Purposes and duties in scientific modelling

More people than ever are paying attention to philosophical questions about epidemiological models, including their susceptibility to the influence of social and ethical values, sufficiency to inform policy decisions under certain conditions, and even their fundamental nature. One important question pertains to the purposes of epidemiological models, for example, are COVID-19 models for ‘prediction’ or ‘projection’? Are they adequate for making causal inferences? Is one of their goals, or virtues, to change individual responses to the pandemic? In this essay, we offer our perspective on these questions and place them in the context of other recent philosophical arguments about epidemiological models. We argue that clarifying the intended purpose of a model, and assessing its adequacy for that purpose, are moral-epistemic duties, responsibilities which pertain to knowledge but have moral significance nonetheless. This moral significance, we argue, stems from the inherent value-ladenness of models, along with the potential for models to be used in political decision making in ways that conflict with liberal values and which could lead to downstream harms. Increasing conversation about the moral significance of modelling, we argue, could help us to resist further eroding our standards of democratic scrutiny in the COVID-19 era.

Breaking the Silence about the Animals We Eat

Some 77 billion terrestrial animals are reared for human consumption globally every year. The moral implications of killing animals for food and the material conditions of these animals in intensive animal agriculture have seldom been discussed in children’s literature. The purpose of this article is to examine how these socially and culturally maintained silences are broken in two Nordic children’s picturebooks, Swedish Älskade lilla gris (Dear Little Pig, 1982) by Ulf Nilsson and Eva Eriksson and Finnish Kinkkulin jouluyllätys (Little Ham’s Christmas Surprise, 2010) by Teija Rekola and Timo Kästämä. The books’ pig protagonists are determined not to die, embodying the dualistic status inherent in the animality of farmed animals; they are subjects and objects, living beings and food-to-become. Further, this article explores the representation of the inherent value of so-called farmed animals and how it can be narrated-to-exist by concepts gleaned from Western animal rights philosophy, especially the capabilities approach by Martha Nussbaum. In the two books, inherent value is expressed in significantly different modes. Älskade lilla gris discusses multispecies families, autonomous animality, and emancipation, whereas Kinkkulin jouluyllätys uses a more traditional mode involving an anthropomorphic animal story, idyllic setting, and humanized subjectivity. Analysis focuses on the representation of nonhuman individuality, agency, sentience, animality, and interaction with humans. Both books present active and sentient individuals with varying degrees of animality. One celebrates its protagonist’s pighood but also contrasts it with the confined conditions of an animal industrial complex. The other employs a human-like pig protagonist on the run from his slaughterer and whose pighood is limited to his appearance and intended use.

Exploring the Market of Soccer Player Registrations: An Empirical Analysis of the Difference Between Transfer Fees and Estimated Players’ Inherent Value

This paper examines the determinants of the difference between soccer player registration transfer fees and the estimated inherent value of transferred players. The results show that this difference increases for players competing in the same league as that of the acquiring team, players acquired during winter transfer windows, defender registrations, and in the presence of player registration swaps. It decreases for midfielder registrations and for registrations purchased the year immediately before the expiration of players’ contracts. Finally, the difference between registration transfer fees and estimated players’ inherent value increases up to when players are 28 years old and decreases afterwards.

The Wilds, Untamed, and Spontaneity

Chapter 4 discusses a “positive” account of madness. The Zhuangist, among others, focuses on the way we can understand an inherent value in madness depending on how we conceive of situations in given perspectives, and that we have reason to resist understanding particular people as mad or disordered objectively. The idea here is to include any mental state that is regularly seen as problematic or getting in the way of efficient or proper human functioning. This chapter also discusses a host of mad or mentally disordered individuals found in early Chinese texts, with the aim of understanding how they fit into the structure built thus far, and how various appearances of these characters (such as the “Madman of Chu”) in different texts will often serve to illustrate the divergent messages about mental disorder we find in these texts.

Reproductive genetic screening for information: evolving paradigms?

Reproductive genetic screening has introduced the possibility for pregnant women to learn, during the pregnancy or sometimes earlier, about the likelihood of their baby being affected with certain genetic conditions. As medicine progresses, the options afforded by this early information have expanded. This has led to a shifting paradigm in prenatal screening, wherein the early knowledge is seen as useful not solely for its inherent value to the pregnant woman, but also as enabling an expansion of conditions whose identification may allow early intervention and clinical impact. This article discusses this paradigm against the backdrop of prenatal genetic screening that is available today.

Disability Studies, Crip Theory, and Education

Disability studies and crip theory emerged out of a need to reimagine, and directly challenge, dominant deficit perspectives of disability in many different contexts. Instead of framing disability as a problem of individual bodies, where the solution to difference is found in often deeply harmful rehabilitation and intervention, disability studies and crip theory allow for a more critical and expansive look at disability as an aspect of identity and culture that holds inherent value. While disability studies and crip theory have been used in academic and activist spaces, the impacts of a more critical and expansive framing of disability have incredibly important impacts on, and reciprocal relationships with, the theory and practice of education. Disability studies and crip theory both work to simultaneously critique and change dominant perspectives of disability in school settings, as it does in academic theory spaces; it challenges teachers, schools, and curriculum to ask questions of the benefits of using deficit perspectives, and what is lost when disability is seen only as a problem to be fixed. In this way, these two fields of inquiry and practice continue to shape, challenge, and push each other toward a more just sense of disability for all.

Bioacoustical Ethics: On Joakim Blattmann’s Treverk (9)

Based on the artwork Treverk (9) by Norwegian artist Joakim Blattmann, this chapter discusses whether it is possible to exhibit a tree in a gallery space and still respect the tree as having inherent value, in accordance with Arne Næss and George Sessions’ ‘Principles of Deep Ecology’. Aspects such as the artist’s intention, the origin of the materials and the installation of the final artwork are put into question and analysed from a deep ecological perspective. If the tree’s desire is to live, then chopping it up and presenting it as a human spectacle in a gallery space is not to respect its inherent value. Yet the chapter argues that Treverk (9) can still inspire ecological thinking by disturbing the anthropocentric world view and displaying a deep relationality between the artist and the tree.

Institutional Resilience: The Foundation for Individual Resilience, Especially During COVID-19

In the protracted healthcare crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has become, healthcare professional wellness and resilience are a national concern. Physicians, nurses and medical staff have been profoundly negatively affected due to the inability of institutions to prepare for this pandemic. Institutional fixed point standards such as Eudaemonics, Inherent Value, and Amplifying Assumptions are essential to make it possible to steer an organizational course during a crisis. Fixed point standards must be embedded in hospitals and systems so they are positioned to do the most good. Employees must feel safe, valued and cared for always, so they can be resilient when crises strike. The best way to do that is by viewing the healthcare professionals through the lens of empathy. Institutional values of safety, access to accurate and caring information, human connection, and emphasis on mental health, are hallmarks of resilient organizations and will result in resilient individuals.

Respect, Inherent Value, Subjects-of-a-Life Some. Reflections on the Key Concepts of Tom Regan’s Animal Ethics

This article reconstructs the theoretical premises of Tom Regan’s animal ethics, the American philosopher recently disappeared who has given a fundamental contribution to this area of practical ethics, by developing a theory of rights based on the extension to all subjects-of-a-life of Kantian notions such as inherent value and respect. Regan’s theory still remains the most rigorous foundation of an animal ethics alternative to the utilitarian approach of Peter Singer, but it is not without unresolved problems or not entirely satisfactory solutions. To remedy some of them, in the final part the author tries to insert into the Reganian theoretical framework elements of gradualism.