps all - of the observed phenomena have counterparts in the inorganic world, so even the combination does not make a compelling case that there was ever life on Mars. Nevertheless, the importance of the problem has justified bringing the results to general attention. The paper has focussed interest on the origin and possible ubiquity of life, and on how we can design techniques capable of giving a more definitive answer to the question of whether there is, or has ever been, life elsewhere in the Universe
Asymmetries in the Value of Existence
According to asymmetric comparativism, it is worse for a person to exist with a miserable life than not to exist, but it is not better for a person to exist with a happy life than not to exist. My aim in this paper is to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. My account of asymmetric comparativism begins with a different asymmetry, regarding the (dis)value of early death. I offer an account of this early death asymmetry, appealing to the idea of conditional goods, and generalize it to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. I also address the objection that asymmetric comparativism has unacceptably antinatalist implications
Effective Altruism
In this entry, we discuss both the definition of effective altruism and objections to effective altruism, so defined
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