Teleological Egalitarianism vs. the Slogan

Utilitas ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC RAMSAY

The Slogan holds that one situation cannot be worse (or better) than another unless there is someone for whom it is worse (or better). This principle appears to provide the basis for the levelling-down objection to teleological egalitarianism. Larry Temkin, however, argues that the Slogan is not a plausible moral ideal, since it stands against not just teleological egalitarianism, but also values such as freedom, rights, autonomy, virtue and desert. I argue that the Slogan is a plausible moral principle, one that provides a suitable moral basis for the levelling-down objection to teleological egalitarianism. Contrary to Temkin, freedom, autonomy, virtue, and rights can all be understood in person-affecting terms, while equality of outcome cannot. Moreover, the Slogan is open to a variety of different ideas about how we should weight or rank people's gains and losses. This flexibility allows the Slogan to accommodate ideals such as prioritarianism and desert.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Campbell

According to the bullet-biting response to the non-identity problem: Given a choice between creating a well-off child, A, and a different child, B, that is significantly worse off than A, it is not impermissible to create B. David Boonin has presented an argument for the bullet-biting response. He claims that although the conclusion of his argument is implausible, the rejection of the argument is even more implausible. But Boonin’s argument is more implausible than he realizes. Three specific premises, together with the claim that creating a child cannot make that child better or worse off than she would otherwise have been, jointly entail that it is not impermissible to create children whose lives contain only pain and suffering. This is a damning objection to Boonin’s argument. I argue that this objection cannot be avoided without undermining the other premises of Boonin’s argument. Finally, I suggest a fairly weak moral principle that avoids the bullet-biting response. According The Weak Principle (WP): If you are choosing between only Act 1 and Act 2, then Act 1 is impermissible if (a) the outcome of Act 2 is significantly better than the outcome of Act 1, (b*) Act 2 wouldn’t cause anyone to incur a significant cost, and (c) Act 2 wouldn’t violate anyone’s rights.


1996 ◽  
Vol 89 (8) ◽  
pp. 674-677
Author(s):  
Carolyn Richbart ◽  
Lynn Richbart

The expression “A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush” expresses the disposition of the average person when faced with a choice between two or more alternatives involving uncertainty. As far back as 1738, one of our most famous mathematicians, Daniel Bernoulli, studied how people think of gains and losses subjectively rather than in terms of mathematical expectation (see Bernoulli [1954]). In this article, we discuss a comparison between the decisions people make in risk situations and mathematical expectation.


Author(s):  
Dina B. Кazantseva ◽  
Sergey I. Iventev

Introduction. The article examines the spiritual and moral aspect of the political sphere. Due to the fact that the core of the potential of the Russian (Russian) politician has historically been the spiritual and moral principle of the Russian mentality, which is formed as a result of spiritual and moral development, in the process of education and training, then analytics, strategic management and the creation of a system of diligence gave the maximum effect of effectiveness in development of the country, were created on the basis of the spiritual and moral ideals of managers as the most important axiological guidelines of society. The purpose of the article is to study the influence of the spiritual and moral potential of a politician’s personality on the political sphere of modern Russia. Methodology. The theoretical and methodological basis of scientific research is cultural-historical, activity-based, integrated, transdisciplinary and psychosocial approaches. The intentional-dynamic concept and theories of cognitive dissonance, structuralist-constructivist, structuralist, ethnomethodological are used. Research Results. The research results in a scientific and philosophical substantiation of the fact that the spiritual and moral principle of the personality of a Russian politician is the essential basis of his resource development, a source of strength, motives and internal activity. The spiritual and moral potential of a politician’s personality determines the movement of deep essential vital forces that unfold through the mental program, which is the generic archetypal basis for self-realization, determining the strategy and tactics, the vector of the country’s development. Determined by the civilization of Russia, the mental programs of the behaviour of the politician’s personality create his stable stereotypes of behaviour and values, preserving the Russian (Russian) mentality, spiritual and moral values and Russian culture as a way of being of society at the genetic level. In connection with the identification through spiritual and moral values with Russian identity, the civilizational foundations of other countries are alien to him and his activities are aimed at strengthening the Russian statehood. Discussion and Conclusion. In the modern political sphere of Russia, there are contradictions between the objective laws of the development of the potential of a politician’s personality and his subjective preferences, which create new realities that violate the foundations of the country’s civilizational development; traditional, culture-forming and external, civilizational alien, changing the essential of Russian civilizational foundations, weakening the fulcrum in the mentality of political leaders. The resolution of contradictions is determined by the peculiarities of the cultural, historical, spiritual development of Russia, which contain the mobilization potential of the individual and society; the power of a political personality, which is an active subject of political activity, realizing its spiritual and moral potential, launching the deep essential forces of the generic archetype of spiritual and moral qualities, carrying out the processes of self-organization of the system, sustainable development and stabilization of society. Strengthening Russia as a world power is possible only for a political subject of the corresponding mentality, giving strength and the essential basis of movement and development, due to the fact that it is the mentality of a politician, which is a manifestation of the mental program of society, that creates the possibility of successful actions in the cultural and educational space of his country. Only in this case politics will act as a spiritual and moral ideal and an important axiological guideline for society and every citizen.


AI and Ethics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Moser

AbstractA recent political proposal to address the challenge of technological unemployment suggests that the state should impose a tax on labor-replacing technologies. The idea is to preserve jobs by disincentivizing automation. In this article, I critically assess the proposal from an ethical perspective. I show that, with respect to conceptions of distributive justice, it is unclear that precluding consumers’ potential real-income gains from automation can be justified. But foremost, I examine the moral ideal behind the normative claim to preserve labor. I show that the arguments in favor of a robot tax rely on doubtful moral convictions on the value of work and I conclude that a moral basis for imposing a robot tax is subject to justified scrutiny.


Author(s):  
Hurtado ◽  
Topa

The dynamic theory of resources is a recent approach that provides a theoretical framework for understanding, forecasting, and examining the relationships between people’s resources and their adaptation to retirement. This article focuses on the transition to retirement in order to better understand how retirees’ perceptions of their gains and losses when they approach retirement significantly explain their well-being after retirement. Moreover, we explore the relationship between people’s preparation behaviors before retirement (T1) and their quality of life and health after retirement (T3), taking into consideration the mediating role of perceived gains and losses in retirement (T2). This study was carried out with a sample of Spanish workers (N = 244) who were employed at T1 and had retired at T2 and T3. The results support the assertion that losses explain well-being better than gains. In addition, some specific losses showed a greater explanatory power for quality of life and health than others. The implications are discussed with a view to understanding retirement and the design of interventions.


1972 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
J. Hers

In South Africa the modern outlook towards time may be said to have started in 1948. Both the two major observatories, The Royal Observatory in Cape Town and the Union Observatory (now known as the Republic Observatory) in Johannesburg had, of course, been involved in the astronomical determination of time almost from their inception, and the Johannesburg Observatory has been responsible for the official time of South Africa since 1908. However the pendulum clocks then in use could not be relied on to provide an accuracy better than about 1/10 second, which was of the same order as that of the astronomical observations. It is doubtful if much use was made of even this limited accuracy outside the two observatories, and although there may – occasionally have been a demand for more accurate time, it was certainly not voiced.


Author(s):  
J. Frank ◽  
P.-Y. Sizaret ◽  
A. Verschoor ◽  
J. Lamy

The accuracy with which the attachment site of immunolabels bound to macromolecules may be localized in electron microscopic images can be considerably improved by using single particle averaging. The example studied in this work showed that the accuracy may be better than the resolution limit imposed by negative staining (∽2nm).The structure used for this demonstration was a halfmolecule of Limulus polyphemus (LP) hemocyanin, consisting of 24 subunits grouped into four hexamers. The top view of this structure was previously studied by image averaging and correspondence analysis. It was found to vary according to the flip or flop position of the molecule, and to the stain imbalance between diagonally opposed hexamers (“rocking effect”). These findings have recently been incorporated into a model of the full 8 × 6 molecule.LP hemocyanin contains eight different polypeptides, and antibodies specific for one, LP II, were used. Uranyl acetate was used as stain. A total of 58 molecule images (29 unlabelled, 29 labelled with antl-LPII Fab) showing the top view were digitized in the microdensitometer with a sampling distance of 50μ corresponding to 6.25nm.


Author(s):  
A. V. Crewe

We have become accustomed to differentiating between the scanning microscope and the conventional transmission microscope according to the resolving power which the two instruments offer. The conventional microscope is capable of a point resolution of a few angstroms and line resolutions of periodic objects of about 1Å. On the other hand, the scanning microscope, in its normal form, is not ordinarily capable of a point resolution better than 100Å. Upon examining reasons for the 100Å limitation, it becomes clear that this is based more on tradition than reason, and in particular, it is a condition imposed upon the microscope by adherence to thermal sources of electrons.


Author(s):  
Li Li-Sheng ◽  
L.F. Allard ◽  
W.C. Bigelow

The aromatic polyamides form a class of fibers having mechanical properties which are much better than those of aliphatic polyamides. Currently, the accepted morphology of these fibers as proposed by M.G. Dobb, et al. is a radial arrangement of pleated sheets, with the plane of the pleats parallel to the axis of the fiber. We have recently obtained evidence which supports a different morphology of this type of fiber, using ultramicrotomy and ion-thinning techniques to prepare specimens for transmission and scanning electron microscopy.


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