The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of (...) judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

On January 11, 2024, the United Kingdom (U.K.) Supreme Court rendered its judgment in _Paul v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust_, restricting the circumstances in which “secondary victims” can successfully claim for damages in clinical negligence cases. This ruling has provided welcome clarity regarding the scope of negligently caused “pure” psychiatric illness claims, but the judgment may well prove controversial. In this article, I trace the facts and opinion from the majority and also discuss an important dissenting opinion. I then (...) reflect on what the ruling means for psychiatric illness claims by secondary victims, and more broadly on the implications for clinical negligence law. I suggest that while much-needed clarity has been injected in this area of the law, it is difficult, reading the majority of the Supreme Court’s emphasis on the restricted scope of a medical practitioner’s duty, to envision a scenario in which secondary victim could ever succeed in a clinical negligence context. (shrink)

Hilde Lindemann Nelson focuses on the stories of groups of people--including Gypsies, mothers, nurses, and transsexuals--whose identities have been defined by those with the power to speak for them and to constrain the scope of their actions. By placing their stories side by side with narratives about the groups in question, Nelson arrives at some important insights regarding the nature of identity. She regards personal identity as consisting not only of how people view themselves but also of how others view (...) them. These perceptions combine to shape the person's field of action. If a dominant group constructs the identities of certain people through socially shared narratives that mark them as morally subnormal, those who bear the damaged identity cannot exercise their moral agency freely.Nelson identifies two kinds of damage inflicted on identities by abusive group relations: one kind deprives individuals of important social goods, and the other deprives them of self-respect. To intervene in the production of either kind of damage, Nelson develops the counterstory, a strategy of resistance that allows the identity to be narratively repaired and so restores the person to full membership in the social and moral community. By attending to the power dynamics that constrict agency, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair augments the narrative approaches of ethicists such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, and Charles Taylor. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate concerning the identification of politically relevant cases of corruption in a democracy by sketching the basic traits of an original liberal theory of institutional corruption. We define this form of corruption as a deviation with respect to the role entrusted to people occupying certain institutional positions, which are crucial for the implementation of public rules, for private gain. In order to illustrate the damages that corrupt behaviour makes to liberal democratic institutions, we discuss (...) the case of health care professionals’ abuse of their right to conscientious objection to abortion services. We show that the conscience clause can be instrumentally abused to sabotage democratically established public rules and thus exert undue private influence on their implementation. In this sense, from a liberal democratic perspective, institutional corruption is problematic because it is disruptive of such fundamental liberal ideals as the impartiality of public institutions and citizens’ political equality. (shrink)

I show, building on Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer, that destructive conduct with respect to the environment can flourish even in the absence of interpersonal conflicts. As Quinn's puzzle makes apparent, in cases where individually negligible effects are involved, an agent, whether it be an individual or a unified collective, can be led down a course of destruction simply as a result of following its informed and perfectly understandable but intransitive preferences. This is relevant with respect to environmental ethics, (...) since environmental damage is often the result of the accumulation of individually negligible effects. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ethical implications of so-called ‘collateral damage’. It develops a moral typology of collateral harm to innocents, which occurs as a side effect of military or quasi-military action. Distinguishing between accidental and incidental collateral damage, it introduces four categories of such damage: negligent, oblivious, knowing and reckless collateral damage. Objecting mainstream versions of the doctrine of double effect, the article argues that in order for any collateral damage to be morally permissible, violent agents must comply with (...) high standards of care. In order for incidental harm to be permissible, an agent must take pains to avoid such harm even at higher cost to him- or herself. It is argued that accidentally but negligently caused collateral damage may be just as difficult to excuse as incidental harm. Only if high precautionary standards of care are met, can unintended harm to innocents – incidental or accidental – be permissible. In practice, such a strong commitment to avoiding harm to civilians may well lead us to question more generally and rethink more radically how violent conflicts ought to be fought, how military violence ought to be used and whether there are better ways of achieving those aims that we think are legitimate than those we are currently using. (shrink)

Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption. We clarify the widely held but obscure principle that consciousness is morally significant. It is hard to apply this principle to difficult cases given that philosophers of mind distinguish between a range (...) of notions of consciousness and that is unclear which of these is assumed by the principle. We suggest that the morally relevant notion is that of phenomenal consciousness and then use our analysis to interpret cases of brain damage. We argue that enjoyment of consciousness might actually give stronger moral reasons not to preserve a patient's life and, indeed, that these might be stronger when patients retain significant cognitive function. (shrink)

This paper argues that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness are essential for epistemic agents such as scientists who are expected to carry out non-epistemic missions. My chief philosophical claim is that the two values should play a joint role in their communication about earthquake-related damages when their knowledge claims are advisory. That said, I try to defend a minimal normative account of science in the context of communication. I show that these (...) epistemic agents when acting as communicators may encounter various epistemic and practical uncertainties in making their knowledge claims. Using four vignettes, I show that the value of openness to epistemic plurality and the value of social responsiveness may best serve their epistemic and practical purposes across different contexts by reducing their epistemic and practical risks associated with the knowledge claims they communicated. The former may reduce the risks of prematurely excluding epistemic alternatives and is conducive to two types of epistemic plurality; the latter is supposed to reduce the risks of making self-defeating advisory claims and harmful wishful speaking by minimizing the values in tension that can be embedded in the social roles the epistemic agents play. (shrink)

Although there is an increasing body of opinion that awards of damages for breach of contract should take account of the claimant’s performance interest, there has been little in the way of analysis of what the performance interest is. Commonly the concept is put forward as simply a reformulation or reconceptualization of the expectation interest, itself hitherto regarded as the one true contractual interest. Such thinking is flawed. A closer analysis of contract doctrine shows there to be two distinct (...) contractual interests; in receiving performance, and in being compensated for losses caused by non-performance. Receiving compensatory damages for non-performance is not the same as receiving performance. At present, this important difference is not fully appreciated, resulting in a failure to develop a principled approach to the claims that can be made following a breach of contract. Recognition of this distinction forces us to confront the fundamental question of how committed we are to the notion that contracts entail a right to performance. This article examines the distinction between these two interests, how the performance interest may be given effect by a damages award, and what the consequences of this analysis are for our understanding of the nature of contractual obligation. (shrink)

Many morally important facts about the way we affect one another, in particular the psychological damage we can inflict, are hard to imagine .

This article explores aggravated and exemplary damages in terms of their structure. It argues that the awards are distinguishable and once they have been appropriately analysed it can be seen that aggravated damages have a secure foundation in the private law and are importantly different from other compensatory awards. The article then argues that many of the reasons given in favour of exemplary damages are not consistent with the structure of that award. The article concludes by insisting (...) that exemplary damages should be abolished as they are in serious tension with the nature of civil liability. (shrink)

María Guadalupe Martínez Alles’s Torts and Retribution. The Case for Punitive Damages is a thoughtful and rigorously argued work. It engages the reader with its clarity and provokes reflection thro...

Professor Ernest Weinrib has argued that restitutionary damages must be understood, not as a deterrent to wrongful conduct, but as a requirement of commutative Justice. Professor Gordley agrees, but claims that a purposive understanding of commutative Justice can shed more light on restitutionary damages than the formal understanding of Professor Weinrib. A purposive understanding enables us to distinguish appropriation of a right from mere inteference, to distinguish true restitutionary damages from damages in lieu of a forced (...) sale or hold-up; and to explain why, normally, it should not matter whether the defendant acted wilfully or innocently. (shrink)

Contrary to much of what has been said about the decision of the United States Supreme Court last term in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, it hardly put an end to the discretion of American judges to make awards of punitive damages in cases within admiralty jurisdiction. Rather, it confirmed judicial authority to make such awards in the absence of legislative direction, rejected the view that the Clean Air Act signals any intent of Congress to foreclose them in cases (...) in which that statute is implicated, and sets for them a cap, but only for an uncommon category of cases. (shrink)

The minimum performance rule applies where the defendant who has repudiated his contract would have had a choice as to how to perform it. The rule requires that damages be assessed on the basis that the defendant would have chosen to perform in the least onerous manner. Two principal criticisms of the rule are made. The first is that the rule’s fundamental assumption, that minimum performance is all the claimant is entitled to, rests on a flawed understanding of what (...) it means to have a choice as to how to perform a promise. The second is that the rule is wrongly applied to claims for consequential loss. Having shown that the rule has no remaining role, the conclusion reached is that it should be abandoned. (shrink)

Abstract—Following the recognition by the House of Lords in AG v Blake of the gain-based remedy of an account of profits in a contractual context, an increasing number of commentators have argued that the English remedial regime for breach of contract should be further reinforced by the introduction of punitive damages. This article considers whether there may be a role for punitive awards in contract law. It seeks to demonstrate that the adoption of punitive damages, without wider reform (...) of the existing remedial regime, may lead to inconsistencies. The reason is that English contract law has generally shown reluctance to view contractual default as being reprehensible or the motive for breach as materially relevant. Legal intervention in particular defined circumstances by way of regulation may be more appropriate than punitive awards. Support for the conclusion that caution should be exercised before reform is undertaken is also drawn from recent developments in France, where the introduction of punitive damages has been proposed as part of a project to reform the Civil Code. (shrink)

The modern orthodoxy is that compensatory and gain-based damages are ‘alternative remedies’ for civil wrongdoing. As such, a claimant can only have judgment for one or other, and must elect which it is to be. This article prepares the ground for a re-examination of that rule by exploring its origins in patent cases, where the election requirement was firmly established in the 1870s by the House of Lords in Neilson v Betts and De Vitre v Betts. Closer examination of (...) early practice offers two important insights. The first is that the explanation given for the election requirement in Neilson v Betts, the ‘condonement theory’, was novel, and not orthodox. Pre-Neilson v Betts, courts had generally refused to allow a claimant to have both compensatory damages (as ‘damages’) and gain-based damages (as an ‘account of profits’). Nevertheless, that practice had more contingent, practical foundations than the Neilson v Betts orthodoxy suggests. It is best viewed as a practical response, in the prevailing institutional context, to the risk of excessive remedial cumulations. The second insight is that the relationship between the remedies is fundamentally determined by two factors: the prevailing conceptions of the remedies' nature and basis, and the procedural and institutional context within which the remedies are claimed and awarded. (shrink)

I explore how considerations about psychological damage connect with moral theories.

In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues discovered how to reprogram terminally differentiated somatic cells to a pluripotent stem cell state. The resulting induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) made a paradigm shift in the field, further nailing down the disproval of the long‐held dogma that differentiation is unidirectional. The prospect of using iPSCs for patient‐specific cell‐based therapies has been enticing. This promise, however, has been questioned in the last two years as several studies demonstrated intrinsic epigenetic and genomic anomalies in these (...) cells. Here, we not only review the recent critical studies addressing the genome integrity during the reprogramming process, but speculate about the underlying mechanisms that could create de novo genome damage in iPSCs. Finally, we discuss how much an elevated mutation load really matters considering the safety of future therapies with cells heavily cultured in vitro. (shrink)

Moral judgments, whether delivered in ordinary experience or in the courtroom, depend on our ability to infer intentions. We forgive unintentional or accidental harms and condemn failed attempts to harm. Prior work demonstrates that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex deliver abnormal judgments in response to moral dilemmas and that these patients are especially impaired in triggering emotional responses to inferred or abstract events, as opposed to real or actual outcomes. We therefore predicted that VMPC patients would deliver (...) abnormal moral judgments of harmful intentions in the absence of harmful outcomes, as in failed attempts to harm. This prediction was confirmed in the current study: VMPC patients judged attempted harms, including attempted murder, as more morally permissible relative to controls. These results highlight the critical role of the VMPC in processing harmful intent for moral judgment. (shrink)

This chapter examines how international solidarity and cooperation in the reform of investment protection relating to the utilization of non-renewable natural resources could help mitigate the wide range of sovereignty, security, and justice risks of net zero and the clean energy transition. Reforms of investment treaties based on international cooperation can help contribute to the phasing out of fossil assets. These reforms can first consist in excluding fossil investments from the international investment protection regime. Environmental carve-outs in modernized investment treaties (...) could recognize states’ right to adopt phase-out decisions without payment of compensation, and environmental considerations could be explicitly included in the valuation methods. In parallel, the adoption of market-based reforms in the energy sector can contribute to reducing the possible damages due when fossil assets are required to close down. Investment treaty and market reforms are necessary to mitigate the risk of damages due to closing down fossil assets and keeping fossil fuels in the ground, without withdrawing from or terminating investment treaties that have a role to play in de-risking the clean energy investments needed to transition to net zero emissions. (shrink)

In this article I advance the inquiry of democratic citizenship in the digital age or ‘digital citizenship,’ for short, through an ideology critique of what I refer to as the ideology of digital empowerment. According to this ideology, which was prevalent from the early 1990s until the early 2010s, digital technologies would effectively contribute to democratic citizens’ political empowerment. Following the introduction, I explain the basic ideas I explain the basic ideas of such an ideology critique and distinguish between its (...) empirical, genealogical, functional, and normative levels of analyses. Then, I identify Aristotelian, Machiavellian, Hobbesian, and Kantian understandings of this ideology to show its past existence across a broad range of conceptions of democratic citizenship. Following that, I empirically analyse these understandings, showing for each of them that the reality of digital citizenship did not hold up to the ideology’s promise. Subsequently, I provide a genealogical analysis of how the ideology came into being by describing the crisis of democratic citizenship at the end of the 20th century, and I complement this analysis by identifying the belief management mechanisms that supported the ideology’s dissemination. In the penultimate section, I pursue a functional analysis of the cultural, psychological, and social conditions that explain why citizens kept endorsing the ideology despite it being erroneous. Finally, I conclude by sketching, from today’s perspective, a normative analysis that addresses the technological oligarchs’ damage to democratic citizenship which this ideology facilitated. (shrink)

Wars, both those won and those lost, are often commemorated with monuments and memorials. These take different forms and make use of various symbolic devices to convey their meanings, such as representation, inscription, style, and cultural references. In addition to these deliberately designed to commemorate, there is another type of memorial, one that displays the damage caused by war, such as Hiroshima’s Genbaku Dome or the preserved remains of Coventry Cathedral. These memorials possess an additional symbolic feature, what Nelson Goodman (...) calls “exemplification,” since they embody the very acts that brought about their injured state. This chapter explores the power of artifacts that exemplify damage in structures that still stand, and of memorials that exemplify the absence of those that were destroyed. (shrink)

Punitive damages and class actions can be viewed as sharing a common economic function - creating optimal deterrence. This is a function that these remedies can best pursue in different domains. When a tortfeasor causes harm that affects many victims, the preferred remedy is a class action. This is especially so when the amount of compensatory damages are high.There are scenarios, however, in which imposing punitive damages represents the best solution. We identify some of these scenarios to (...) suggest the proper domains of these two remedies. Finally, we identify situations where a combined use of these two remedies is desirable. We suggest that when the amount of losses suffered by victims is so small as to preclude a class action due to transaction costs and inactivity, it may nevertheless be useful to combine punitive damages with a class action. Punitive damages should be awarded within a class action if and only if there are frictions that could prevent the injured party from taking legal action. (shrink)

The paper offers a normative analysis of the new Loss & Damage Fund supporting vulnerable countries grappling with climate change-related harms. This fund is primarily financed by affluent nations, often identified as historical polluters. However, the perspective of relational egalitarianism highlights persistent structural injustices in the background of the fund. Addressing them necessitates conceptualizing the fund not merely as an act of cooperative solidarity but as compensation for the consequences of historical and ongoing structural injustices. Properly conceived, the fund manages (...) adverse climate effects and simultaneously tackles their underlying root causes, including the unjust distribution of advantages and power. (shrink)

Four models of forgiveness are identified; the health model, the philosophical model, the Christian model and the prosocial model. All define the term ‘forgiveness’ in a way which is consistent with their particular perspective. The authors offer a definition of forgiveness and propose an integrated model of forgiveness which seeks to incorporate contributions from all four areas, but is not biased towards any one model. Four levels of transgression are identified and categorized according to the degree of perceived damage. Apology-automatic (...) and apology-dependent responses are distinguished from a forgiveness response which is restricted to Levels 3 and 4. The advantages of adopting a forgiveness strategy for both the forgiver and forgiven as opposed to other responses, i.e., revenge, denial, and condoning are discussed. The authors provide a definition and model which integrates the important contributions from each of the areas discussed. (shrink)

It has long been known that brain damage has important negative effects on one’s mental life and even eliminates one’s ability to have certain conscious experiences. It thus stands to reason that when all of one’s brain activity ceases upon death, consciousness is no longer possible and so neither is an afterlife. It seems clear that human consciousness is dependent upon functioning brains. This essay reviews some of the overall neurological evidence from brain damage studies and concludes that our argument (...) from brain damage has been vindicated by such overwhelming evidence. It also puts forth a more mature philosophical rationale against an afterlife and counters several replies to the argument. -/- 1. Philosophical Background -- 2. The Dependence of Consciousness on the Brain: Some Preliminary Evidence -- 3. Brain Damage, Lesion Studies, and the Localization of Mental Function - 3.1 Perception - 3.2 Awareness, Comprehension, and Recognition - 3.3 Memory - 3.4 Personality - 3.5 Language - 3.6 Emotion - 3.7 Decision-Making - 3.8 Social Cognition and Theory of Mind - 3.9 Moral Judgment and Empathy - 3.10 Neurological Disorders and Disease - 3.11 The Unity of Consciousness -- 4. Objections and Replies - 4.1 Souls, Minds, and Energy Fields - 4.2 The Instrument Theory - 4.3 The Embodied Soul Alone is Affected -- 5. Conclusion. (shrink)

Scholars have recently debated whether deep brain stimulation (DBS) threatens personal identity. Françoise Baylis advances a relational identity-constitution framework, asserting that the purported threat of DBS to personal identity becomes problematic when identity is viewed through dynamic, narrative, and relational lenses. This paper offers a more nuanced perspective. While we acknowledge the significance of Baylis’s relational identity-constituting framework, we contend that her conclusion warrants further examination. Our analysis reveals that DBS can indeed pose significant challenges to personal identity, specifically by (...) compromising the narrative subject’s capacity to construct their relational identity. From the perspective of the relational identity-constituting approach, we demonstrate that the fundamental issue lies in the disruption of the equilibrium between self-perception and social recognition. Specifically, DBS can disrupt the balance between self-ascription and ascription by others. To address potential identity disruptions caused by DBS, we proposed that identity restoration should focus on two key aspects: enhancing patients’ capacity to construct and internalize coherent life narratives, and strengthening their capacity to engage in meaningful dialogue with others to foster mutual understanding and recognition. (shrink)

In Causation in the Law, Hart and Honoré famously argued that the attribution of responsibility for outcomes within the law is broadly consistent with the ordinary person’s non-legal judgments about responsibility, whilst simultaneously drawing an important distinction between ‘causal’ and non-causal’ rules of responsibility attribution. In Mitigation in the Law of Damages, Andrew Summers argues that the theory of ‘common-sense causation’ Hart and Honoré advanced also persuasively explains the English law of mitigation. In addition to considering the continuing relevance (...) of this analysis today, and noting the need for an improved understanding of legal responsibility’s non-causal limits, the present article critically evaluates Summers’s descriptive claims. It is argued that while Summers offers a generally compelling rationalisation of the avoidable loss rule, his analysis of the authorities concerned with the relevance of consequential benefits derived from the wrong when assessing damages following civil wrongdoing is substantively incomplete. (shrink)

Intersex studies, although often framed as an ‘emerging’ field, has been rooted in activism and scholarly inquiry since at least the early 1990s. Much of this work has centred on documenting harm towards individuals with variations of sex characteristics, in what could be considered a damage-based approach. Recently, scholars and activists have begun to advocate for a shift towards intersex joy as an alternative framework. This article explores the suggested ‘turn’, arguing for a critical and cautious engagement with joy. While (...) important, there is a risk that this might downplay or erase intersex accounts that complicate easy distinctions between harm and joy. We analyse historical and contemporary discourses on intersex happiness, often framed as reliant upon medical intervention. Happiness, we suggest, is always culturally and politically contingent, and is mobilised differently by parents, intersex adults, policymakers and clinicians, sometimes to justify interventions, other times to resist them. Recognising this complexity is not simply descriptive, it opens space for rethinking what counts as harm, care and flourishing, and for developing research, policies and activism attuned to both structural injustice and resistant forms of joy. We propose a flexible, desire-based approach to intersex studies that does more than document trauma or celebrate joy: it examines how both are shaped by power, how they risk being dichotomised and how scholars and stakeholders generate meaning, belonging and critique. This approach acknowledges intersex experiences as complex and contradictory, while remaining attentive to broader systems of power that structure their lives. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number and magnitude of punitive damages verdicts rendered by juries in civil trials. Probably the most extraordinary example is the July 2000 award of $144.8 billion in the Florida class action lawsuit brought against cigarette manufacturers. Or consider two recent verdicts against the auto manufacturer BMW in Alabama. In identical cases, argued in the same court before the same judge, one jury awarded $4 million (...) in punitive damages, while the other awarded no punitive damages at all. In cases involving accidents, civil rights, and the environment, multimillion-dollar punitive awards have been a subject of intense controversy. But how do juries actually make decisions about punitive damages? To find out, the authors-experts in psychology, economics, and the law-present the results of controlled experiments with more than 600 mock juries involving the responses of more than 8,000 jury-eligible citizens. Although juries tended to agree in their moral judgments about the defendant's conduct, they rendered erratic and unpredictable dollar awards. The experiments also showed that instead of moderating juror verdicts, the process of jury deliberation produced a striking "severity shift" toward ever-higher awards. Jurors also tended to ignore instructions from the judges; were influenced by whatever amount the plaintiff happened to request; showed "hindsight bias," believing that what happened should have been foreseen; and penalized corporations that had based their decisions on careful cost-benefit analyses. While judges made many of the same errors, they performed better in some areas, suggesting that judges (or other specialists) may be better equipped than juries to decide punitive damages. Using a wealth of new experimental data, and offering a host of provocative findings, this book documents a wide range of systematic biases in jury behavior. It will be indispensable for anyone interested not only in punitive damages, but also jury behavior, psychology, and how people think about punishment. (shrink)

describes connections between a series of related papers.

Health care professionals’ and trainees’ conceptions of their responsibilities to patients can change over time for a number of reasons: evolving career goals, desires to serve different patient populations, and changing family obligations, for example. Some changes in conceptions of responsibility are healthy, but others express moral damage. Clinicians’ changes in their conceptions of what they are responsible for express moral damage when their responses to others express a meager, rather than robust, sense of what they owe others. At least (...) two important expressions of moral damage in the context of health care are these: callousness and divestiture. Callousness describes the poor condition of a clinician's capacity for moral perception; when her capacity to accurately appreciate features of moral relevance that configure others’ needs, vulnerabilities, and desert of care diminishes, such that she fails to respond with care to those for whom she has duties to care, she is callous. Callousness has been explored in detail elsewhere,1 and so the focus of this paper is divestiture. A clinician divests when the value of responding with care to others becomes less centrally and importantly constitutive of his personal and professional identity. Divestiture has important consequences for patients and health professions education, which I will explore here. (shrink)

The segregation of damaged components at cell division determines the survival and aging of cells. In cells that divide asymmetrically, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, aggregated proteins are retained by the mother cell. Yet, where and how aggregation occurs is not known. Recent work by Zhou and collaborators shows that the birth of protein aggregates, under specific stress conditions, requires active translation, and occurs mainly at the endoplasmic reticulum. Later, aggregates move to the mitochondrial surface through fis1‐dependent association. During replicative aging, (...) aggregate association with the mother‐cell mitochondria contributes to the asymmetric segregation of aggregates, because mitochondria in the daughter cell do not carry aggregates. With increasing age of mother cells, aggregates lose their connection to the mitochondria, and segregation is less asymmetric. Relating these findings to other mechanisms of aggregate segregation in different organisms, we postulate that fusion between aggregates and their tethering to organelles such as the vacuole, nucleus, ER, or mitochondria are common principles that establish asymmetric segregation during stress resistance and aging. (shrink)

Acoustic emission technique is a common approach to identify the damage of the refractories; however, there is a complex problem since there are as many as fifteen involved parameters, which calls for effective data processing and classification algorithms to reduce the level of complexity. In this paper, experiments involving three-point bending tests of refractories were conducted and AE signals were collected. A new data processing method of merging the similar parameters in the description of the damage and reducing the dimension (...) was developed. By means of the principle component analysis for dimension reduction, the fifteen related parameters can be reduced to two parameters. The parameters were the linear combinations of the fifteen original parameters and taken as the indexes for damage classification. Based on the proposed approach, the Gaussian mixture model was integrated with the Bayesian information criterion to group the AE signals into two damage categories, which accounted for 99% of all damage. Electronic microscope scanning of the refractories verified the two types of damage. (shrink)

For corrective justice, liability is the consequence of the parties' being correlatively situated as the doer and sufferer of an injustice, and the remedy is seen as undoing that injustice to the extent possible. Combining consideration of legal doctrine and private law theory, this article applies the framework of corrective justice to gain-based damages for torts. Within this framework, restitutionary damages ought to be available only insofar as they correspond to a constituent element in the injustice that the (...) defendant has done to the plaintiff. The radical proposal that allows restitutionary damages for any wrongful gain is unsatisfactory because it fails to link the damages that the plaintiff receives to the normative quality of the defendant's wrong. In contrast, dealings in another's property give rise to such damages because the idea of property includes within the owner's entitlement the potential gainsfrom the property's use or alienation. Restitutionary damages should not be seen as serving a deterrent or punitive function; such a function cannot account for why the plaintiff, of all people, is entitled to the defendant's gain. Properly understood, even situations where the plaintiff's wilfulness or calculation increases the damage award fit within the framework of corrective justice. The corrective justice approach thus repudiates the notion that restitutionary damages are occasions for the promotion of social purposes extrinsic to the juridical relationship between the parties. (shrink)

We argue that Graziano and Kastner are mistaken to claim that neglect favors their self-directed social perception account of consciousness. For the latter should not predict that neglect would result from damage to mechanisms of social perception. Neglect is better explained in terms of damage to attentional mechanisms.

In this article we examine the role which vindication plays in contract damages. Vindication describes the making good of a right by the award of an adequate remedy. We argue that, while the primary purpose of compensation is to provide an indemnity for loss, an award of compensatory damages will nevertheless generally vindicate the right to performance of the contract. We go on to consider a distinct measure of damages, vindicatory damages. These, we argue, are neither (...) compensatory nor restitutionary, neither loss-based nor gain-based: they are a rights-based remedy. We then identify various situations in which the courts may be seen to have awarded what are, in substance, vindicatory damages. We conclude by considering the benefits which may follow from recognition of the availability of vindicatory damages as a contract remedy. (shrink)

The access-to-justice movement broadly concerns the extent to which people have the ability to resolve legally actionable problems. To the extent that individuals seek resolution through civil litigation, they can be disadvantaged by their unmet need for legal services, particularly in high-stakes cases and complicated areas of law. I propose an innovative legal intervention to this problem called “compensatory preliminary damages,” which builds from the work of Gideon Parchomovsky and Alex Stein. I argue that preliminary damages should function (...) as compensatory awards for harm to a plaintiff’s ability to access justice, rather than a contingency loan that might make indigent plaintiffs worse off than before if they lose. By awarding such damages, courts make plaintiffs whole for harm to their access to justice that is not conditional on a decision after the merits or their final recovery for the injuries alleged. As such, the award would not need to be repaid. (shrink)

Neither environmental economics nor environmental philosophy have adequately examined the moral implications of imposing environmental degradation and ecosystem instability upon our descendants. A neglected aspect of these problems is the supposed extent of the burden that the current generation is placing on future generations. The standard economic position on discounting implies an ethicaljudgment concerning future generations. If intergenerational obligations exist, then two types of intergenerational transfer must be considered: basic distributional transfers and compensatory transfers. Basic transfers have been the central (...) intergenerational concern of both environmental economics and philosophy, but compensatory transfers emphasize obligations of a kind often disregarded. (shrink)

Edmund Pellegrino claims that medical ethics must be derived from a perception of the patient's damaged humanity, rather than from the self-imposed duties of professionals. This essay explores the meaning and examines the challenges to this patient-centered ethic. Social scientific and bioethical interpretations of medicine constitute one kind of challenge. A more pervasive challenge is the ascendancy of managed care, and especially investor-owned, for-profit managed care. A list of questions addressed to patients, physicians and organizations is offered as one means (...) of assessing this threat and moving toward morally trustworthy relationships. (shrink)

There has been little scholarly attention given to explaining exactly how and why Socrates thinks that wrongdoing damages the soul. But there is more than a simple gap in the literature here, we shall argue. The most widely accepted view of Socratic moral psychology, we claim, actually leaves this well-known feature of Socrates’ philosophy absolutely inexplicable. In the first section of this paper, we rehearse this view of Socratic moral psychology, and explain its inadequacy on the issue of the (...) damaging consequences of wrongdoing. We then go on to provide our own account of the way in which injustice damages the soul, and then draw conclusions about how Socratic moral psychology should be understood. (shrink)

Richard McCormick justified his move to proportionalism in part because of the perceived inadequacy of the Grisez-Finnis approach to morality to answer the following question: “What is to count for turning against a basic good, and why?” In this paper, I provide the beginnings of an account of what it means to intend damage to a good; I then show that the account is readily exportable to judgments regarding killing and lying defended by Grisez and others. I then indicate that (...) the account comports well with some of what Grisez says about sexual morality and suggest areas in which further clarification is necessary. In thus proceeding, I hope to inoculate the Grisez view from McCormick's reservations. (shrink)

We should adopt the following principle with regard to compensatory justice. (1) If an unjust act benefits an innocent person and there is no reasonable way to assess the amount of damages to the victim, then compensatory justice does not require that the innocent beneficiary pay compensation for those damages. We cannot reasonably assess the amount of damages to current racial minorities that have resulted from past discriminatory acts. Problems arise in determining the identity of the injured (...) parties, the identity of the injuring agents and injuring acts (and omissions), and the degree of injury that directly resulted from these acts (or omissions). Since such compensable damages cannot be accurately estimated and since white male applicants are innocent beneficiaries of past discriminatory acts, the value of compensatory justice does not justify strong affirmative action programs. (shrink)

Extreme weather already causes much damage today, and it will become only more common as climate change progresses, not only in the Netherlands itself but also in the Caribbean territories. In this chapter, we specifically examine the damage caused by extreme rainfall, who is compensated for it, and who actually pays for it. We then consider which distributive principles we can identify in policies. We explain how other distributive justice considerations and principles could also have been deployed.

While jurisprudence in the United States has been cast in the general mode of the English common law, modifications over time haveproduced enough significant variations that American law has a distinctive quality. To illustrate: The exclusionary rule in criminal cases prohibiting the use of evidence (even from reliable witnesses) acquired through illegal search, is not followed in Britain-or, for that matter, in Canada, Germany, and Israel. The punitive-damage concept (PD) in tort law is also a jurisprudential novelty. Punitive damages (...) are imposed in addition to compensatory awards given to tort victims to warn manufacturers and sellers to be careful in their safety and marketing practices. PDs are society's warning signals: Seller beware! Because they are one of society's ways to protect itself, PDs have recently been considered as fines which, to prevent excesses, should be under the rubric of the Eighth Amendment.This essay introduces new elements into the discussion on torts by hypothesizing (1) PDs are fines which belong to the public purse; (2) that expenditures from the public purse should be given to local organizations (like orphanages and inner-city hospitals) which provide vital services for those unable to pay; and (3) that the victim (or the victim's survivor) has a right to designate what local organizations should benefit from his or her punitive-damage awards.The hypotheses require reexamination of the concepts of citizenship, community, and work, respectively.Tort law is an integral part of the American law of injuries, a body of judicial doctrine and legislation and a set of legal arrangements that also include compensatron systems and safety legislation. It would have been unthinkable as recently as twenty-five years ago that the tort system would become a source of bitter contention. Today, however, it generates sharp rhetoric and dramatic proposals for change to address its contested problems, as well as strong views in favor of continuing the system essentially intact so as not to disturb its contended benefits. (shrink)

Several million people are treated with neuroleptic medications in North America each year. A large percentage of these patients develop a chronic neurologic disorder-tardive dyskinesia-characterized by abnormal movements of the voluntary muscles. Most cases are permanent and there is no known treatment. Evidence has been accumulating that the neuroleptics also cause damage to the highest centers of the brain, producing chronic mental dysfunction, tardive dementia and tardive psychosis. These drug effects may be considered a mental equivalent of tardive dyskinesia. Relevant (...) data are derived from human autopsies, brain imaging, neurophysical tests, and clinical research. That the neuroleptics can damage higher brain centers is confirmed by their known neurotoxicity and neurophysiological impact, animal autopsies, and a comparison to diseases that mimic neuroleptic effects, such as Huntington's chorea and lethargic encephalitis. Patients and the public should be informed of the danger of both tardive dyskinesia and tardive dementia. The mental health professions should severely limit the use of neuroleptics and develop safer and better alternatives to these dangerous substances. (shrink)

This article focuses on cases of restitution within contract, investigating the normative desirability of enabling a promise to pursue the profits derived by the promisor through a breach of contract as an alternative pecuniary remedy of wide applicability. Situated at the frontier of both contractual and restitutionary liability, the question of whether restitutionary damages for breach of contract should be available has received a considerable amount of attention. This article makes a critical examination of the normative groundings that have (...) been proposed for and against awarding this pecuniary remedy. This article arrives at two significant conclusions. The first is deconstructive. Parts I and II critique two conventional arguments often raised in the debate over restitutionary damages. These Parts raise doubts as to the ability of these arguments to substantiate the doctrinal conclusions they purport to support. I claim that both promise-keeping and unjust enrichment are neutral between rules offering restitutionary damages and denying such awards. The significance of the results of this analysis extends beyond the specific questions at hand, since these arguments dominate many of the debates surrounding private law theory. The second conclusion reached is reconstructive. Parts III, IV and V present three normative considerations that are more helpful: protection of proprietary rights, enhancement of efficiency, and good faith. Here an attempt is made to reconceptualize the conventional arguments for the derivation of legal rules from these normative prescriptions. From this reconceptualization, we realize that in order to settle the debate over restitutionary damages for breach of contract, a choice must be made between the instrumental conception of contract and its more cooperative alternative. Thus, it emerges that here, too, just as in the case of many other legal issues, the persistent need to choose between two conflicting social visions cannot be avoided. (shrink)

This article is a review of the 2010 book Collateral Damage by Dan Walter.

In Harris v Digital Pulse Pty Ltd (2003) 56 NSWLR 298, the New South Wales Court of Appeal held that exemplary (or punitive) damages are not available for breach of fiduciary duty or other equitable obligation. The decision runs counter to authorities in Canada, New Zealand and some U.S. states. Punitive (exemplary) damages is a hotly debated topic in the United States and it has attracted considerable interest among law and economics scholars, particularly in the tort litigation context. (...) This article analyzes the Digital Pulse case from a law and economics perspective. Polinsky and Shavell (among others) argue that the function of punitive damages is to achieve optimal deterrence in cases where the probability that the plaintiff will discover and successfully litigate the defendant’s wrongdoing is less than 1. Given the high costs of monitoring fiduciary behaviour, it might be tempting to conclude that exemplary damages should be routinely awarded for breach of fiduciary obligation. The article explains why this view is wrong. On the other hand, given the availability of gains-based remedies (the account of profits and the like) for breach of fiduciary obligation, it might be tempting to conclude that exemplary damages are never justified in fiduciary cases. The article explains why this view is wrong too. The main conclusions are that: (1) exemplary damages should be available for breach of fiduciary duty and the like, but not as a matter of course; and (2) exemplary damages were probably not warranted in Digital Pulse itself. (shrink)