Justifying Standing to Give Reasons: Hypocrisy, Minding Your Own Business, and Knowing One's Place

What justifies practices of “standing”? Numerous everyday practices exhibit the normativity of standing: forbidding certain interventions and permitting ignoring them. The normativity of standing is grounded in facts about the person intervening and not on the validity of her intervention. When valid, directives are reasons to do as directed. When interventions take the form of directives, standing practices may permit excluding those directives from one’s practical deliberations, regardless of their validity or normative weight. Standing practices are, therefore, puzzling – forbidding giving reasons and, if given, permitting disregarding such reasons. What justifies standing practices are the values that they protect, including privacy, autonomy, independence, valuable relationships, and equal respect. These values count in favor of standing’s duty against certain interventions and, when these duties of non-intervention are breached, the values underpinning those duties count in favor of standing’s permission to discount or exclude those interventions from one’s practical deliberations – the normative weight of those interventions notwithstanding

Why \u27Nonexistent People\u27 Do Not Have Zero Well-Being but No Well-Being at All

Some believe that the harm or benefit of existence is assessed by comparing a person’s actual state of well-being with the level of well-being they would have had had they never existed. This approach relies on ascribing a state or level of well-being to “nonexistent people,” which seems a peculiar practice: how can we attribute well-being to a “nonexistent person”? To explain away this oddity, some have argued that because no properties of well-being can be attributed to “nonexistent people” such people may be ascribed a neutral or zero level of well-being, setting the baseline for comparatively assessing the harm or benefit of coming into existence. However, this line of argumentation conflates the category of having zero well-being with the category of having no well-being. No Ф, unlike a zero level of Ф, is not comparable to levels of Ф – neutral, positive, or negative. Considering the nature of well-being and the fact that “nonexistent people” cannot (metaphysically or conceptually) have well-being determinative properties, it follows that “nonexistent people” have no well-being rather than zero well-being

An Assessment of Preparations Made in the United States for Highly Hazardous Communicable Diseases Following the 2014-2016 Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic

The 2014-2016 Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa was unprecedented in magnitude and scope. The threat of imported cases of EVD in the United States prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish a tiered network of hospitals to enhance domestic isolation capacity, including the designation of select hospitals as Ebola treatment centers (ETCs). As of spring 2015, no information existed on the capacity, physical infrastructure, staffing models, or infection control protocols of these newly-established ETCs, nor was there information on other highly hazardous communicable diseases (HHCDs) these units would admit. Moreover, no documentation was available on the varying preparedness activities of state health departments related to HHCD transport and the treatment center network. The purpose of theses studies was to assess preparations made in the United States in response to the 2014-16 EVD epidemic; specifically, to determine costs incurred by CDC-designated ETCs in establishing their unit, capabilities developed by ETCs, and guidelines established by state health departments for the management and transportation of patients with EVD or another HHCD. Data were obtained through the distribution of three electronic national assessments; two administered to the 56 CDC-designated ETCs in 2015 and 2016 (85% and 64% response rate, respectively) and one to all state public health departments (73% response rate). On average, responding ETCs incurred $1.2 million in establishing their facility and are awaiting$650,000 in reimbursement. Cumulative capacity of reporting ETCs was 121 beds. Although nearly all facilities had written protocols for various infection control domains, procedures and capabilities varied. ETCs and state health departments differed in reports on diseases that would be treated in high-level isolation. The domestic preparedness efforts described in this dissertation are fundamental to the U.S. response to the next HHCD threat; however, questions on the sustainability and scalability of this network and the use of these units for a non-EVD HHCD outbreak remain

Responsibility in Negligence: Why the Duty of Care is Not a Duty “To Try”

Even though it offers a compelling account of the responsibility-component in the negligence standard—arguably the Holy Grail of negligence theory—Professor John Gardner is mistaken in conceptualizing the duty of care in negligence as a duty to try to avert harm. My goal here is to explain why and to point to an alternative account of the responsibility component in negligence. The flaws in conceiving of the duty of care as a duty to try are: failing to comport with the legal doctrine of negligence and failing as a revisionary account for the law; overly burdening autonomy and restricting the liberty of thought; adversely affecting the prevention of negligent harm—the essence of the negligence standard—; and, raising severe probative difficulties. Moreover, the duty of care also does not give rise to what I call a de facto duty to try. The duty of care is better construed to require only certain conduct and not trying. Returning to the primary appeal and motivation for exploring the validity of equating the duty of care with a duty to try—searching for the responsibility-component in the negligence standard—I argue that the responsibility-component in negligence does not take the form of an obligation to try but rather has a conditional form, manifested in the conditions of applicability of the negligence standard. In other words, the negligence standard comprises a conduct-based as opposed to a combined action-/intent-based duty (such as a duty to try) as its duty of care, a duty that only applies to actors who possess the capacity to intentionally or knowingly comply with it, or, put differently, possess the capacity to try

Justifying Subversion: Why Nussbaum Got (the Better Interpretation of) Butler Wrong

One of the most common critiques directed at deconstructive and poststructuralist theories is that they are amoral – rejecting the validity of the very idea of norms and moral principles as grounds for justifying or criticizing political action and social structures – and that in rejecting the validity of the distinction between what is just and what is unjust, they “collaborate with evil.” By now, an almost canonical example of this common critique is found in Martha Nussbaum’s highly critical essay on the work of Judith Butler, titled The Professor of Parody.3 Here, I focus on Nussbaum’s critique and on Butler’s work as examples of the “common critique” and of deconstruction and poststructuralism in political theory. I argue that the more modest and sounder understanding of Butler – taken as a deconstructive and poststructuralist theorist – is not susceptible to these accusations of amorality and collaboration with evil

A Normative Theory of the Clean Hands Defense

What is the clean hands defense (CHD) normatively about? Courts designate court integrity as the CHD’s primary norm. Yet, while the CHD may at times further court integrity it is not fully aligned with court integrity. In addition to occasionally instrumentally furthering certain goods (e.g., court legitimacy, judge integrity, deterrence), the CHD embodies two judicially undetected norms: retribution and tu quoque (“you too!”). Tu quoque captures the moral intuition that wrongdoers are in no position to blame, condemn, or make claims on others who are guilty of similar or related wrongdoing. The CHD shares the structure of the tu quoque: both are doctrines of standing that deflate the illocutionary force (and not the truth-value) of normative speech acts directed against wrongdoers by those guilty of similar/connected wrongdoing. The CHD also exhibits retributive logic: it sanctions plaintiffs by reason of their wrongdoing and manifests the retributive principle that “punishment must fit the crime.

Justifying Subversion: Why Nussbaum Got (the Better Interpretation of) Butler Wrong

One of the most common critiques directed at deconstructive and poststructuralist theories is that they are amoral – rejecting the validity of the very idea of norms and moral principles as grounds for justifying or criticizing political action and social structures – and that in rejecting the validity of the distinction between what is just and what is unjust, they “collaborate with evil.” By now, an almost canonical example of this common critique is found in Martha Nussbaum’s highly critical essay on the work of Judith Butler, titled The Professor of Parody.3 Here, I focus on Nussbaum’s critique and on Butler’s work as examples of the “common critique” and of deconstruction and poststructuralism in political theory. I argue that the more modest and sounder understanding of Butler – taken as a deconstructive and poststructuralist theorist – is not susceptible to these accusations of amorality and collaboration with evil

Need for Aeromedical Evacuation High-Level Containment Transport Guidelines

Circumstances exist that call for the aeromedical evacuation high-level containment transport (AE-HLCT) of patients with highly hazardous communicable diseases. A small number of organizations maintain AE-HLCT capabilities, and little is publicly available regarding the practices. The time is ripe for the development of standards and consensus guidelines involving AE-HLCT