The Balancing View holds that what one ought to do is determined by the balance of reasons. It’s not clear how to formulate it. Thomas Schmidt defends one formulation, while supplementing it with two principles governing the transmission of reasons. A.S. Arridge argues against Schmidt’s views and suggests an alternative formulation. This chapter starts with the dispute between Schmidt and Arridge. It argues that Arridge’s formulation (which bears similarities to classical act-consequentualism) has an advantage over Schmidt’s: it can more (...) naturally be extended to issue comparative verdicts about there being more reason to pursue one alternative over another. The chapter then considers whether, working with Arridge’s formulation, we should accept the transmission principles. It argues that doing so generates puzzling results, and abandoning them isn’t as theoretically costly as it might appear. The chapter then introduces the thesis of “Reasons Framing” – according to which sometimes a consideration counting in favor of some alternative could be framed as a consideration counting against an incompatible alternative, and sometimes a consideration counting against some alternative could be framed as a consideration counting in favor of some incompatible alternative – which explains our intuitive attraction to the transmission principles while avoiding their pitfalls. (shrink)

The debate and implementation of Clinical Ethics Consultation is still in its beginnings in Europe and the issue of the patient's perspective has been neglected so far, especially at the theoretical and methodological level. At the practical level, recommendations about the involvement of the patient or his/her relatives are missing, reflecting the general lack of quality and practice standards in CEC. Balance of perspectives is a challenge in any interpersonal consultation, which has led to great efforts to develop “technical”approaches, (...) e.g., in psychological counseling or psychotherapeutic treatment. In ethics, unbalance or partiality is a matter of justice and has provoked significant theoretical work, also relevant for practical medical ethics. A lack of balance seems to be particularly serious in those situations, where ethical conflict is triggering a consultation and where the “parties” involved may try to persuade the consultant that their particular opinion is the most convincing; but to our knowledge the connection between patient/relatives involvement and balance has not yet been discussed in the context of CEC. Central questions of access and involvement of the patient and his/her relatives will be analysed and discussed regarding the challenge of balance and the adequate role or attitude of a Clinical Ethics Consultant. It is argued that the Clinical Ethics Consultant should have a methodological awareness regarding the concepts of “neutrality” versus “advocacy” in his/her role and try to achieve a balanced procedure that allows for an optimum of change of perspectives. The argumentation is developed along the narrative of a real case study. Recommendations concerning the involvement of the patient or the relatives are formulated for the practice of CEC. (shrink)

The balance of power is fundamental to the discipline of international relations, but its accuracy in explaining the historical record has been disputed. For international relations, balance of power theory represents a distinct approach which details the behaviour of states to counter hegemonic threats within an anarchic system. This article reimagines the balance of power tradition by highlighting its early modern foundations. Through providing a historical contextualization of the balance of power, this article shows how republican (...) thinkers sought to balance against concentrations of power in order to safeguard political liberty. Early modern republics grappled with the challenge of maintaining a division of power within the polis in a co-constitutive relationship with the international. A republican polis could not secure liberty if under external domination or if the polis itself expanded to imperial proportions. Imperial expansion and the martial politics this entailed have traditionally been understood as incompatible to the safeguarding of political liberty. Recognizing this republican influence can uncover the co-constitutive connections between the internal power dynamics of the polis and the international sphere. (shrink)

I defend a novel way of working out the Balancing View of Ought, that is, the view that whether one ought to take some action depends on nothing but the balance of the reasons for the action and those against it or for its alternatives. I show that the Balancing View needs to be complemented by certain principles of reason transmission, at least one of which might seem rather surprising. The result is an attractive theoretical package that allows for (...) compelling explanations of noteworthy normative phenomena, including ones that the Balancing View has been claimed to be at odds with. (shrink)

In the course of legal reasoning—whether for purposes of deciding an issue, justifying a decision, predicting how an issue will be decided, or arguing for how it should be decided—one often is required to reach conclusions based on a balance of reasons that is not straightforwardly reducible to the application of rules. Recent AI and Law work has modeled reason-balancing, both within and across cases, with set-theoretic and rule- or value-ordering approaches. This article explores a way to model balancing (...) in quantitative terms that may yield new questions, insights, and tools. (shrink)

Theories of organization and management have offered several concepts and models which indicate that organizational values are an important factor for running organizations successfully. A still unexplained question concerns the creation of balanced organizational values, which can support the achievement of several different and even conflicting goals of modern organizations. To explore balanced organizational values in contemporary business practice, we tested different models of organizational values on a sample of Fortune 100 companies. Research results demonstrate that none of the proportions/ratios (...) of balance proposed by the main models of organizational values from existing literature possesses/presents the ideal balance that is currently pursued in the business field. As a conclusion, a new model of balanced organizational values is proposed. (shrink)

In this contribution, I will argue that the image of a balance is often used to defend the idea of a trade-off. To understand the drawbacks of this line of thought, I will explore the relationship between online security technologies and fundamental rights, notably privacy, nondiscrimination, freedom of speech and due process. After discriminating between three types of online security technologies, I will trace the reconfiguration of the notion of privacy in the era of smart environments. This will lead (...) to an inquiry into the metaphor of the scale, building on the triple test regarding the justification of the limitation of fundamental rights such as privacy. The conclusion will be that in the case of a trade-off, infringing measures will have to be balanced by effective safeguards. No trade-off without balance. (shrink)

Most non-consequentialists “let the numbers count” when one can save either a lesser or greater number from equal or similar harm. But they are wary of doing so when one can save either a small number from grave harm or instead a very large number from minor harm. Limited aggregation is an approach that reconciles these two commitments. It is motivated by a powerful idea: our decision whom to save should respect each person who has a claim to our help, (...) including those whom we fail to save. However, it has recently been argued that it is open to decisive objections. I develop a new limitedly aggregative view:Hybrid Balance Relevant Claims. This view is well grounded in the reasons we have to be skeptical of aggregation and resolves all recent challenges by paying careful attention to the rationale for limited aggregation. (shrink)

It has long been taken for granted that the immune system’s capacity to protect an individual from infection and disease depends on the power of the system to distinguish between self and nonself. However, accumulating data have undermined this fundamental concept. Evidence against the self/nonself discrimination model left researchers in need of a new overarching framework able to capture the immune system’s reactivity. Here, I highlight that along with the self/nonself model, another powerful representation of the immune system’s reactivity has (...) been developed in the twentieth century immunology. According to this alternative view, the immune system is not a killer of nonself strangers but a peace-maker helping to establish harmony with the environment. The balance view of the system has never become part of the dominant paradigm. However, it is gaining more and more currency as new research develops. Advances in mucosal immunology confirm that instead of distinguishing between self and foreign the immune system reacts to microbial, chemical and self-induced alterations to produce responses that counterbalance effects of these changes. (shrink)

Dworkin, Schauer and others have argued that the last step of the proportionality test, ie balancing, is subject to a significant asymmetry. While we could balance interests against each other, we could not do so with rights, lest we destroy the unique normative status of rights. If this asymmetry exists, the applicability of balancing would be considerably limited. I analyse the asymmetry thesis and discuss its merits and weaknesses. I then demonstrate how we can accommodate the rationale behind the (...) asymmetry thesis within the principles theory’s account of balancing. My article confirms that proportionality adjudication includes the balancing of rights and interests. (shrink)

Truth-telling in healthcare practice can be regarded as a universal communicative virtue; however, there are different views on what consequence it has for giving or diminishing hope. The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between the concepts of truth-telling and hope from a relational ethics approach in the context of healthcare practice. Healthcare staff protect themselves and others to preserve hope in the care of seriously sick patients and in end-of-life care. This is done by balancing truth-telling (...) guided by different conditions such as the cultural norms of patients, family and staff. Our main conclusion is that the balancing of truth-telling needs to be decided in a mutual understanding in the caring relationship, but hope must always be inspired. Instead of focusing on autonomy as the only guiding principle, we would like to propose that relational ethics can serve as a meaningful perspective in balancing truth-telling. (shrink)

In a recent systematic review of the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard literature in this journal, we developed a typology of architectures as a basis for the process of SBSC design, implementation, use, and evolution. This paper addresses a comment by Hahn and Figge designed to stimulate further research. We argue that the existing literature demonstrates that the SBSC management tool can play an important role in corporate sustainability. The SBSC architectures—as representations of goals and priorities—form an integral and iterative part of (...) the corporate sustainability strategy-making process and therefore cannot be isolated from it. However, the concept as such should not be overloaded. In this paper, we first reflect on the potentials and constraints of the SBSC in relation to radical or transformational change and measuring performance outcomes on the level of human–earth systems. Second, we discuss the importance of SBSC architecture concerning how it enables the integration of sustainability into business organisations; how both strictly hierarchical cause-and-effect chains and less hierarchical designs can allow companies to seek inclusive profits; and the contingency-based use of generic architectures in contrast to its use as a diagnostic tool. (shrink)

In spite of a renewed interest in the relationship between spirituality and managerial thinking, the literature covering the link between Islam and management has been sparse – especially in the area of ethics. One potential reason may be the cultural diversity of nearly 1.3 billion Muslims globally. Yet, one common element binding Muslim individuals and countries is normative Islam. Using all four sources of this religion’s teachings, we outline the parameters of an Islamic model of normative business ethics. We explain (...) how this ethics model seeks to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders, and discuss its enforcement mechanisms. This Islamic approach to business ethics is centered around criteria that are in common with stakeholder theory such as justice and balance, and includes unique additional criteria such as trust and benevolence. (shrink)

This paper navigates the relationship between the growing influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the foundational principles of academic integrity. It offers an in-depth analysis of how key academic stakeholders—publishers and universities—are crafting strategies and guidelines to integrate AI into the sphere of scholarly work. These efforts are not merely reactionary but are part of a broader initiative to harness AI’s potential while maintaining ethical standards. The exploration reveals a diverse array of stances, reflecting the varied applications of AI in (...) academic settings. These range from conservative approaches emphasizing the need for stringent AI regulations to more progressive strategies that seek to leverage AI’s capabilities. The paper accentuates the importance of guidelines that are adaptable, transparent, and culturally sensitive, acknowledging the global context of academic research. It also highlights the pressing need for effective implementation and enforcement of these guidelines to ensure that the integration of AI into academia does not compromise the integrity of scholarly work. The conclusion emphasizes the dynamic balance required between embracing AI’s transformative potential and upholding the timeless values of academic rigor and ethical research. This comprehensive analysis aims to provide a detailed perspective on the evolving role of AI in academia, fostering a dialog on how best to navigate this new technological frontier while preserving the sanctity of academic scholarship. (shrink)

I introduce a puzzle involving lives that appear good on balance for the people living them even though they seemingly contain perfectly balanced quantities of good and bad things. To solve it, I argue that every conscious experience is basically good for the person who experiences it—good for her, and not merely in the derivative sense of being appropriately related to something else that is good or bad for her—simply in virtue of being a conscious experience of hers. Although (...) experiences are, other things equal, more basically good if they are pleasant, even experiences that aren’t pleasant are basically good. And although unpleasant experiences are, in virtue of their unpleasantness, basically bad, they are also basically good simply in virtue of being conscious experiences. Well-being is easier to come by than any of the major theories recognizes: we accrue it at every waking moment, simply by being conscious. (shrink)

The notion that it is useful to specify norms progressively in order to resolve doubts about what to do, which I developed initially in a 1990 article, has been only partly assimilated by the bioethics literature. The thought is not just that it is helpful to work with relatively specific norms. It is more than that: specification can replace deductive subsumption and balancing. Here I argue against two versions of reliance on balancing that are prominent in recent bioethical discussions. Without (...) meaning to address the substance or the overall merits of either view I criticize, I attack Gert, Culver and Clouser's implicit reliance on some overall dimension of balancing as a basis of resolving conflicts among norms and Beauchamp and Childress's residual acceptance of 'justified balancing'. The former authors' description of resolving conflicts depends upon a type of value commensurability that (as they otherwise seem to admit) does not obtain, while the latter authors' role for justified balancing would be better served by continued specification. (shrink)

Experimental balance is usually understood as the control for the value of the conditions, other than the one under study, which are liable to affect the result of a test. We will discuss three different approaches to balance. ‘Millean balance’ requires to identify and equalize ex ante the value of these conditions in order to conduct solid causal inferences. ‘Fisherian balance’ measures ex post the influence of uncontrolled conditions through the analysis of variance. In ‘efficiency (...) class='Hi'>balance’ the value of the antecedent conditions is decided ex ante according to the efficiency they yield in the estimation of the treatment outcome. Against some old arguments by John Worrall, we will show that in both Fisherian and efficiency balance there are good reasons to randomize the allocation of treatments, in particular when there is no agreement among experimenters as to the antecedent conditions to be controlled for. (shrink)

In this article, we explain the mechanisms that allow social enterprises to balance their missions, and the risk of mission drift as organizations grow. We empirically explore Incubator-BUS (I-BUS), a student organization within a private Brazilian university, which sought to incubate cooperatives for vulnerable groups. Although initially successful in balancing its missions, I-BUS then failed. We show how scaling-up can complicate the balancing of different missions within the same organization. We propose that, to balance their missions, social enterprises—especially (...) recently formed and democratically managed enterprises—need not only “spaces of negotiation,” as suggested in the literature, but also “herding spaces” that connect an organization to its institutional context. We indicate why herding spaces are critical, but then show how scaling-up can result in organizational “compartmentalization” that undermines them. (shrink)

According to the Balancing View of Ought, we ought to perform an action if and only if performing the action is most strongly supported by the balance of our reasons. The Balancing View faces the objection from exclusionary reasons, which are second-order reasons not to act for certain other reasons. According to Joseph Raz, the existence of exclusionary reasons undermines the Balancing View: a reason might tip the balance in favour of performing an act but at the same (...) time be excluded by an undefeated second-order reason, in which case one ought not conform to the balance of reasons. I argue that the Balancing View can be defended against this objection and that the existence of exclusionary reasons is compatible with the Balancing View. (shrink)

The formal structure of subsumption may be represented in a deductive scheme, which one might call the “Subsumption Formula.” The author argues that there is an analogous scheme for the formal structure of balancing or weighing, which he terms the “Weight Formula.” In short, subsumption and balancing have comparable schemata, through which the formal structure of a set of premisses, which warrant the inference to a legal result, can be identified. The relation in the two cases between these premisses and (...) the ensuing legal result is, however, different. The Subsumption Formula is represented by a scheme that works according to the rules of logic, the Weight Formula, by a scheme that works according to the rules of arithmetic. In spite of this difference, the two formulae are alike in that judgments, in both cases, remain the basis of the argument. (shrink)

The notion of whether people focus on the past, present or future, and how it shapes their behaviour is known as Time Perspective. Fundamental to the work of two of its earliest proponents, Zimbardo and Boyd (2008), was the concept of balanced time perspective and its relationship to wellness. A person with balanced time perspective can be expected to have a flexible temporal focus of mostly positive orientations (past-positive, present-hedonistic, and future) and much less negative orientations (past-negative and present-fatalistic). This (...) study measured deviation from balanced time perspective (DBTP: Zhang, Howell, and Stolarski, 2013) in a sample of 243 mature adults aged 45 to 91 years and explored relationships to Retirement Planning, Depression, Anxiety, Stress, Positive Mood, and Negative Mood. Results indicate that DBTP accounts for unexplained variance in the outcome measures even after controlling for demographic variables. DBTP was negatively related to Retirement Planning and Positive Mood and positively related to Depression, Anxiety, Stress and Negative Mood. Theoretical and practical implications regarding balanced time perspective are discussed. (shrink)

Haptic-based vibrotactile biofeedback (BF) is a promising technique to improve rehabilitation of balance in stroke patients. However, the extent to which BF training changes temporal structure of the center of pressure (CoP) trajectories remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate the effect of vibrotactile BF training on the temporal structure of CoP during quiet stance in chronic stroke patients using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Nine chronic stroke patients (age; 81.56±44 months post-stroke) received a balance training regimen using a (...) vibrotactile BF system twice a week over four weeks. A Wii Balance board was used to record five 30 s trials of quiet stance pre- and post-training at 50 Hz. DFA revealed presence of two linear scaling regions in CoP indicating presence of fast- and slow-scale fluctuations. Averaged across all trials, fast-scale fluctuations showed persistent dynamics ( = 1.05 ±.08 for ML and  = 0.99 ±.17 for AP) and slow-scale fluctuations were anti-persistent ( = 0.35 ±.05 for ML and  = 0.32 ±.05 for AP). The slow-scale dynamics of ML CoP in stroke patients decreased from pre-training to post-BF training ( = 0.40 ±.13 vs. 0.31 ±.09). These results suggest that the vibrotactile BF training affects postural control strategy used by chronic stroke patients in the ML direction. Results of the DFA are further discussed in the context of balance training using vibrotactile BF and interpreted from the perspective of intermittent control of upright stance. (shrink)

All living systems need to regulate themselves and coordinate the activities of their parts to maintain themselves under changing conditions. Historically, homeostasis is one of the central ideas that have been employed to understand biological regulation. In this article we examine the application of the concept of homeostasis to medicine and its implications for understanding health. We argue that while using homeostasis to characterize health is in line with current criticisms of ideas of health as a complete state of well-being (...) or absence of disease, such an endeavor has been hindered by the adoption of a narrow cybernetic interpretation of homeostasis based on feedback mechanisms and setpoints. This latter interpretation emphasizes stability and balance as the hallmarks of health: a stable physiological state that needs to be preserved or to which an organism needs to return after a perturbation, with change or imbalance as something to be counteracted. William Bechtel has contributed to criticizing this view and reframing the concept of homeostasis by focusing on the organism as a whole. By building on this work and looking at regulation beyond error correction as the organism’s ability to modify its internal dynamics in response to varying conditions, we apply this interpretation of homeostasis to health by advocating for a change of perspective: from a notion of health based on stability and balance to one based on adaptive change. We propose an alternative perspective that emphasizes the capability for change as a new lens through which to understand health. (shrink)

There seem to be obvious virtues to keeping a sense of balance. In this paper, I consider some examples from ordinary life and education where the pursuit of balance would appear to be a benefit. Yet I also draw upon lines of thinking from John Stuart Mill and Adam Phillips to examine whether the apparent good sense of balance can be disturbed. I show how Mill's and Phillips’ ideas extend into a consideration of the aesthetics of (...) class='Hi'>balance and the idea that there might be something deceptively alluring about balance. I seek to develop these lines of thinking in relation to a work of modernist literature that works to dissipate balance's beguiling allure. (shrink)

In Balanced Wonder, Jan B. W. Pedersen digs deep into the alluring topic of wonder, in dialogue with Neo-Aristotelian philosophers, arguing that the experience of wonder, when balanced, serves as a strong contributor to human flourishing.

If we had a balance of reasons, where the arguments presented in favor and against the case were weighed precisely and the verdict could be pronounced in favor of the most inclined scale... [we would have] a more valuable art than that miraculous science of producing gold.

The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed characterisation of some ways in which our preferences reflect our reasons. I will argue that practical reasons can be characterised along two dimensions that influence our preferences: their balance and their weight. This is analogous to a similar characterisation of the way in which probabilities reflect the balance and weight of evidence in epistemology. In this paper, I will illustrate the distinction between the balance and weight of (...) reasons, and show how this is crucial for an adequate account of preference and choice. The upshot is a more complete picture of a particular kind of decision, labelled by Isaac Levi and, more recently, Ruth Chang as ‘hard choices’. These are choices in which one option is better than another in some ways, the other is better than the first in some ways, but neither seems better overall. The distinction between the balance and weight of reasons presents a new way of understanding how hard choices vary by degree and what it is that makes them so hard. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Balance and the Mean Individuality Moving Off the Mat Conclusion: Lesson Learned.

We all have moral beliefs. But what if one beleif conflicts with another? DePaul argues that we have to make our beliefs cohere, but that the current coherence methods are seriously flawed. It is not just the arguments that need to be considered in moral enquiry. DePaul asserts that the ability to make sensitive moral judgements is vital to any philosophical inquiry into morality. The inquirer must consider how her life experiences and experiences with literature, film and theatre have influenced (...) her capacity for making moral judgments and attempt to ensure that this capacity is neither naive nor corrupted. (shrink)

Defining actions in contradistinction to mere happenings runs into the problem of specifying the role of the agent and separating what the agent does from what they exploit or suffer. Traditionally these problems have been approached by starting with a simple act, such as an incidental movement, and considering causality, or by seeking to elucidate the connection between the act and the agent's intentions or reasons. It is suggested here that a promising approach is to shift attention from 'simple' movements (...) and start instead by exploring the general character of acquired skills. Balancing the body is one such skill and serves here as an exemplar. Some remarks made by Reid on balance are used in a Peircean framework for perception to suggest that, at least for humans, an action is always the performance of an acquired skill. Also, while action is constitutive of perception, bodily perception is the basis of action, providing in a feeling of ownership direct knowledge of an asymmetric opposition between the agent and the world. (shrink)

The standard view among philosophers of normativity is that practical reasons balance permissively (i.e., when reasons are tied between incompatible actions, either action is rational), while epistemic reasons balance prohibitively (i.e., when reasons are tied between incompatible doxastic attitudes, neither attitude may be rationally formed). Those who disagree, typically epistemic permissivists, think that epistemic reasons behave like reasons for action and that all reasons exhibit permissive balancing. One thing widely agreed on is that a third possibility, that all (...) reasons exhibit prohibitive balancing, is off the table. This paper aims to get that option back on the table. I defend the view that all reasons balance prohibitively, and the apparent permissive balancing of practical reasons is an illusion. What we take to be cases of choosing on the basis of tied practical reasons, actually involve finding extra, tie-breaking, reasons. (shrink)

Across languages of the world, some grammatical patterns have been argued to be more common than expected by chance. These are sometimes referred to as language universals. One such universal is the correlation between constituent order freedom and the presence of a case system in a language. Here, we explore whether this correlation can be explained by a bias to balance production effort and informativity of cues to grammatical function. Two groups of learners were presented with miniature artificial languages (...) containing optional case marking and either flexible or fixed constituent order. Learners of the flexible order language used case marking significantly more often. This result parallels the typological correlation between constituent order flexibility and the presence of case marking in a language and provides a possible explanation for the historical development of Old English to Modern English, from flexible constituent order with case marking to relatively fixed order without case marking. In addition, learners of the flexible order language conditioned case marking on constituent order, using more case marking with the cross-linguistically less frequent order, again mirroring typological data. These results suggest that some cross-linguistic generalizations originate in functionally motivated biases operating during language learning. (shrink)

This paper offers a new concept of the firm that aims at balancing the corporate economic, social, and environmental responsibilities and goes beyond the stakeholder approach. It intends to provide a conceptual and operationalizable basis to fairly assess corporate conduct from both inside and outside the companies. To a large extent these different responsibilities may overlap and reinforce each other. However, if they conflict, they should be clearly evaluated for their own sake and in terms of wealth creation. Only then (...) can a balanced approach be realized. Section 1 briefly discusses some general aspects of the relationship between concepts and measurement. In Section 2, a concept of the firm is developed that is based on the notion of responsibility and balances economic, social and environmental responsibilities. According to these concepts, different ways of measuring corporate planning and performance are examined in Section 3, followed up by a summary and conclusions. (shrink)

According to the Balancing View of Ought, we ought to perform an action if and only if performing the action is most strongly supported by the balance of our reasons. The Balancing View faces the objection from exclusionary reasons, which are second-order reasons not to act for certain other reasons. According to Joseph Raz, the existence of exclusionary reasons undermines the Balancing View: a reason might tip the balance in favour of performing an act but at the same (...) time be excluded by an undefeated second-order reason, in which case one ought not conform to the balance of reasons. This chapter argues that the Balancing View can be defended against this objection and that the existence of exclusionary reasons is compatible with the Balancing View. (shrink)

Unlike most texts in critical thinking, _Reason in the Balance_ focuses broadly on the practice of critical inquiry, the process of carefully examining an issue in order to come to a reasoned judgment. Although analysis and critique of individual arguments have an important role to play, this text goes beyond that dimension to emphasize the various aspects that go into the practice of inquiry, including identifying issues and relevant contexts, understanding competing cases, and making a comparative judgment._ Distinctive Features of (...) the Text:_ Emphasis on applying critical thinking to complex issues with competing arguments Inclusion of chapters on inquiry in specific contexts Attention to the dialogical aspects of inquiry, including sample dialogues Emphasis on the spirit of inquiry _The Second Edition Features:_ Updated examples and items of current interest New dialogues on vaccination, prostitution, and climate change New material on biases in reasoning, including emotional, psychological, social, and cognitive _The _Reason in the Balance_ Website includes:_ An Appendix on Logic Exercises Quizzes. (shrink)

Microbiome research is changing how ecosystems, including animal bodies, are understood. In the case of humans, microbiome knowledge is transforming medical approaches and applications. However, the field is still young, and many conceptual and explanatory issues need resolving. These include how microbiome causality is understood, and how to conceptualize the role microbiomes have in the health status of their hosts and other ecosystems. A key concept that crops up in the medical microbiome literature is “balance.” A balanced microbiome is (...) thought to produce health and an imbalanced one disease. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of how balance is used in the microbiome literature, this “think again” essay critically analyses each of the several subconceptions of balance. As well as identifying problems with these uses, the essay suggests some starting points for filling this conceptual gap in microbiome research. (shrink)

Democratic theorists often distinguish between two views of democratic procedures. ‘Outcomes theorists’ emphasize the instrumental nature of these procedures and argue that they are only valuable because they tend to produce good outcomes. In contrast, ‘proceduralists’ emphasize the intrinsic value of democratic procedures, for instance, on the grounds that they are fair. In this paper. I argue that we should reject pure versions of these two theories in favor of an understanding of the democratic ideal that recognizes a commitment to (...) both intrinsically valuable democratic procedures and democratic outcomes. In instances in which there is a conflict between these two commitments, I suggest they must be balanced. This balancing approach offers a justification of judicial review on the grounds that it potentially limits outcomes that undermine democracy. But judicial review is not justifiable in any instance in which a bad democratic outcome results from democratic procedures. When the loss that would result from overturning a democratic procedure is greater than the gain to democracy that would result from ensuring against an undemocratic outcome; judicial review is not justifiable. Loss or gain to democracy is defined by the negative or positive impact of each action on the core democratic values of equality and autonomy, aspects of the democratic ideal. Even when judicial review is justified, the fact that it overturns intrinsically valuable procedures suggests that such review is never ideal from the standpoint of democracy. (shrink)

In this reply to van de Poel’s (Philosophy & Technology, 35(3), 82, 2022) commentary on O’Neill (Philosophy & Technology, 35(79), 2022), I discuss two worries about the general contextual integrity approach to evaluating technological change. First, I address van de Poel’s concern that the general contextual integrity approach will not supply the right guidance in cases where morally problematic technological change poses no threat to contextual integrity. Second, I elaborate on how the approach supplies mechanisms for balancing caution with the (...) need for change. (shrink)

Critical-care decision making is highly complex, given the need for health care providers and organizations to consider, and constructively respond to, the diverse interests and perspectives of a variety of legitimate stakeholders. Insights derived from an identified set of ethics-related considerations have the potential to meaningfully inform inclusive and deliberative policy development that aims to optimally balance the competing obligations that arise in this challenging, clinical decision-making domain. A potential, constructive outcome of such policy engagement is the collaborative development (...) of an as-fair-as-possible dispute resolution process that incorporates an appropriated-justified, defensible critical-care obligation threshold. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the risks that can be involved in healthcare work. In this paper, we explore the issue of staff safety in clinical work using the example of personal protective equipment in the COVID-19 crisis. We articulate some of the specific ethical challenges around PPE currently being faced by front-line clinicians, and develop an approach to staff safety that involves balancing duty to care and personal well-being. We describe each of these values, and present a decision-making framework (...) that integrates the two. The aim of the framework is to guide the process of balancing these two values when staff safety is at stake, by facilitating ethical reflection and/or decision-making that is systematic, specific and transparent. It provides a structure for individual reflection, collaborative staff discussion, and decision-making by those responsible for teams, departments and other groups of healthcare staff. Overall the framework guides the decision maker to characterise the degree of risk to staff, articulate feasible options for staff protection in that specific setting and identify the option that ensures any decrease in patient care is proportionate to the increase in staff well-being. It applies specifically to issues of PPE in COVID-19, and also has potential to assist decision makers in other situations involving protection of healthcare staff. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

This chapter continues to explore consequences of the communicative conception of democratic law by considering an issue about constitutional balancing: When can a discretionary interest asserted by a state be balanced against a constitutional liberty interest? Criticizing the US Supreme Court’s decision in _Washington v. Glucksberg_, in which a ban on assisted suicide was upheld as constitutional on the basis of an asserted state interest in preserving human life, it argues that balancing requires more than the mere assertion of an (...) interest; rather, the state must show a commitment to and investment in that interest by adopting consistent policies that further the interest. Failure to insist on this requirement undermines the idea, implicit in the communicative conception, that law must aspire to articulate a coherent set of moral commitments. (shrink)

Robert Alexy has for many years been a prominent analyst of the role of principles in legal argumentation, and an equally prominent defender of the rationality of balancing and proportionality modes of legal decision-making. But although Alexy's defense of proportionality and balancing against charges by Jürgen Habermas and Justice Antonin Scalia that balancing is essentially an irrational process is sound, Alexy in the process is too quick to collapse the important differences between the process of balancing competing principles and the (...) process of interpreting a canonical written text. Although both can be and are frequently rational, rationality is not the same as external constraint, and the ability of canonical texts to provide a degree of external constraint on legal decision-making that cannot be provided by open-ended principles is a difference that should not be lost in the well-aimed efforts to demonstrate that both can be rational and both have important places in legal argumentation and decision-making. (shrink)

The widely cited Nuffield Council on Bioethics ‘Intervention Ladder’ structurally embodies the assumption that personal autonomy is maximized by non-intervention. Consequently, the Intervention Ladder encourages an extreme ‘negative liberty’ view of autonomy. Yet there are several alternative accounts of autonomy that are both arguably superior as accounts of autonomy and better suited to the issues facing public health ethics. We propose to replace the one-sided ladder, which has any intervention coming at a cost to autonomy, with a two-sided ‘Balanced Intervention (...) Ladder,’ where intervention can either enhance or diminish autonomy. We show that not only the alternative, richer accounts of autonomy but even Mill’s classic version of negative liberty puts some interventions on the positive side of the ladder. (shrink)

The balance of nature concept is an old idea that manifests itself in anumber of forms in population and community ecology. This paper focuseson population ecology, where controversy surrounding the balance ofnature takes the form of perennial debates over the significance ofdensity dependence, population regulation, and species interactions suchas competition. One of the most striking features of these debates, overthe course of the previous century in ecology, is the tendency to arguethe case on largely conceptual grounds. This paper (...) explores twoquestions. Why this tendency to settle on conceptual grounds what is soobviously an empirical issue? Are there any good conceptual arguments tobe had in this area? (shrink)