This paper critically addresses the logics of exceptionality inherent to emerging regulations of the gender field, with a focus on Spain’s recent self-determination-based regulation of gender. To achieve this, it offers a biopolitical analysis of the concept of “public order” and its influence on gender governance, drawing parallels to Agamben’s concept of the state of exception and exploring the connections between contemporary regulations and the gendered public order of nineteenth-century France. Finally, it analyzes the exclusions and (...) restrictions that the Spanish trans law reserves for migrants, non-binary people, and minors, contributing to the ongoing discourse on the limitations to gender autonomy in contemporary Western societies. (shrink)

How heavily should ethical considerations weigh in allowing or disallowing genetic patents? The concept of 'ordre public' can be useful in offsetting a simple utilitarian view.

A well-ordered society faces a crisis whenever a sufficient number of noncompliers enter into the political system. This has the potential to destabilize liberal democratic political order. This article provides a formal analysis of two competing solutions to the problem of political stability offered in the public reason liberalism literature—namely, using public reason or using convergence discourse to restore liberal democratic political order in the well-ordered society. The formal analyses offered in this article show that using (...) public reason fails completely, and using convergent discourse, although doing better, has its own critical limitations that have not been previously recognized properly. (shrink)

This treatise proposes a moderate relation between religion and politics. While there is no decisive philosophical proof either for or against the existence of God, modern society still needs mechanisms for the internalization of norms so that policies of penal leniency can advance without social collapse. The solution is “Public Reason and Private Spirituality”: in the public sphere, legislation and coercion rely only on reasons accessible to all; in the private sphere, individual religiosity or spirituality is permitted but (...) rationally constrained—no imposition on others, logical compatibility with the will of the democratic majority as expressed in law, and avoidance of harm. This model preserves religion’s historic role in cultivating inner restraint without superstition, financial corruption, or fusion with power, while staying compatible with rationalism and pluralism. The framework draws inspiration from Descartes (inner awareness and the striving for perfection), Spinoza (necessitarianism and limited freedom), Hume (meaning anchored in clear impressions and disciplined description), Kant (the primacy of public reason and the demands of practical reason), and Pascal (private faith and intuition). Keywords: public reason; private spirituality; moderation; penal leniency; normative pluralism; limited freedom. (shrink)

A number of widely discussed court decisions on cases of insults against religious feelings in Russia, such as the relatively recent “Pokemon Go” case of blogger Ruslan Sokolovsky or the lawsuit filed against an Orthodox priest by Nikolai Ryabchevsky in Yekaterinburg for comparing Lenin with Hitler, make pertinent the question of why toleration becomes so difficult in matters concerning religion. In this paper, I revise the classical liberal concept of toleration (David Heyd, Peter Nicholson, and John Horton), arguing that it (...) is challenged by contemporary philosophers, who see no room for applying this concept in the “domain of identities”. The most prominent case of “primordial” identity, that is, the notion of identity as a given, is the claim of devoted believers for recognition. Should we replace the principle of toleration by the principle of recognition since the latter better corresponds to identity claims? To address this question, in the first part of the article I describe the mechanism of tolerant attitude (Nicholson, Heyd) and in the second part, I analyze the debates about the possibility or impossibility of inner religious toleration (Avishai Margalit, Cary Nederman, and Maxim Khomyakov) and further compare toleration and recognition as normative principles. In the light of the debates I took part in the conference hosted by the University of Southern Denmark in October 2019 as part of the project “Religious Majority/Minority in Public Space in Russia and Northern Europe: Historical-Cultural Analysis”, I come to the conclusion that the principle of toleration is preferable to the principle of recognition because the “second-order” arguments for toleration in a secular state will be universally acceptable (pragmatic argument) and, therefore, the principle of toleration is more logical (analytical argument). Following Peter John’s thesis about minimal recognition embedded in toleration, it may also be concluded that we need a normatively charged idea of citizenship, which could provide us with universal “second-order” foundation. (shrink)

This chapter explores the concept of "public order" as a biopolitical dispositif that structures and legitimizes state interventions in gender, kinship, and reproduction across Western legal systems. Drawing on Foucault’s and Agamben’s theories of power, Pérez Navarro examines how public order functions not only as a moral framework but as a mechanism for the microphysical distribution of sovereign power, reinforcing racial, gendered, and sexual norms. The chapter highlights how institutions such as monogamous marriage and civil registration (...) become tools of exclusion, particularly affecting queer, trans, non-monogamous, and racialized subjects, whose life projects are treated as threats to national coherence. By tracing the colonial and Islamophobic genealogy of public order, the author reveals its ongoing role in maintaining Western sexual exceptionalism and homonationalist politics. The chapter concludes by reclaiming "friendship"—as theorized by Foucault—not as a private refuge but as a site of political resistance, capable of disrupting the heteronormative, racialized order inscribed in legal and social norms. Friendship, thus, becomes a figure of “public disorder” that challenges the state’s monopolization of legitimate relationality. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper, Gaus’ ground for the ideal of persons as free and equal is described. Doubts are raised about the appropriateness of the use of his account of this ideal as endogenous to our moral practice. Th e worries are related to the use of the concept of having a reason that Gaus makes in his book, as well as to the aptness of his account of our moral practice from the viewpoint of our moral (...) phenomenology. Some doubts are raised in relation to the pertinence of Gaus’ concept of having a reason from the perspective of the motivation of the public reason project. In the second part of the paper, a summary is off ered of Gaus’ model of public justification and some of its consequences are discussed. Th e primary intention here is to show that, contrary to Gaus’ view, egalitarian liberalism, and not classical liberalism, is the most appropriate result of such a model of justification. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to tackle the problem of living together – as dignified human beings – in a certain territory in the field of social philosophy, on the theoretical grounding ensured by some remarkable exponents of the Austrian School − and by means of the praxeologic method. Because political tools diminish the human nature not only of those who use them, but also of those who undergo their effects, people can live a life worthy of a (...) human being only as members of some autarchic or self-governing communities. As a spontaneous order, every autarchic community is inherently democratic, inasmuch as it makes possible free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. The members of autarchic communities are moral individuals who avoid aggression, practice self-control, seek a dynamical efficiency and establish a democratic public discourse. (shrink)

Public reason views hold that the exercise of political power must be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. A growing number of philosophers argue that this reasonable acceptability principle (RAP) can be justified by appealing to the value of civic friendship. They claim that a valuable form of political community can only be achieved among the citizens of pluralistic societies if they refrain from appealing to controversial ideals and values when justifying the exercise of political power to one another. This (...) paper argues against such accounts. In order to justify RAP, one must explain and defend a conception of reasonableness. Civic friendship is unfit to perform this task, rendering it unable to ground public reason alone. Meanwhile, pluralist views that combine civic friendship with other considerations in order to specify RAP either fail or make civic friendship a spare wheel in the argument for public reason. (shrink)

Public justification in political liberalism is often conceptualized in light of Rawls’s view of its role in a hypothetical well-ordered society as an ideal or idealizing form of justification that applies a putatively reasonable conception of political justice to political matters. But Rawls implicates a different idea of public justification in his doctrine of general reflective equilibrium. The paper engages this second, more fundamental idea. Public justification in this second sense is actualist and fundamental. It is actualist (...) in that it fully enfranchises actual reasonable citizens. It is fundamental in that political liberalism qualifies conceptions of political justice as reasonable to begin with only if they can be accepted coherently by actual reasonable citizens. Together, these features invite the long-standing concern that actualist political liberalism is objectionably exclusionary. I argue that the exclusion objection, while plausible, is more problematic in own right than it seems if actualist and fundamental public justification hypotheticalizes and discursive respect is compatible with substantive discursive inequality. This leaves proponents and critics of political liberalism with deeper questions about the nature of permissible discursive inequality in public justification. (shrink)

We are witnessing increasing use of the Internet, particular social media, to criticize (perceived or actual) moral failings and misdemeanors. This phenomenon of so-called ‘online public shaming’ could provide a powerful tool for reinforcing valuable social norms. But it also threatens unwarranted and severe punishments meted out by online mobs. This paper analyses the dangers associated with the informal enforcement of norms, drawing on Locke, but also highlights its promise, drawing on recent discussions of social norms. We then consider (...) two crucial conditions that online public shaming must meet in order to be justifiable: proportionality and accountability. We argue that these requirements are in fact frequently violated, rendering most cases of online public shaming unjustified. While the use of online public shaming against others’ vices has some apparent virtues, it is currently rarely justified, given its own vices. (shrink)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive (...) enhancement even as they recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

Andrew Lister’s Public Reason and Political Community is an important new contribution to the debate over political liberalism. In this article, I critically evaluate some of the central arguments of the book in order to assess the current state of public reason liberalism. I pursue two main objections to Lister’s work. First, Lister’s justification for public reason, which appeals to the value of civic friendship, fails to show why public reason liberalism should be preferred to (...) an alternative democratic theory that does not include public reason restrictions. Second, there are several important ambiguities and tensions within Lister’s view that he does not adequately resolve. His approach to them often takes public reason liberalism in directions that many of its advocates will reject. More work thus remains to be done by public reason liberals both to show why public reason restrictions are necessary and to resolve these tensions in a more satisfactory way. (shrink)

How ought we socially to categorize individuals with respect to sexual orientation? In this paper, I engage with philosophical work on the foundations of political solidarity as well as public health research on the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS in order to develop a categorization scheme conducive to the normatively important aims of LGBTQIA+ social movements.

The re-use of publicly available (personal) data for originally unanticipated purposes has become common practice. Without such secondary uses, the development of many AI systems like large language models (LLMs) and ChatGPT would not even have been possible. This chapter addresses the ethical implications of such secondary processing, with a particular focus on data protection and privacy issues. Legal and ethical evaluations of secondary processing of publicly available personal data diverge considerably both among scholars and the general public. While (...) some of these uses are met with opposition and criticism, others are quite unanimously viewed as unproblematic. Often, proponents and opponents of such practices invoke the same ethical and legal standards for their opposite conclusions. This state of affairs shows that other considerations besides the public availability of data must play a role. It calls for a theoretical clarification of the additional criteria that should guide decisions about the (legally informed) ethical acceptability of re-processing practices. In order to make a contribution towards this goal, the present chapter maps the ongoing debate and systematises the existing contributions around three lines of argument: a consent-centred position, an approach that focuses on the distinction between data and information, and finally a line of argument that focuses on the contextual norms that govern the flows of information. The chapter further relates these arguments to three underlying conceptions of privacy and data protection: rights-based, structural and contextual, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of each position in the light of concrete examples. It concludes by arguing for a mixed approach that combines core elements of the structural and contextual approaches. The chapter aims to contribute to existing research in the fields of data, AI and research ethics, and to reconnect the debate with ethical and legal scholarship on privacy and data protection. In doing so, it aims to make a theoretical contribution towards refining existing conceptions of privacy and data protection in order to make them more fit to ‘drive our digital world’ as far as the use of publicly available data is concerned. (shrink)

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science (...) in domains where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce. (shrink)

This essay responds to the thoughtful essays on the Order of Public Reason (OPR) by Elvio Baccarini, Giulia Bistagnino and Nenad Miscevic. All three essays interrogate OPR’s understanding of moral theory - “meta” matters about the nature of morality, reasons and modeling within moral theories. I first turn to the general understanding of the moral enterprise underlying OPR, explaining why it takes a view at odds with the contemporary mainstream in moral philosophy. I then explain the idea of (...) moral truth in OPR: when it comes to social morality, moral truth is necessarily a function of what can be endorsed by some collectivity. Th is leads to a fundamental worry about theories of public reason: why is the endorsement of the public so important? And if some sort of public endorsement is really so terribly important, how can a theory of public reason withstand the fact that it advances its own controversial claims that cannot be publicly endorsed? After considering when public endorsement is necessary, and when public reason theories can make controversial claims, I close by considering in what way OPR does, and in what way it does not, employ a thought experiment, and the complexities of that. (shrink)

-/- Violence in Sports and Public Life: A Discourse on the Universal Law of Balance By Angelito Malicse -/- The human experience, whether in the structured environment of sports or the open arena of society, is governed by universal natural laws. Among these, the law of balance holds a central place. It dictates not only the harmony of ecosystems and physical systems but also the inner workings of human thought, emotion, and decision-making. When we compare how violence is treated (...) in sports versus public life, we are not merely observing a cultural or legal distinction—we are witnessing two very different systemic approaches to managing imbalance. -/- In many competitive sports, particularly those involving physical contact like boxing, hockey, or mixed martial arts, certain degrees of aggression and conflict are built into the structure of the game. These activities are bound by rules, referees, safety equipment, and mutual consent. While the public may witness moments of violence—such as a fight on the ice or a punch in the ring—these actions occur within a controlled system. There is a start and an end, boundaries are clear, and consequences are predictable. This kind of conflict, while seemingly chaotic, actually operates within a feedback loop that functions to restore balance—either emotionally, competitively, or interpersonally among players (Coakley, 2009). -/- Here, the law of balance Is honored. Participants and spectators alike recognize that these moments of conflict are not personal but part of the system’s self-correction mechanism. They are expressions of tension release, accountability, or retaliation within limits. Importantly, these systems also include educational components: athletes are trained to control their behavior, accept penalties, and operate within the boundaries of fair play (Shogan, 1999). In this sense, sports act as a microcosm of a balanced society—where temporary imbalance is allowed only to maintain long-term equilibrium. -/- In stark contrast, acts of violence in public life are treated with seriousness and condemnation. Public violence is not bound by a consensual framework; it is unregulated, unanticipated, and often rooted in emotional instability, misinformation, injustice, or oppression. When one individual harms another in public, the action disrupts not just personal safety but the perceived stability of the collective environment. There are no referees, no agreed-upon rules, and no structural mechanism immediately available to restore balance. In such cases, the law of balance is violated, and the system falls into disorder (Rawls, 1971). -/- This is where the importance of police forces and intervention by responsible individuals or institutions becomes vital. The police serve as society’s designated referees in the public arena. They exist to neutralize immediate threats, restore order, and provide a stabilizing feedback mechanism when balance is lost. Their role, when exercised lawfully and ethically, aligns with the natural law of balance: to prevent further escalation, protect innocent lives, and return the environment to a state of peace and security (Goldstein, 1990). -/- Yet intervention alone is not enough. To complete the cycle of restoring balance, society depends on the justice system—a formal structure that examines, judges, and corrects the violations of law and public order. The justice system plays an essential role in ensuring that violent actions are not left unchecked or unresolved. When it functions properly, it acts as a rational and fair feedback mechanism, offering proportionate consequences and opportunities for reform (Becker, 1968; Tyler, 2006). It provides victims with a sense of protection and resolution, and it holds perpetrators accountable in a way that aims not for revenge, but for correction and reintegration into the societal system. -/- A well-functioning justice system honors the universal law of balance by recognizing the interconnectedness of cause and effect. It does not respond with disproportionate punishment or allow impunity; instead, it seeks to restore harmony—not just between individuals, but within the collective consciousness of society. When the justice system fails, either through corruption, delay, or bias, the feedback loop breaks, and public confidence in societal balance erodes. This often leads to further unrest, vigilante justice, or systemic breakdown (Packer, 1968). -/- From the perspective of natural law, particularly my universal formula on the problem of free will, this distinction becomes crucial. Human behavior, whether on the playing field or in daily life, is subject to natural feedback. A person who violates balance—whether through unregulated violence or willful ignorance—disturbs both their internal system (mind, emotion, reason) and the external system (family, society, nation, nature). The result is not only personal suffering but systemic dysfunction. -/- This underscores the need for a holistic educational system—one that does not merely teach skills or memorized facts, but one that programs the individual mind to recognize and operate within the universal law of balance. When individuals are raised with an understanding of how imbalance affects not just themselves but the interconnected systems around them, they develop the inner regulators necessary to live peacefully and responsibly (Noddings, 2013; Freire, 1970). -/- Such an educational system would mirror the structure of organized sports. It would involve feedback mechanisms, critical thinking, emotional self-regulation, and an internal sense of fairness. In this system, violence—whether verbal, emotional, or physical—is never glorified but understood as a sign of imbalance, an alarm that calls for restoration, not retaliation. -/- Leadership plays a vital role here. Leaders, like referees in a game, must understand the natural law of balance and guide their communities accordingly. They must know when to allow constructive conflict and when to intervene. More importantly, they must support both justice and educational reforms that embed the law of balance into the foundation of human development. -/- The end goal Is not the elimination of conflict, but its proper regulation and transformation. Only through this lens—where balance is the ultimate law, and all behavior is subject to feedback—can human society evolve beyond cycles of violence, whether on the field, in public spaces, or within institutions. This is the path to lasting harmony, both within and beyond the boundaries of organized sport. -/- References -/- Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach. Journal of Political Economy. -/- Coakley, J. (2009). Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies. McGraw-Hill. -/- Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder. -/- Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem-Oriented Policing. McGraw-Hill. -/- Noddings, N. (2013). Education and Democracy in the 21st Century. Teachers College Press. -/- Packer, H. L. (1968). The Limits of the Criminal Sanction. Stanford University Press. -/- Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard University Press. -/- Shogan, D. (1999). The Making of High-Performance Athletes: Discipline, Diversity, and Ethics. University of Toronto Press. -/- Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why People Obey the Law. Princeton University Press. -/- . (shrink)

In this chapter, I consider the prospects for deploying the concept of public reason in settling practical bioethical questions, focusing in particular on entitlements to healthcare. I begin by tracing the origins of the concept of public reason to the aspirations of the liberal political theorist to find a justification for the authority of government, which reconciles a basic belief in the autonomy of the individual with the legitimacy of the coercive institutions that create and govern the (...) class='Hi'>public sphere. I then consider how the concept of public reason may be used in order to justify a universal entitlement to healthcare, paying particular attention to the work of Norman Daniels. Finally, I briefly consider the objection that an entitlement to healthcare grounded on such terms is insufficiently robust, because it downplays the values that healthcare encodes. I conclude by reflecting on whether the concept of public reason can be stretched to include a more robust conception of the value of health. (shrink)

The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss the issue of managing fake news in the online environment, from an organizational perspective, by using reactive PR strategies. First, we critically discuss the most important definitions of the umbrella term fake news, in the so-called post-truth era, in order to emphasize different challenges in conceptualizing this elusive social phenomenon. Second, employing some valuable contribution from literature, we present and illustrate with vivid examples 10 categories of fake news. Each type (...) of fake news is discussed in the context of organizational communication. Based on existent literature, we propose a 3D conceptual model of fake news, in an organizational context. Furthermore, we consider that PR managers can use either reactive PR strategies to counteract online fake news regarding an organization, or communication stratagems to temporarily transform the organization served into a potential source of fake news. The existing typology of reactive public relations strategies from the literature allow us to discuss the challenge of using them in counteracting online fake news. Each reactive PR strategy can be a potential solution to respond to different types of online fake news. Although these possibilities seem to be extensive, in some cases, PR managers can find them ineffective. In our view, this cluster of reactive PR strategies is not a panacea for managing fake news in the online environment and different strategic approaches may be need, such as communication stratagems. In this context, communication stratagems consist in using organization as a source or as a vector for strategic creation and dissemination of online fake news, for the benefit of the organization. We conclude that within online environment PR managers can employ a variety of reactive PR strategies to counteract fake news, or different communication stratagems to achieve organizational goals. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two (...) general problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

The project of “public reason” claims to offer an epistemological resolution to the civic dilemma created by the clash of incompatible options for the rational exercise of freedom adopted by citizens in a diverse community. The present Article proposes, via consideration of a contrast between two classical accounts of dialectical reasoning, that the employment of “public reason,” in substantive due process analysis, is unworkable in theory and contrary to more reflective Supreme Court precedent. Although logical commonalities might be (...) available to pick out from the multitude of particularized accounts of what constitutes “civic order,” no “public reason” so derived could adequately capture - and thus be able to secure in a practical sense - any single determinate civic order, much less one that would be consistent with all citizens' conceptions of public order. Part I of this Article raises a number of issues for consideration relating to the epistemology of law and focuses especially on the concept of public reason and its critique. Part II addresses alternative approaches to legal reasoning suggested by classical accounts of practical reasoning and virtue theory and considers the operation of such legal analysis outside the area of substantive due process; Part III analyzes post-Lawrence case law confirming the dilemma created by the Supreme Court's ambiguous approaches to substantive due process and concludes that only one interpretation - that articulated fully in Washington v. Glucksberg and given lip service in Lawrence v. Texas - provides a method for resolving novel substantive due process challenges that is philosophically sound as well as historically coherent. Rather than perpetuating a fiction that denies the propriety of lawmaking unless based on principles that all citizens can rationally agree upon, an appropriate model of substantive due process analysis recognizes that law must inevitably be based upon principles that cannot be agreed upon by all citizens in virtue of rationality alone. -/- Abstract Footnotes (291) Beta -/- Revise My Submission -/- -/- One-Click Download | Share | Email | Add to Briefcase -/- Facebook | Twitter | Digg | Del.icio.us | CiteULike | Permalink Using the URL or DOI link below will ensure access to this page indefinitely -/- Based on your IP address, your paper is being delivered by: New York, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] Illinois, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] Brussels, Belgium Processing request. [Processing request.] Seoul, Korea Processing request. [Processing request.] California, USA Processing request. [Processing request.] -/- If you have any problems downloading this paper, please click on another Download Location above, or view our FAQ File name: SSRN-id1004757. ; Size: 424K -/- Sample Cover You will receive a black and white printed and perfect bound version of this document in 8 1/2 x 11 inch format, with glossy color front and back covers. Currently shipping to the US addresses only. Your order will be shipped within three business days. Quantity: Total Price = $0.50 plus shipping (U.S. Only) -/- If you have any problems with this purchase, please email [email protected] or call 1-585-442-8170. Reason's Freedom and the Dialectic of Ordered Liberty -/- Edward C. Lyons University of Notre Dame Law School -/- Cleveland State Law Review, Vol. 55, p. 157, 2007 -/- Abstract: The project of "public reason" claims to offer an epistemological resolution to the civic dilemma created by the clash of incompatible options for the rational exercise of freedom adopted by citizens in a diverse community. The present Article proposes, via consideration of a contrast between two classical accounts of dialectical reasoning, that the employment of "public reason," in substantive due process analysis, is unworkable in theory and contrary to more reflective Supreme Court precedent. Although logical commonalities might be available to pick out from the multitude of particularized accounts of what constitutes "civic order," no "public reason" so derived could adequately capture - and thus be able to secure in a practical sense - any single determinate civic order, much less one that would be consistent with all citizens' conceptions of public order. -/- Part I of this Article raises a number of issues for consideration relating to the epistemology of law and focuses especially on the concept of public reason and its critique. Part II addresses alternative approaches to legal reasoning suggested by classical accounts of practical reasoning and virtue theory and considers the operation of such legal analysis outside the area of substantive due process; Part III analyzes post-Lawrence case law confirming the dilemma created by the Supreme Court's ambiguous approaches to substantive due process and concludes that only one interpretation - that articulated fully in Washington v. Glucksberg and given lip service in Lawrence v. Texas - provides a method for resolving novel substantive due process challenges that is philosophically sound as well as historically coherent. -/- Rather than perpetuating a fiction that denies the propriety of lawmaking unless based on principles that all citizens can rationally agree upon, an appropriate model of substantive due process analysis recognizes that law must inevitably be based upon principles that cannot be agreed upon by all citizens in virtue of rationality alone. -/- Keywords: substantive due process, practical reason, public reason, Rawls, Casey, Lawrence, Glucksberg, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, dialectic, autonomy, freedom -/- . (shrink)

In this article I examine the main conceptions of public reason in contemporary political philosophy in order to set the frame for appreciating the novelty of the pragmatist understanding of public reason as based upon the notion of consequences and upon a theory of rationality as inquiry. The approach is inspired by Dewey but is free from any concern with history of philosophy. The aim is to propose a different understanding of the nature of public reason (...) aimed at overcoming the limitations of the existing approaches. Public reason is presented as the proper basis for discussing contested issues in the broad frame of deep democracy. (shrink)

There is widespread consensus that the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) environment has contributed to the subpar quality of public sector service delivery in South Africa. Hence, the aim of this paper is to ascertain how the South African government can enhance service delivery in a VUCA world. This article presents a comprehensive study of a number of secondary literature sources. The author makes an effort to draw attention to knowledge gaps that might serve as the foundation for (...) more research in the future. The main finding is that for the South African government to provide good service in a VUCA environment, its employees must be proficient in Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation, Strategic Planning, Programme and Project Management Methodology, and Change Management Methodology. There is a severe lack of empirical study on the delivery of public sector services in an environment characterized by VUCA. As a result, there is a need for more research on this topic. Specifically, in order to establish the effect that the VUCA environment has on the governments of emerging nations. The research will be beneficial to the governments of developing countries, notably South Africa, as well as to those who work in the field of public administration. (shrink)

Since the human genome was decoded, great emphasis has been placed on the unique, personal nature of the genome, along with the benefits that personalized medicine can bring to individuals and the importance of safeguarding genetic privacy. As a result, an equally important aspect of the human genome – its common nature – has been underappreciated and underrepresented in the ethics literature and policy dialogue surrounding genetics and genomics. This article will argue that, just as the personal nature of the (...) genome has been used to reinforce individual rights and justify important privacy protections, so too the common nature of the genome can be employed to support protections of the genome at a population level and policies designed to promote the public's wellbeing. In order for public health officials to have the authority to develop genetics policies for the sake of the public good, the genome must have not only a common, but also a public, dimension. This article contends that DNA carries a public dimension through the use of two conceptual frameworks: the common heritage framework and the common resource framework. Both frameworks establish a public interest in the human genome, but the CH framework can be used to justify policies aimed at preserving and protecting the genome, while the CR framework can be employed to justify policies for utilizing the genome for the public benefit. A variety of possible policy implications are discussed, with special attention paid to the use of large-scale genomics databases for public health research. (shrink)

Large consumer technology corporations are becoming increasingly influential in health and medicine. While this is sometimes beneficial to public health, it also raises many risks, like inequitable returns to the public sector in public-private medical partnerships or new dependencies on technology firms for the provision of public health goods and services. These risks are not always fully captured by existing frameworks. In this paper, we argue that it is time to adopt a public health ethics (...) perspective on the increasing influence of Big Tech in health and medicine. A public health ethics perspective can not only capture the effects of Big Tech on the health of entire populations, but it also raises the important question of whether governments ought sometimes to intervene in the activities of Big Tech in order to safeguard public health. (shrink)

Public health policy often limits people’s liberty for their own good. The very point of many types of public health measures is to restrict people’s options in order to stop them from doing unhealthy things, for example use harmful recreational drugs or drive without a seatbelt. While such restrictive public health policies enjoy widespread support, so does the traditional liberal idea that liberty (or autonomy) is a higher value, to be given priority in most, if not (...) all, circumstances. In this text, I will defend the thesis that liberty is an important value, but with no claim to priority. (shrink)

Objective: This main aim of the study is to explore COVID-19 pandemic problems from the perspective of public health-clinical care ethics through online mediareports in Turkey. Method: This research was designed as a descriptive and qualitative study that assesses COVID-19 through online media reports on critics between the periods of March 11, 2020 and April 2 2020 as a quantitative as number of reports and qualitative study, across Turkey. Reports were from Turkish Medical Association websites which included newspaper reports. (...) Study data were presented as statistically and qualitative data case and headlines. No ethical or ofTicial permission was sought as the study was conducted through open access internet news sites. Results: This online reports analysis retrieved about 6723 articles about the COVID-19. According to study data, information about COVID-19 were themed as follows: general deTiciencies in taking action and isolation, lack of isolation, passengers and transport vehicles not quarantined ; insufTicient diagnostic tests, decision to test after healthcare professionals become infected, lack of equipment, lack of evaluation outbreak countries [Table 2]. Conclusion and Suggestions: COVID-19 is a pandemic and is a global public health problem that concerns every individual and needs to be handled carefully. This requires a multi-faceted preparation and education. In this context, healthcare professionals should be well trained in this aspect and have all the necessary equipment throughout the process. Additionally, it should work systematically with the cooperation of all health organizations, the Ministry of Health, local governments and of course the media, in order to inform society, fairly distribute the resources and to implement the safety measures effectively. BrieTly, lack of transparency, insufTicient information, limited resources, lack of public health protection measures such as partial quarantine decision, partial implementation of the scientiTic board's re c ommenda ti on s fo r e c on omi c rea s on s, and contradiction of the explanations are revealed as serious ethical problems. (shrink)

What makes public history more than just another hill to fight over in culture war politics? In this paper I propose a novel way of understanding the political significance of how public history creates and shapes identities: a contractarian one. I argue that public history can be sensibly understood as representing groups as a society’s contracting parties. One particular value of the contractarian approach is that it helps to elucidate the phenomenon of “signing on,” where a marginalized (...) or oppressed group is offered membership in a society without the social order being meaningfully changed. (shrink)

Although the question of religion did not feature prominently in Jürgen Habermas’s early political theory, his more recent work has continuously addressed the topic. This later interest in religion is grounded in what one commentator in a volume on The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, cited as the urgent need to integrate religious voices in the workings of public reason in order to avoid social disharmony and to thwart potential violence. However, the following paper argues (...) that the hermeneutic procedures Habermas develops for the public sphere cannot bear the weight that his later understanding of religion demands of them. Such an insight validates Paul Ricoeur’s earlier argument that Habermas’s “depth hermeneutics,” were themselves utopic in nature. It is from this vantage point that a return to Ricoeur's thought is justified, through which a more productive understanding of the public potential of religious discourse can be understood. (shrink)

Many scientists, philosophers, and commentators of science have argued that science ought to made responsive to the public, or ought to be “democratized”. This chapter begins by showing that the case for making science responsive to the public compares favorably to the case for making other critical institutions - such as a society’s educational or health care system - responsive to the public. It then shows several ways that science is not currently responsive to the public. (...) It concludes by discussing three unresolved philosophical questions that must be answered in order to determine what it would mean for science to be appropriately responsive to the public. The first comes from the importance of looking at science as a complex system; the second and third arise from considering diversity within the public and within the scientific community, respectively. (shrink)

In The Reason of Rules, Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan argue for what I call a “Rules First Theory of Justice.” On their Rules First view, rules are prior to justice, and justice is simply obedience to the most fundamental agreed-upon rules. I argue against this view by appeal to another reason for rules provided by Brennan and Buchanan: protection from arbitrary power. Without a standard of justice over and above existing rules, rules will not have the stability to provide (...) this protection. This is because the attitude towards existing rules encouraged by the Rules First approach enables two paths to arbitrary power from well-designed constitutions: ambiguities resolving through elite-favoring interpretive drift, and acquiescence to longstanding elite violations of rules. Both paths allow for the unfortunate result of rendering arbitrary power necessarily just, with disobedience to that arbitrary power now unjust. The first path, additionally, can get there without any steps that the Rules First approach can even call unjust. I then offer natural rights frameworks and relational egalitarianism as possible alternatives for better serving Brennan and Buchanan’s motivations for the Rules First theory. (shrink)

This article addresses the recent reception of Franz Brentano's writings on consciousness. I am particularly interested in the connection established between Brentano's theory of consciousness and higher-order theories of consciousness and, more specifically, the theory proposed by David Rosenthal. My working hypothesis is that despite the many similarities that can be established with Rosenthal's philosophy of mind, Brentano's theory of consciousness differs in many respects from higher-order theories of consciousness and avoids most of the criticisms generally directed to (...) them. This article is divided into eight parts. The first two sections expound the basic outline of Rosenthal's theory, and the third summarizes the principal objections that Rosenthal addresses to Brentano, which I, then, examine in sections 4 and 5. In sections 6 and 7, I discuss Brentano's principle of the unity of consciousness, and in section 8, I consider the scope of the changes that Brentano brings to his theory of consciousness in his later writings, which follow the 1874 publication of Psychology. I then draw the conclusion that Brentano's theory rests on a view of intransitive and intrinsic self-consciousness. (shrink)

Public Announcement Logic (PAL), as a paradigmatic fragment of Dynamic Epistemic Logic (DEL), implements information change by model restriction; under probabilistic semantics this reduces to classical conditioning and therefore yields commutative sequential update (up to conjunction of announced events). By contrast, the minimal Lüders instrument for sharp quantum yes/no questions induces noncommutative state dynamics whenever the associated projectors fail to commute, generating order effects. We formalize PAL updates as conditioning endomorphisms on Boolean event algebras and Lüders updates as (...) completely positive trace-preserving maps on density operators. We prove: (i) all PAL-style fixed-meaning announcement updates commute whenever both orders are defined; (ii) Lüders channels commute on all states if and only if the underlying projectors commute; (iii) consequently, no PAL-style conditioning semantics with context-independent proposition identity can represent Lüders order effects while preserving sequential composition. A conservative embedding theorem is provided: restricting to an abelian algebra generated by commuting projectors, Lüders update collapses to classical conditioning, recovering PAL as a commutative subtheory. (shrink)

Purpose: The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of public and private sector investments on gross domestic product (GDP) and employment econometrically with the panel data method in order to determine the efficiency of investments in Turkey. -/- Design/Method/Approach: In the study, the possible effects of public and private sector investments on GDP and employment in Turkey are examined by dividing them into sectors. Sectors are included in the analysis as agriculture and other non-agricultural (...) sectors. Since the data of various sectors within a certain time period are used, time series and horizontal cross-sectional data are analyzed using the panel data method, which allows them to be used together. Four different models are created in the research. Among them, the effects of public investment expenditures on GDP in the period of 2004-2020 in Model 1, private investment expenditures on GDP in the same period in Model 2, public investment expenditures on employment in the period of 2014-2021 in Model 3 and private investment expenditures on employment data in Model 4 are investigated. -/- Findings: The results obtained from the analyses show that public and private sector investments have a significant and positive impact on GDP and employment in Turkey. -/- Practical Implications: It is generally accepted in the public finance literature that investments will positively affect economic growth, production level, employment and regional development if they are used in productive areas. -/- Originality/Value: What makes this study different from others is that the relationship of public and private sector investments with both GDP and employment is analyzed separately. In this way, a comparison can be made from the point of public and private sector investments in Turkey in terms of the contribution of investments to both GDP and employment, and an answer can be sought to the question of how correct the policy of increasing the share of the private sector in investments, especially in recent years, is in Turkey. -/- Research Limitations/Future Research: This study will make a significant contribution to the literature on the economic effects of public and private sector investments. It will be determined how accurate the idea of increasing the share of private investments in Turkey in recent years is. According to the results obtained from the study, new studies will be conducted on what can be done to increase the efficiency of public or private sector investments. -/- Disclaimer: This article was produced from the doctoral thesis prepared by Özgür Mustafa Ömür at Bursa Uludağ University Social Sciences Institute, Department of Finance, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Filiz Giray. -/- Paper Type: Empirical -/- JEL Classification: E01, E22, E24, H54. (shrink)

The discussion develops the view that public justification in Rawls’s political liberalism, in one of its roles, is actualist in fully enfranchising actual reasonable citizens and fundamental in political liberalism’s order of justification. I anchor this reading in the political role Rawls accords to general reflective equilibrium, and examine in its light the relationship between public justification, pro tanto justification, political values, full justification, the wide view of public political culture and salient public reason intuitions. (...) This leaves us with the question of how a more plausible, post-Rawlsian political liberalism should understand the commitment to discursive respect and robust discursive equality that is reflected in its view of actualist and fundamental public justification. (shrink)

Who constitutes the public on whose behalf such an official speaks and in whose name the apology is offered? In this paper I argue that in most cases, the “public” that the official offering an apology represents and on whose behalf the apology is offered is not the general public but the public sector: those who direct, control and populate the apparatus of the state. I argue that in most cases there is not a plausible model (...) according to which public sector actors can be treated as vehicles for actions, decisions, projects and values of the general public: a public sector actor is not an avatar of the general public. This makes for a gap between public officials and the general public that must be explicitly bridged with respect to actions, decisions and attitudes named in a public apology in order for members of the general public to perceive themselves as part of either the wrongs for which apology is offered or the apology itself. Recognizing this gap does not imply that members of the general public are not or cannot be responsible for wrongs perpetrated by public sector actors. However, it does imply that the source of the responsibility will not usually be found in public officials having acted at the behest of or for the sake of the general public. (shrink)

Various psychopathologies of self-awareness, such as somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion in schizophrenia, might seem to threaten the viability of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness since it requires a HOT about one’s own mental state to accompany every conscious state. The HOT theory of consciousness says that what makes a mental state a conscious mental state is that there is a HOT to the effect that “I am in mental state M” (Rosenthal 2005, Gennaro 2012). In a previous (...) publication (Gennaro 2015), I argued that a HOT theorist can adequately respond to this concern with respect to somatoparaphrenia. Somatoparaphrenia is a “depersonalization disorder” which is characterized by the sense of alienation from parts of one’s body. It is a bizarre type of body delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body. My focus in the chapter, however, is on “inserted thoughts” which is a common symptom of schizophrenia, although it will also be useful to contrast it with somatoparaphrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder which most commonly manifests itself through auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking. Thought insertion is the delusion that some thoughts are not “one’s own” in some sense or are somehow being inserted into one’s mind by someone else. Graham and Stephens (2000), for example, have suggested that thought insertion should be understood as alienated self-consciousness or meta-representation. I argue that HOT theory has nothing to fear from this phenomenon either and can consistently explain what happens in this admittedly unusual case. (shrink)

Resolution Ethics explains justice through the structure of authored resolution under exposure. When wrongdoing occurs, the ethical task is not to “balance suffering,” but to preserve civic order, repair standing, and maintain the conditions under which agents can resolve safely across time. This paper develops a telic model of justice: a two-horizon framework in which short-horizon responses establish public closure through mandatory prosecution, finite punishment, and restitution, while long-horizon responses govern the future through conditional supervision, risk reduction, and (...) reintegration. Punishment is justified only insofar as it reduces systemic noise—restoring legibility, reaffirming violated norms, and preventing private enforcement—while remaining constrained by proportionality, equal application, and due process. Victim repair and state authority are treated as distinct obligations, neither of which can substitute for the other. Telic Justice therefore rejects both retributivist excess and permissive decay, offering a structured account of punishment, repair, and forgiveness as instruments for the preservation of legitimate public order. (shrink)

This thesis under the title “Public Health Policy in Resource Allocation: the Role of Ubuntu Ethics in Redressing Resource Disparity between Public and Private Healthcare in South Africa” explores health care disparities pertaining to resource allocation between public and private sector. It is of relevance and importance in South Africa where 54% of the population live on less than US$3 per day. Although the government has instituted certain changes aimed at transforming the public health care system, (...) the resource allocation gap between the two persists and remains wide. The research gives special attention to the role that Ubuntu ethics can play in redressing the resource allocation disparities between public and private health care sectors in South Africa, pointing out the existing gap in financing, as well as human resource between public and private health care sectors, which leads to poor health outcomes in public sector. Therefore, the problem is the prevalent inequality of resource allocation between private and public health care sectors. The analysis of policy gaps, as well as evaluating the cause of disparities in the health system is the goal of this research. The study endeavours to redress the disparities within the context of Ubuntu ethical principles and proposes a change in public policy so as to enhance healthcare for the benefit of the people. The study is philosophical and ethical, so the methodology used is discursive in nature, majorly focusing on critically reviewing existing literature, that is, the philosophical resources on Ubuntu ethics and justice theories as well as a range of government resources inclusive of public health policy documents. Social determinants of health and their impact in a South African context are discussed with the implication that health is not merely freedom from disease and or incapacity, but rather being well mentally, physically and socially. The attainment of a healthy status goes beyond ability to access healthcare services, and incorporates social determinants including but not limited to conditions in which people have been born into, stay, establish career and grow old in. It also includes the arrangements put in place to deal with illness and determine health. Issues of revenue, literacy, communal safety networks, vocation and conditions under-which vocation is undertaken, lack of work and vocation insecurity, early stages of human development, gender, cultural group, dietary insecurity, housing communal exclusion and disability all come into the picture as factors that determine health. But there is also discussion of the socio-economic status as contributors to health inequity wherein alcohol abuse, sugar intake, and smoking are identified as behavioural factors that complicate public health. One outstanding feature of this research is that it establishes a link between Ubuntu and public health policy. The researcher establishes that Ubuntu ethics is appropriate for not only discussing public morality, but also for formulating public policy that is morally tenable for South Africa, especially for the public health sector. This thesis calls for an application of Ubuntu in a proper context in order to enhance societal well-being for the benefit of many, if not all. The research proposes the fundamental principle of Ubuntu ethics in which the good of the community is as important as the good of every member of the community. Since Ubuntu ethics does not merely seek to fulfil what benefits the majority, as would be the case in a utilitarian society, the researcher advocates for the building of consensus on the common good, which should be understood to imply not just what is good for everyone in the community, but also what is good for the continued well-being of the community as a single unit. In this regard, the research finds it important that deliberate effort be made to integrate Ubuntu ethics into policies, citing the example of the National Health Insurance (NHI). The good health of all the members of a community is an assurance of the well-being and continuity of the whole national community. The research concludes that public health policy should integrate Ubuntu ethical values such as community, sharing, care, solidarity, identity, harmony, respect, and dignity into policy documents and legislation. (shrink)

In this article we aim to open a new line of debate about religion in public schools by focusing on religious ideals. We begin with an elucidation of the concept ‘religious ideals’ and an explanation of the notion of reasonable pluralism, in order to be able to explore the dangers and positive contributions of religious ideals and their pursuit on a liberal democratic society. We draw our examples of religious ideals from Christianity and Islam, because these religions have (...) most adherents in Western liberal democracies that are the focus of this article. The fifth and most important section ‘‘Reasonable pluralism and the inclusion of religious ideals in public secondary schools’’ provides three arguments for our claim that public schools should include religious ideals, namely that they are important to religious people, that they are conducive for the development of pupils into citizens of a liberal democracy, and that the flourishing of pupils as adults is advanced by encountering religious ideals. We also offer a more practical reason: religious ideals can more easily be included within public education than religious dogmas and rules. (shrink)

This article is a critical survey of the debate over the value of the social discount rate, with a particular focus on climate change. The ma- jority of the material surveyed is from the economics rather than from the philosophy literature, but the emphasis of the survey itself is on founda- tions in ethical and other normative theory rather than highly technical details. I begin by locating the standard approach to discounting within the overall landscape of ethical theory, and explaining (...) the assumptions and simplifications that are needed in order to arrive at the model that is standard in the discounting literature. The article then covers the general theory of the Ramsey equation and its relationship to observed interest rates, arguments for and against a positive rate of pure time preference, the consumption elasticity of utility, and the effect of various sorts of uncertainty on the discount rate. Finally, it turns specifically to the ap- plication of this debate to the case of climate change, focussing on the recent controversy over the low discount rate used in the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change. (shrink)

This article explores the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques as part of data-driven border checks in the EU. While the idea to group travelers into risk categories in order to differentiate the intensity of border checks has been criticized for its likely impact on privacy and other fundamental rights, the exclusive use of “open,” “public” data was proposed as an alternative that mitigates these issues. However, OSINT remains a rather vague term, as it is unclear what constitutes (...) “open” or “public” data, how the use of such techniques would contribute to the production of security, and whether its use actually mitigates most ethical issues. The goal of this article is to contribute toward a situated answer to these questions. It will provide groundwork by clarifying what OSINT practices could entail in the context of the European border checks regime and by developing an ethical perspective on these practices. I will show that the impact depends not so much on the public availability of the analyzed data, but on the specifics of the implementation of OSINT techniques. Thus, certain uses of OSINT continue to raise severe privacy and fundamental rights issues. (shrink)

The mandates of the president, members of Congress, judges of the Supreme Court of the United States of America (USA), as well as public servants appointed by them and other public servants of the legislative and executive bodies of the USA ended on December 31, 2025, due to their legal incompetence and incapacity, and the proven failure of the political system that vested them with public authority. Continuation of public service on the territory now under the (...) jurisdiction of the Community Rus’ is possible only for the purpose of ensuring the declared rule of law. -/- Полномочия президента, членов конгресса, судей Верховного суда Союза Североамериканских Государств (USA), а также назначенных ими служащих и прочих служащих законодательных и исполнительных органов USA закончились 31 декабря 2025 года вследствие их невменяемости и неправоспособности, и доказанной несостоятельности политической системы, наделявшей их служебными полномочиями. Продолжение служебной деятельности на территории, отныне находящейся в юрисдикции Общности Русь, возможно лишь с целью обеспечения объявленного правопорядка. (shrink)

This thesis discusses how societies should allocate clinical care resources. The first aim of the thesis is to defend the idea that clinical care resource allocation is a matter for deliberative democratic procedures. I argue that deliberative democracy is justified because of its ability to implement equal respect and autonomy. Furthermore, I address several in-principle objections to the project of applying deliberative democracy to clinical care resource allocation. Most notably, I respond to the narrow view of the scope of deliberative (...) democracy and the critiques of explicit rationing. The second aim of the thesis is to determine what is required by deliberative democracy in clinical care resource allocation. I identify the general requirements that resource allocation agencies should meet, namely public reason, public involvement, transparency, accuracy and revisability. I then examine what is required by deliberative democracy with regard to two particularly salient specific topics, namely the substantive values that should govern resource allocation and the involvement of scientific experts in decision-making. I demonstrate that public reason imposes severe constraints on the substantive values that should be employed. Most of these constraints are rooted in the idea that, under a regime of scarcity, public reason requires that resources be allocated so as to minimise the strongest complaint anyone may have. Out of the variety of values that are commonly proposed as relevant, only priority to the worst-off, ability to benefit, specialness of clinical care and cost are consistent with public reason. Turning to expert involvement, I argue that deliberative democracy can overcome several formidable threats, such as the opacity of expert opinions to laypersons and the tendency to hide uncertainty and disagreement from the public. I also discuss how my proposals on substantive values and expert involvement could be implemented, in order to add to the plausibility of my theory. (shrink)

In the last two decades, WORDNET has evolved as the most comprehensive computational lexicon of general English. In this article, we discuss its potential for supporting the creation of an entirely new kind of information resource for public health, viz. MEDICAL WORDNET. This resource is not to be conceived merely as a lexical extension of the original WORDNET to medical terminology; indeed, there is already a considerable degree of overlap between WORDNET and the vocabulary of medicine. Instead, we propose (...) a new type of repository, consisting of three large collections of (1) medically relevant word forms, structured along the lines of the existing Princeton WORDNET; (2) medically validated propositions, referred to here as medical facts, which will constitute what we shall call MEDICAL FACTNET; and (3) propositions reflecting laypersons’ medical beliefs, which will constitute what we shall call the MEDICAL BELIEFNET. We introduce a methodology for setting up the MEDICAL WORDNET. We then turn to the discussion of research challenges that have to be met in order to build this new type of information resource. (shrink)

This article theorises 'the new paradigm of mass communication ', ‘the media scenario ' and pseudo-events and pseudo-worlds as the central operating units of the new paradigm of mass communication and of the media scenario. Building on The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, pseudo-events are treated not as occasional distortions of public life but as a routine mode of reality-production: events increasingly occur in order to be narrated, circulated, replayed, and emotionally ‘confirmed’ by audiences. The argument (...) extends this logic from events to worlds. Drawing on possible worlds theory and contemporary narratology associated with Marie-Laure Ryan, pseudo-worlds are defined as coherent but strategically engineered storyworlds that can be entered, inhabited, and defended as if actual. In networked environments, these worlds are sustained less by evidence than by repeatable narrative roles, affective cues, and the infrastructural design of platforms. Hyperlinks, interfaces, and procedural media function as ontological switches that intensify re-centring and multiply ‘world transitions’, enabling rapid movement between fiction, documentation, and hybrid scenography. As a result, publics no longer share a single ‘mass’ reality but participate in overlapping and competing world-models, each with its own internal truth conditions and moral coordinates. The media scenario is therefore approached as a system of world-building in which attention, identity, and political alignment are organised through scripted participation rather than deliberation. The article concludes that the key struggle of contemporary communication is not primarily over facts, but over the design, accessibility, and durability of pseudo-worlds that convert narrative coherence into social power. (shrink)

This study aimed to assess the level of acceptance and perceived impact of DepEd Order No. 21, Series of 2023, among selected public elementary teachers in Balayan, Batangas, focusing on its influence on teaching practices and pupil learning. The study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-method approach, beginning with a quantitative survey and followed by qualitative interviews. The participants consisted of 30 teachers from public elementary schools that participated in the Brigada Eskwela program. The results revealed that teachers (...) generally accepted the policy, recognizing its objectives of promoting cleaner, more organized classrooms conducive to learning. However, challenges related to the removal of visual aids, particularly for younger students, were noted. Teachers experienced minimal disruption in their teaching practices, with some reporting positive effects on classroom management and material organization. While the policy improved pupil engagement by reducing distractions, it also highlighted the need for alternative strategies to support memory retention. The study found no significant differences in acceptance based on demographic factors, suggesting a uniform perception across age, gender, and years of service. Recommendations for improving the implementation of the DepEd Order include providing additional resources, professional development, and feedback mechanisms to support teachers and address logistical challenges. The study contributes to the understanding of the practical implications of DepEd Order No. 21 and offers insights for enhancing its impact on educational practices and outcomes. (shrink)