This article was championed in view of the notion of (perceived) economic rationalisation which seem to be the foremost of patients' care in the NHS as opposed to addressing distress to their existing well-being, while in a state of being tormented with agonising news of prolonged ill health. Serious consideration is given to addressing the need to rationalise resources in ensuring the long standing history of the NHS' free health care is critically addressed, but not in a way that destroys (...) confidence on the ability of professionals to manifest ethical prudence in their acts of judgments about whether patients' care is to be imminent or prolonged on a waiting list. There is certainly serious impacts to be comprehended with in situations of economic rationality through services provided by the NHS, but it is believed that tangible outcomes about definitive care for patients should be addressed collaboratively. (shrink)

The aim of this commentary is to discuss the axiology of the cost–benefit approach assumed by Travis Rieder (2017) to analyze medical decision making in the case of extremely preterm infants.

The assumption that procuring more organs will save more lives has inspired increasingly forceful calls to increase organ procurement. This project, in contrast, directly questions the premise that more organ transplantation means more lives saved. Its argument begins with the fact that resources are limited and medical procedures have opportunity costs. Because many other lifesaving interventions are more cost‐effective than transplantation and compete with transplantation for a limited budget, spending on organ transplantation consumes resources that could have been used (...) to save a greater number of other lives. This argument has not yet been advanced in debates over expanded procurement and could buttress existing concerns about expanded procurement. To support this argument, I review existing empirical data on the cost‐effectiveness of transplantation and compare them to data on interventions for other illnesses. These data should motivate utilitarians and others whose primary goal is maximizing population‐wide health benefits to doubt the merits of expanding organ procurement. I then consider two major objections: one makes the case that transplant candidates have a special claim to medical resources, and the other challenges the use of cost‐effectiveness to set priorities. I argue that there is no reason to conclude that transplant candidates’ medical interests should receive special priority, and that giving some consideration to cost‐effectiveness in priority setting requires neither sweeping changes to overall health priorities nor the adoption of any specific, controversial metric for assessing cost‐effectiveness. Before searching for more organs, we should first ensure the provision of cost‐effective care. (shrink)

Much thought has been devoted to how metaethical disagreement between moral realism and expressivism can be saved once minimalism starts creeping. Very little thought has been given to how creeping minimalism affects error-theories’ disagreement with their metaethical competitors. The reason for this omission, I suspect, is found in the belief that whilst locating distinctive moral realist and expressivist positions within a minimalist landscape poses a severe challenge, no such difficulties are encountered when differentiating error-theories from moral realism and expressivism. In (...) the first part of this paper, I show that this belief is mistaken: Insofar as moral realists and error-theorists are still taken to disagree, creeping minimalism renders their disagreement moral, but makes these positions metaethically indistinguishable. In the second part of the paper, I present a modified inferentialist solution to the problem of creeping minimalism which seeks to put error-theories back on the metaethical map. Yet, this too comes at a cost, in that it significantly modifies our interpretation of error-theories. Whichever way we turn, then, creeping minimalism not only forces us to re-phrase metaethical positions in a way that is compatible with minimalism, but also requires us to change our very understanding of these positions. (shrink)

This chapter assesses John Gray’s modus vivendi-based justification for liberalism. I argue that his approach is preferable to the more orthodox deontological or teleological justificatory strategies, at least because of the way it can deal with the problem of diversity. But then I show how that is not good news for liberalism, for grounding liberal political authority in a modus vivendi undermines liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. So modus vivendi can save liberalism (...) from moralism, but at cost many liberals will not be prepared to pay. (shrink)

I discuss Gheaus's (2013) argument against the claim that the requirements of justice are not constrained by feasibility concerns. I show that the general strategy exemplified by this argument is not only dialectically puzzling, but also imposes a heavy cost on theories of justice -- puzzling because it simply sidesteps a presupposition of any plausible formulation of the so-called "feasibility requirement"; costly because it it deprives justice of its normative implications for action. I also show that Gheaus's attempt to (...) recover this normative force presupposes an epistemic dimension to the feasibility requirement that most proponents of that requirement would reject. (shrink)

This research proposes a novel Smart Deduplication Framework (SDF) designed to identify and eliminate redundant data, thus optimizing storage usage and improving data retrieval speeds. The framework leverages a hybrid cloud architecture, combining the scalability of public clouds with the security of private clouds. By employing a combination of client-side hashing, metadata indexing, and machine learning-based duplicate detection, the framework achieves significant storage savings without compromising data integrity. Real-time testing on a hybrid cloud setup demonstrated a 65% reduction in (...) storage needs and a 40% improvement in data retrieval times. Additionally, the system employs blockchain for immutable logging of deduplication activities, enhancing transparency and traceability. This study concludes with an evaluation of the deduplication framework's impact on cost efficiency, system performance, and potential scalability. Future enhancements aim to integrate multi-cloud interoperability and advanced compression algorithms to further refine storage management. (shrink)

The prospect of consumable meat produced in a laboratory setting without the need to raise and slaughter animals is both realistic and exciting. Not only could such in vitro meat become popular due to potential cost savings, but it also avoids many of the ethical and environmental problems with traditional meat productions. However, as with any new technology, in vitro meat is likely to face some detractors. We examine in detail three potential objections: 1) in vitro meat is (...) disrespectful, either to nature or to animals; 2) it will reduce the number of happy animals in the world; and 3) it will open the door to cannibalism. While each objection has some attraction, we ultimately find that all can be overcome. The upshot is that in vitro meat production is generally permissible and, especially for ethical vegetarians, worth promoting. (shrink)

Every year, hundreds of patients in England die whilst waiting for a kidney transplant, and this is evidence that the current system of altruistic-based donation is not sufficient to address the shortage of kidneys available for transplant. To address this problem, we propose a monopsony system whereby kidney donors can opt-in to receive financial compensation, whilst still preserving the right of individuals to donate without receiving any compensation. A monopsony system describes a market structure where there is only one ‘buyer’—in (...) this case the National Health Service. By doing so, several hundred lives could be saved each year in England, wait times for a kidney transplant could be significantly reduced, and it would lessen the burden on dialysis services. Furthermore, compensation would help alleviate the common disincentives to living kidney donation, such as its potential associated health and psychological costs, and it would also help to increase awareness of living kidney donation. The proposed system would also result in significant cost savings that could then be redirected towards preventing kidney disease and reducing health disparities. While concerns about exploitation, coercion, and the ‘crowding out’ of altruistic donors exist, we believe that careful implementation can mitigate these issues. Therefore, we recommend piloting financial compensation for living kidney donors at a transplant centre in England. (shrink)

There is an ongoing increase in the use of mobile health technologies that patients can use to monitor health-related outcomes and behaviours. While the dominant narrative around mHealth focuses on patient empowerment, there is potential for mHealth to fit into a growing push for patients to take personal responsibility for their health. I call the first of these uses ‘medical monitoring’, and the second ‘personal health surveillance’. After outlining two problems which the use of mHealth might seem to enable us (...) to overcome—fairness of burdens and reliance on self-reporting—I note that these problems would only really be solved by unacceptably comprehensive forms of personal health surveillance which applies to all of us at all times. A more plausible model is to use personal health surveillance as a last resort for patients who would otherwise independently qualify for responsibility-based penalties. However, I note that there are still a number of ethical and practical problems that such a policy would need to overcome. The prospects of mHealth enabling a fair, genuinely cost-saving policy of patient responsibility are slim. (shrink)

Server-less computing, also known as Function as a Service (FaaS), revolutionizes cloud architecture by allowing developers to focus on code and functionality without managing underlying infrastructure. This paradigm enhances resource management efficiency by dynamically allocating resources only when needed, thus optimizing cost and performance. Server-less models, epitomized by platforms like AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, and Azure Functions, provide automatic scaling and fine-grained billing, making them ideal for applications with variable workloads. While challenges such as cold start latency and (...) complex debugging exist, the benefits of server-less computing—including cost savings, simplified deployment, and accelerated innovation—make it a transformative approach in the cloud computing landscape. This paper explores the principles, benefits, challenges, and practical applications of server-less computing in modern cloud architectures, highlighting its potential to drive efficiency and innovation. (shrink)

We discuss the role of prior authorization (PA) in supporting patient-centered care (PCC) by directing health system resources and thus the ability to better meet the needs of individual patients. We begin with an account of PCC as a standard that should be aimed for in patient care. In order to achieve widespread PCC, appropriate resource management is essential in a healthcare system. This brings us to PA, and we present an idealized view of PA in order to argue how (...) at its best, it can contribute to the provision of PCC. PA is a means of cost saving and as such it has mixed success. The example of the US demonstrates how implementation of PA has increased health inequalities whereas best practice has the potential to reduce them. In contrast, systems of universal coverage, like those in Europe, may use the cost savings of PA to better address individuals' care and PCC. The conclusion we offer therefore is an optimistic one, pointing towards areas of supportive overlap between PCC and PA where usually the incongruities are most evident. (shrink)

Building information modeling can help in predicting the energy efficiency in future based on dynamic patterns obtained by visualization of data. The aim of this study was to investigate the effective parameters of energy consumption using BIM technology which can evaluate the buildings energy performance. First, three forms of general states in the building were modeled to evaluate the proposed designs in Autodesk Revit Software. Then, the main building form for energy modeling and analysis was selected. Autodesk Revit 2020 software (...) was also used to obtain the results of climate data analysis and building energy consumption index. Finally, the most optimal mode was selected by examining different energy consumption modes. The results showed that the use of building information modeling technology in adjusting the parameters affecting energy consumption can save energy cost up to 58.23% in block D. Energy cost savings for block C and the western lobby were obtained as 51.03% and 43.05%, respectively. Based on energy use intensity, energy cost savings for blocks C, D, and the western lobby were estimated as 16.67%, 16.30%, and 11%, respectively. The results of parametric studies on alternative schemes of energy use intensity optimization showed that 16.30% savings could be achieved by the base building model in a 30-year time horizon. Therefore, it was concluded that optimization of energy consumption would reduce the environmental pollutants emission and contribute to preservation and sustainability of the environment. (shrink)

Buildings are the largest energy consumer in the world, according to the United Nations Environment Program. Most of the energy will be used during the building life-cycle stage. Thus, achieving sustainable development at the national level requires minimizing the impact of buildings on the environment by reducing energy consumption. Using Building Information Modeling technology in energy performance assessment could be significantly reduced time and cost. This study aimed to optimize energy consumption in a residential building using BIM technology. The (...) main focus of this study was to evaluate energy performance through the simultaneous evaluation of building components using BIM technology with a conceptual design approach, comparison, and reduction of energy consumption. To investigate different design ideas were created several conceptual masses in Autodesk Revit software with a top-down design approach. After reviewing the conceptual masses, the main building form was chosen for modeling. Then, building energy consumption was computed using related tools in this field, based on the type of materials, equipment, and project location. Finally, the most optimal mode was selected by examining different energy consumption forms. The results of parametric studies on alternative schemes of energy optimization showed that 58.46% of energy cost savings could be achieved compared to the initial model of the building on a 30-year time horizon. (shrink)

. In the high-stakes environments of mining and construction, the efficiency of loading operations is crucial for maximizing productivity and ensuring safety. Shovel operators often rely on estimates or indirect cues to gauge the load status of haul trucks, leading to challenges such as overloading, underloading , and increased operational costs. Introducing real-time visibility for dumper load status can significantly transform this process. By equipping haul trucks with sensors and data transmission technology, operators gain immediate access to accurate load information, (...) allowing them to make informed decisions on the fly. This capability ensures that trucks are filled to capacity without exceeding weight limits, effectively reducing wait times and streamlining operations. Furthermore, real-time visibility enhances communication between shovel operators and dumper drivers, fostering collaboration and minimizing miscommunication. The operational improvements also lead to substantial cost savings by reducing wear and tear on equipment and improving fuel efficiency. Ultimately, the integration of real-time visibility not only boosts productivity and safety but also represents a modern advancement that paves the way for a more efficient and cooperative future in the mining and construction industries. (shrink)

The paper presents an analysis of the current state of administrative modular buildings and co-working spaces in some European countries and Latin America. The study provides an overview of the concept of modular buildings and co-working spaces, including their history and evolution and their energy efficiency. They also examine the benefits and drawbacks of these types of buildings, as well as the factors that contribute to their success. The authors analyze several case studies of administrative modular buildings and co-working spaces (...) in different European countries and Latin America, such as the UK, Germany, Slovakia, and Ukraine ending with Brazil. The paper takes into consideration the design and construction of these buildings, as well as the services and amenities they offer. The paper also considers the impact of administrative modular buildings and co-working spaces on the environment, as well as their potential for promoting sustainable development. The authors discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with the development of administrative modular buildings and co-working spaces and provide recommendations for future research in this area. Energy-efficient modular buildings and co-working spaces have the potential to support organizations in achieving their sustainability goals while also providing a range of benefits for employees and stakeholders. (shrink)

Control measures, such as “lockdowns”, have been widely used to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic. Under some conditions, they prevent illness and save lives. But they also exact an economic toll. How should we balance the impact of such policies on individual lives and livelihoods (and other dimensions of concern) to determine which is best? A widely used method of policy evaluation, benefit–cost analysis (BCA), answers these questions by converting all the effects of a policy into monetary equivalents and then (...) summing them up. A different method, social welfare analysis, proceeds by determining the effects of a policy on individual wellbeing and then applying an aggregation formula to them to evaluate the overall effects of a policy. In this chapter, we survey these methods and argue that social welfare analysis has important advantages. One crucial advantage is that it enables ethical considerations relating to the impact of policies on individual wellbeing and its distribution to be incorporated into policy assessments in a transparent way. We illustrate this with a simple numerical model for evaluating pandemic policies that vary in terms of the stringency of the controls that they impose on individual behaviour, showing how the evaluation depends on the ethical significance accorded to their impact on the wellbeing of different age and income groups. (shrink)

When moral philosophers study ignorance, their efforts are almost exclusively confined to its exculpatory and blameworthy aspects. Unfortunately, though, this trend overlooks that certain kinds of propositional ignorance, namely of the personal costs and benefits of altruistic actions, can indirectly incentivize those actions. Humans require cooperation from others to survive, and that can be facilitated by a good reputation. One avenue to a good reputation is helping others, sticking to moral principles, and so forth, without calculating the personal costs of (...) doing so, e.g., saving someone from a burning building without calculating how personally costly or beneficial it would be. These actions are indirect moral benefits (partly) resulting from that kind of propositional ignorance. (shrink)

In Saving Truth from Paradox, Hartry Field presents and defends a theory of truth with a new conditional. In this paper, I present two criticisms of this theory, one concerning its assessments of validity and one concerning its treatment of truth-preservation claims. One way of adjusting the theory adequately responds to the truth-preservation criticism, at the cost of making the validity criticism worse. I show that in a restricted setting, Field has a way to respond to the validity criticism. (...) I close with some general considerations on the use of revision-theoretic methods in theories of truth. (shrink)

Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation— external representations save internal memory and com- putation—is only part of the story. I discuss seven ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they facilitate re- representation; they are often a more natural representation (...) of structure than mental representations; they facilitate the computation of more explicit encoding of information; they enable the construction of arbitrarily complex structure; and they lower the cost of controlling thought—they help coordinate thought. Jointly, these functions allow people to think more powerfully with external representations than without. They allow us to think the previously unthinkable. (shrink)

The rule of rescue holds that special weight should be given to protecting the lives of assignable individuals in need, implying that less weight is given to considerations of cost-effectiveness. This is sometimes invoked as an argument for funding or reimbursing life-saving treatment in public healthcare even if the costs of such treatment are extreme. At first sight one might assume that an individualist approach to ethics—such as Scanlon’s contractualism—would offer a promising route to justification of the rule of (...) rescue. In this chapter I argue that contractualism cannot endorse the rule of rescue, whereas a collectivist approach that appeals to group solidarity would offer support for rescue cases. The argument, however, has its limitations, and though solidarity is of central concern in shaping public healthcare, there are good reasons for not endorsing the rule of rescue as a moral basis for allocating scarce resources in clinical care. (shrink)

Suppose you want to do as much good as possible. What should you do? According to members of the effective altruism movement—which has produced much of the thinking on this issue and counts several moral philosophers as its key protagonists—we should prioritise among the world’s problems by assessing their scale, solvability, and neglectedness. Once we’ve done this, the three top priorities, not necessarily in this order, are (1) aiding the world’s poorest people by providing life-saving medical treatments or alleviating poverty (...) itself, (2) preventing global catastrophic risks, such as those posed by nuclear war or rogue artificial intelligence, and (3) ending factory farming. These claims are both plausible and striking. If correct, they should prompt a stark revision of how we approach our altruistic activities. However, the project of determining how to do the most good—as opposed to say, whether we should do the most good—has only recently, within the last ten years, become the subject of serious academic attention. Many key claims have not yet been carefully scrutinised. This is a cause for concern: are effective altruists doing good badly? In this thesis, I critique and develop some of the latest claims about how individuals can do the most good. I do this in three areas: the value of saving lives (preventing premature deaths), how best to improve lives (making people happier during their lives), and cause prioritisation methodology (frameworks for determining which problems are the highest priorities). In each case, I raise novel theoretical considerations that, when incorporated, change the analysis. Roughly speaking, my main conclusions are (1) saving lives is not as straightforwardly good we tend to suppose, may not be good at all, and is not clearly a priority; (2) happiness can be measured through self-reports and, based on the self-reported evidence, treating mental health stands out as an overlooked problem that may be an even more cost-effective way to improve lives than alleviating poverty; (3) the cause prioritisation methodology proposed by effective altruists needs to be moderately reconceptualised and, when it is, it turns out it is not as illuminating a tool as we might have thought and hoped. (shrink)

Garrett Cullity concedes that saving a drowning child from a shallow pond at little cost to oneself is not actually analogous to giving money to a poverty relief organization like Oxfam. The question then arises whether this objection is fatal to Peters Singer's argument for a duty of assistance or whether it can be saved anyway. Cullity argues that not saving the drowning child and not giving money to organizations like Oxfam are still morally analogous, that is, not giving (...) money to organizations like Oxfam is morally nearly as bad as letting the child drown. I argue that Cullity's two arguments for this conclusion, an argument from "transitivity" and an argument from collective responsibility, fail. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively? There might be such a reason if your offsetting compensated or somehow (...) benefitted the victims of your emission, since that could mean that you would satisfy the duty not to harm others by emitting and offsetting. But that is typically not true. If your emission harms some person and your offsetting benefits some person, then these are most likely different people. Hence, I conclude, we have a stronger reason to give to effective charities than we have to offset our emissions. (shrink)

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis. Here we first give a brief history of the path to today’s severity criteria (...) in Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian perspective on severity might be conducive to the international discussion, given its long-standing use as a priority setting criterion, despite having reached rather different conclusions so far. We then argue that severity can be viewed as a multidimensional concept, drawing on accounts of need, urgency, fairness, duty to save lives, and human dignity. Such concerns will often be relative to local mores, and the weighting placed on the various dimensions cannot be expected to be fixed. Thirdly, we present what we think are the most pertinent questions to answer about severity in order to facilitate decision making in the coming years of increased scarcity, and to further the understanding of underlying assumptions and values that go into these decisions. We conclude that severity is poorly understood, and that the topic needs substantial further inquiry; thus we hope this article may set a challenging and important research agenda. (shrink)

Intertemporal choice is the study of how people make choices about what and how much to do at various points in time, when choices at one time influence the possibilities available at other points in time. These choices are influenced by the relative value people assign to two or more payoffs at different points in time. Most choices require decision-makers to trade off costs and benefits at different points in time. These decisions may be about savings, work effort, education, (...) nutrition, exercise, health care and so forth. Since early in the twentieth century, economists have analyzed intertemporal decisions using the discounted utility model, which assumes that people evaluate the pleasures and pains resulting from a decision in much the same way that financial markets evaluate losses and gains, exponentially 'discounting' the value of outcomes according to how delayed they are in time. Discounted utility has been used to describe how people actually make intertemporal choices and it has been used as a tool for public policy. Policy decisions about how much to spend on research and development, health and education all depend on the discount rate used to analyze the decision. (shrink)

There is much philosophical literature on the duty to rescue. Individuals who encounter and could save, at relatively little cost to themselves, a person at risk of losing life or limb are morally obligated to do so. Yet little has been said about the other side of the issue. There are cases in which the need for rescue could have been reasonably avoided by the rescuee. We argue for a duty to take rescue precautions, providing an account of the (...) circumstances in which it arises. This novel duty has important implications for public policy. We apply it to the situation of some of the uninsured in the United States. Given the US clinician's duty to provide emergency care to all people regardless of ability to pay, some of the uninsured have a moral duty to purchase health insurance. We defend the duty against objections, including the possibility that a right to rescue can be waived, thus undermining a duty to take rescue precautions, that the duty of many professionals is voluntarily incurred, and that a distinction between actively assumed and passively assumed risks matters morally. (shrink)

One widely used method for allocating health care resources involves the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to rank treatments in terms of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained. CEA has been criticized for discriminating against people with disabilities by valuing their lives less than those of non-disabled people. Avoiding discrimination seems to lead to the ’QALY trap’: we cannot value saving lives equally and still value raising quality of life. This paper reviews existing responses to the QALY trap and argues that (...) all are problematic. Instead, we argue that adopting a moderate form of prioritarianism avoids the QALY trap and disability discrimination. (shrink)

This paper addresses a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, i.e. superdeterminism. In short, superdeterminism i) takes the world to be fundamentally deterministic, ii) postulates hidden variables, and iii) contra Bell, saves locality at the cost of violating the principle of statistical independence. Superdeterminism currently enjoys little support in the physics and philosophy communities. Many take it to posit the ubiquitous occurrence of hard-to-digest conspiratorial and coincidental events; others object that violating the principle of statistical independence implies the death of (...) the scientific methodology. In this paper, we offer a defense to these and other objections. To counter the conspiracy objection, we draw upon the philosophical literature on time travel, and conclude that the picture of the world offered by the superdeterminist does not need to be particularly surprising or conspiratorial. We then move on to other recent objections, in particular those that focus on the methodology of science and the nature of the physical laws compatible with superdeterminism. A key ingredient of our arguments is that the principle of statistical independence may be violated in theory, but valid for practical purposes. Our overarching goal is to offer a defense of superdeterminism with respect to its main objections, so that it can earn its keep as a legitimate contender among the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Because the poorest people tend to die from easily preventable diseases, addressing poverty is a relatively cheap way to save lives. War, by contrast, is extremely expensive. This article argues that, since states that wage war could alleviate poverty instead, poverty can render war unjust. Two just war theory conditions prove relevant: proportionality and last resort. Proportionality requires that war does not yield excessive costs in relation to the benefits. Standardly, just war theorists count only the direct costs: the death (...) and destruction wrought by war. This article argues that it can sometimes be appropriate to add the opportunity costs of a failure to alleviate poverty. Last resort is the condition that there must be no better alternative means of achieving the same just end for which the war is waged. This article argues that there are some cases in which alleviating poverty may constitute a better alternative. These are cases in which the most fitting description of the just end for war is sufficiently general that poverty alleviation offers a means to pursue it. The idea that poverty can sometimes render war unjust has, to date, been largely overlooked. It is, nevertheless, an idea with profound implications since, once taken seriously, war becomes much harder to justify. Wars that, in every other respect, seem just may prove disproportionate or unnecessary given the alternative of alleviating poverty. (shrink)

To clarify the proper role of values in science, focusing on controversial expert responses to Covid-19, this article examines the status of (in)convenient hypotheses. Polarizing cases like health experts downplaying mask efficacy to save resources for healthcare workers, or scientists dismissing “accidental lab leak” hypotheses in view of potential xenophobia, plausibly involve modifying evidential standards for (in)convenient claims. Societies could accept that scientists handle (in)convenient claims just like nonscientists, and give experts less political power. Or societies could hold scientists to (...) a higher bar, by expecting them not to modify evidential standards to avoid costs only incidentally tied to error. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence and robotics is pervasive in daily life and set to expand to new levels potentially replacing human decision-making and action. Self-driving cars, home and healthcare robots, and autonomous weapons are some examples. A distinction appears to be emerging between potentially benevolent civilian uses of the technology (eg unmanned aerial vehicles delivering medicines), and potentially malevolent military uses (eg lethal autonomous weapons killing human com- batants). Machine-mediated human interaction challenges the philosophical basis of human existence and ethical conduct. Aside (...) from technical challenges of ensuring ethical conduct in artificial intelligence and robotics, there are moral questions about the desirability of replacing human functions and the human mind with such technology. How will artificial intelligence and robotics engage in moral reasoning in order to act ethically? Is there a need for a new set of moral rules? What happens to human interaction when it is mediated by technology? Should such technology be used to end human life? Who bears responsibility for wrongdoing or harmful conduct by artificial intelligence and robotics? -/- Whilst Kant may be familiar to international lawyers for setting restraints on the use of force and rules for perpetual peace, his foundational work on ethics provides an inclusive moral philosophy for assessing ethical conduct of individuals and states and, thus, is relevant to discussions on the use and development of artificial intelligence and robotics. His philosophy is inclusive because it incorporates justifications for morals and legitimate responses to immoral conduct, and applies to all human agents irrespective of whether they are wrongdoers, unlawful combatants, or unjust enemies. Humans are at the centre of rational thinking, action, and norm-creation so that the rationale for restraints on methods and means of warfare, for example, is based on preserving human dignity as well as ensuring conditions for perpetual peace among states. Unlike utilitarian arguments which favour use of autonomous weapons on the basis of cost-benefit reasoning or the potential to save lives, Kantian ethics establish non-consequentialist and deontological rules which are good in themselves to follow and not dependent on expediency or achieving a greater public good. -/- Kantian ethics make two distinct contributions to the debate. First, they provide a human-centric ethical framework whereby human exist- ence and capacity are at the centre of a norm-creating moral philosophy guiding our understanding of moral conduct. Second, the ultimate aim of Kantian ethics is practical philosophy that is relevant and applicable to achieving moral conduct. -/- I will seek to address the moral questions outlined above by exploring how core elements of Kantian ethics relate to use of artificial intelli- gence and robotics in the civilian and military spheres. Section 2 sets out and examines core elements of Kantian ethics: the categorical imperative; autonomy of the will; rational beings and rational thinking capacity; and human dignity and humanity as an end in itself. Sections 3-7 consider how these core elements apply to artificial intelligence and robotics with discussion of fully autonomous and human-machine rule-generating approaches; types of moral reasoning; the difference be- tween ‘human will’ and ‘machine will’; and respecting human dignity. (shrink)

Leibniz has long faced a challenge about the coherence of the distinction between necessary and contingent truths in his philosophy. In this paper, I propose and examine a new way to save genuine contingency within a Leibnizian framework. I conclude that it succeeds in formally solving the problem, but at unbearable cost. I present Leibniz’s challenge by considering God’s choice of the best possible world (Sect. 2). God necessarily exists and necessarily chooses to actualise the best possible world. The (...) actual world therefore could not be different, for if it were different it would be a distinct and inferior world and hence would not be created. In Sect. 3 I defend Leibniz from this challenge. I argue that while it is necessary for God to choose to create the best possible world, it is not necessary for any world to be the best possible. This is because the criterion for judging perfection can itself be contingent. Different criteria will judge different worlds as the best. Thus it is necessary for God to create the best, but not necessary which is the best. Distinguishing between possible worlds in Leibniz’s sense and in the modern sense allows a fuller exposition of this position. There are worries that can arise with the claim that the criterion of perfection is contingent. I consider two of the most pressing (Sect. 4). The first argues that the criterion is in God’s understanding and hence is necessary; the second alleges that a contingent criterion of perfection violates Leibniz’s cherished Principle of Sufficient Reason. These worries are well-grounded, and examining them reveals a deep incompatibility between this solution and Leibniz’s metaphysical views. I conclude that there is a real solution available, but that it is unacceptable to Leibniz or a Leibnizian. The search for a genuine solution that is genuinely Leibnizian goes on. (shrink)

Self-medication of antibiotics is an irrational use of drugs, contributing to microbial resistance, increasing healthcare costs and higher mortality and morbidity. This study aimed to assess self-medication with antibiotics without a medical prescription in the community of Libya. This is a cross-sectional study conducted from June to December 2022 and the total number of participants was 200. The design of the study and sample size were modified according to the proficiency of pharmacists and the medical and non-medical population of Libya. (...) The questionnaire was developed in English and Arabic language and was distributed through social media platforms. The questions were used after a thorough literature search and assessing the validity and reliability. The significant signs regarding reasons for the treatment by self-medication drugs of antibiotics, because of its various drugs of antibiotic by pharmacist (n=80, 40.0%) and family (n=90, 45.0%) compared with experience and physicians by used prescription was 13 (6.50%) and significant sings regarding by nasal congestion self-medication of various antibiotics (n=100, 50.0%). This sign must be practiced based on a previous physician’s prescription. The antibiotics are often self-administered as patients feel that they will save money and time but this can lead to substantial adverse drug reactions, antibiotic resistance, treatment failure and drug-related toxicity. This study respondent's medical and non-medical public of Libya who should be relatively informed and educated about the risk of treatment by self-medication of antibiotics with the development of resistance. (shrink)

The recent explosion of philosophical papers on Confederate and Colonialist statues centers on a central question: When, if ever, is it permissible to admire a person? This paper contends it’s not just Confederates and slavers whose reputations are on the line, but also pacifists like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Daisy Bates whose commitments to pacifism meant they were unwilling to save others using defensive violence, including others they talked into endangering themselves for the sake of racial equality. Other things (...) being equal, that’s gravely immoral if pacifism is false, and we shouldn’t admire people guilty of grave immorality. So, it appears that we shouldn’t admire Bates or King, which is counterintuitive. To solve this problem, I explore several possibilities: that only selective traits of Bates and King are admirable, that Bates and King are admirable despite their grave immorality, and that Bates and King are admirable by virtue of their integrity. However, each of these proposals fails: the first because it inadequately captures our moral phenomenology (we admire people, not just their traits), the second because it ignores the extent to which gravely immoral commitments are constitutive of a person’s moral character, and the third because we ought not to admire people for acting on their immoral beliefs. The paper concludes, first, that either pacifists like Bates and King aren’t admirable or they are, and the latter presupposes the truth of pacifism. Second, I borrow from Vanessa Carbonell’s ratcheting-up argument from moral sainthood to argue that pacifists like Bates and King provide epistemic defeaters to the objection that pacifism is unreasonably costly. Thus, not only are pacifists admirable only if they’re right—they are right. (shrink)

Urban lighting systems are essential for safety, security, and quality of life, but they often consume significant energy and lack adaptability to changing conditions. Traditional lighting systems rely on fixed schedules and manual adjustments, leading to inefficiencies such as over-illumination and energy waste. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can optimize urban lighting by enabling real-time adjustments, energy savings, and adaptive illumination based on environmental conditions and human activity. By integrating data from motion sensors, weather (...) forecasts, and traffic systems, cities can reduce energy consumption, enhance safety, and improve the quality of life for residents. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in energy efficiency, lighting quality, and operational costs, offering a sustainable blueprint for smart urban lighting systems. (shrink)

Buildings account for a significant portion of global energy consumption and carbon emissions, making energy efficiency a critical focus for urban sustainability. Traditional building management systems often lack the adaptability and precision needed to optimize energy usage dynamically. This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies can enhance energy efficiency in smart buildings by enabling real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and adaptive control systems. By integrating data from smart meters, occupancy sensors, and environmental monitors, cities can reduce energy waste, (...) lower carbon footprints, and improve occupant comfort. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in energy savings, operational costs, and environmental impact, offering a sustainable blueprint for smart building management. (shrink)

The Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is designed to serve as a computational infrastructure that can permit global exploration and utilization of data and information relevant to salivaomics. SKB is created by aligning (1) the saliva biomarker discovery and validation resources at UCLA with (2) the ontology resources developed by the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry, including a new Saliva Ontology (SALO). We define the Saliva Ontology (SALO; http://www.skb.ucla.edu/SALO/) as a consensus-based controlled vocabulary of terms and relations dedicated to the salivaomics (...) domain and to saliva-related diagnostics following the principles of the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry. The Saliva Ontology is an ongoing exploratory initiative. The ontology will be used to facilitate salivaomics data retrieval and integration across multiple fields of research together with data analysis and data mining. The ontology will be tested through its ability to serve the annotation ('tagging') of a representative corpus of salivaomics research literature that is to be incorporated into the SKB. Background Saliva (oral fluid) is an emerging biofluid for non-invasive diagnostics used in the detection of human diseases. The need to advance saliva research is strongly emphasized by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), and is included in the NIDCR's 2004- 2009 expert panel long-term research agenda [1]. The ability to monitor health status, disease onset, progression, recurrence and treatment outcome through noninvasive means is highly important to advancing health care management. Saliva is a perfect medium to be explored for personalized individual medicine including diagnostics, offering a non-invasive, easy to obtain means for detecting and monitoring diseases. Saliva testing potentially allows the patient to collect their own saliva samples at home, yielding convenience for the patient and savings in health costs, and facilitating multiple sampling. Specimen collection is less objectionable to patients and easier in children and elderly individuals. Due to these advantages. (shrink)

Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation – external representations save internal memory and computation – is only part of the story. I discuss eight ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they facilitate re-representation; they are often a more natural (...) representation of structure than mental representations; they facilitate the computation of more explicit encoding of information; they enable the construction of arbitrarily complex structure; and they lower the cost of controlling thought – they help coordinate thought. (shrink)

This article explores the philosophical underpinnings that guided the Framers of the US Constitution in establishing a government, following its War of Independence (1775-1783), as the first large republic in history. The Founding Fathers first began convening formally during the First Continental Congress in 1774, though the path to independence escalated with the Second Continental Congress in 1775. Central to their concerns was the protection of individual rights, a concept deeply rooted in Western political thought. These rights, including freedom of (...) speech, belief, and private property, were essential to safeguard against government overreach. The tyrannical rule of King George III constantly violated His Majesty’s American subjects’ fundamental rights, due to the high rising costs of the war with France. Although, it was the British government (the Parliament) which was in charge of running the Empire. Through the eyes of American subjects, it was the King who was responsible for many grievances such as “taxation without representation.” The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), and the US Constitution (September 17, 1787) declare, enlist and protect those rights. The measures for protecting those rights for the people, and protecting the integrity of the government were among the two essential concerns for the Founding Fathers after gaining the independence. There is a delicate balance between these two concerns which has been engraved within the Constitution. American republic represents that balance to keep. The concern for saving the republic from foreign and domestic enemies remain as strong as before. After the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, when Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall, he was reportedly asked by a woman, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.” (McHenry, 85.). (shrink)

Climate change policy decisions are inescapably intertwined with future generations. Even if all carbon dioxide emissions were to be stopped today, most aspects of climate change would persist for hundreds of years, thus inevitably raising questions of intergenerational justice and sustainability. -/- The chapter begins with a short overview of discount rate debate in climate economics, followed by the observation that discounting implicitly makes the assumption that natural capital is always substitutable with man-made capital. The chapter explains why non-substitutability matters (...) if we are to take intergenerational justice seriously and invest aptly in mitigation. Non-substitutability simply implies that there are some forms of capital that cannot be substituted by another, and so consumption of one cannot be compensated with additional stocks of the other. The non-substitutability of critical natural capital can be defended without empirical data about preferences or the need to view the environment as a superior good, and the argument is presented through the language of keeping options open. -/- Those alive today make decisions about what natural capital to use and what to save for future. These choices are often represented as different points in a continuum of sustainability: weak sustainability is associated with a high degree of substitutability and therefore a lot of flexibility over what capital to consume, whereas strong sustainability is more stringent on substitutability. While it may be that in economical understanding weak and strong sustainability collapse into one another, philosophically the emphasis is slightly different. The chapter discusses how normative sustainability can be supported without ignoring opportunity costs and trade-offs. (shrink)

The framework leverages a hybrid cloud architecture, combining the scalability of public clouds with the security of private clouds. By employing a combination of client-side hashing, metadata indexing, and machine learning-based duplicate detection, the framework achieves significant storage savings without compromising data integrity. Real-time testing on a hybrid cloud setup demonstrated a 65% reduction in storage needs and a 40% improvement in data retrieval times. Additionally, the system employs blockchain for immutable logging of deduplication activities, enhancing transparency and traceability. (...) This study concludes with an evaluation of the deduplication framework's impact on cost efficiency, system performance, and potential scalability. Future enhancements aim to integrate multi-cloud interoperability and advanced compression algorithms to further refine storage management. (shrink)

This project explores the design and implementation of an Automated Street Lighting System using the Internet of Things (IoT). The system aims to enhance urban lighting efficiency, reduce energy consumption, and improve public safety by employing smart sensors and IoT technology. The system's primary components include motion sensors, ambient light sensors, and IoT controllers, enabling dynamic lighting adjustments based on real-time environmental data. The proposed system is designed to operate autonomously, detecting pedestrian and vehicular movement to activate streetlights only when (...) needed. The project demonstrates significant energy savings and operational efficiency compared to traditional street lighting systems. By utilizing energy-efficient LED lights and integrating renewable energy sources, the system further reduces the carbon footprint, contributing to sustainability goals. This study illustrates the potential of IoT-enabled street lighting to transform urban environments, offering a scalable and cost-effective solution for modern cities striving for smarter, safer, and more sustainable infrastructure. (shrink)

Contrary to popular belief, population-wide preventive measures are rarely cost-reducing. Yet they can still be cost-effective, and indeed more cost-effective than treatment. This is often true of preventive measures that work by slightly reducing the already low risks of death faced by many people. This raises a difficult moral question: when we must choose between life-saving treatment, on the one hand, and preventive measures that avert even more deaths, on the other, is the case for prevention weakened (...) when it works by reducing many healthy people’s already low risks by a further tiny amount? I argue the answer is no. (shrink)

The exponential growth of data storage requirements has become a pressing challenge in hybrid cloud environments, necessitating efficient data deduplication methods. This research proposes a novel Smart Deduplication Framework (SDF) designed to identify and eliminate redundant data, thus optimizing storage usage and improving data retrieval speeds. The framework leverages a hybrid cloud architecture, combining the scalability of public clouds with the security of private clouds. By employing a combination of client-side hashing, metadata indexing, and machine learning-based duplicate detection, the framework (...) achieves significant storage savings without compromising data integrity. Real-time testing on a hybrid cloud setup demonstrated a 65% reduction in storage needs and a 40% improvement in data retrieval times. Additionally, the system employs blockchain for immutable logging of deduplication activities, enhancing transparency and traceability. This study concludes with an evaluation of the deduplication framework's impact on cost efficiency, system performance, and potential scalability. Future enhancements aim to integrate multi-cloud interoperability and advanced compression algorithms to further refine storage management. (shrink)

Is there is a moral obligation to militarily intervene in another state to stop a genocide from happening (if this can be done with proportionate force)? My answer is that under exceptional circumstances a state or even a non-state actor might have a duty to stop a genocide (for example if these actors have promised to do so), but under most circumstances there is no such obligation. To wit, “humanity,” states, collectives, and individuals do not have an obligation to make (...) such promises in the first place or to create institutions that would impose a legal obligation of intervention upon them. Nor do states or persons or humanity “collectively” have – originally, without specifically creating such duties by contracts or promises – any pro tanto or special duties to save strangers at considerable cost to themselves or their own citizens (including their soldiers). That is, these costs do not merely override a duty to intervene, but rather there is no such duty to begin with – as shown by the fact that in such cases of non-intervention agents would not owe those they let die any compensation: if I do not save someone’s life because saving him would have cost me my arm or would have come with a high risk of losing my own life or would have forced me to kill innocent bystanders, I do not owe this person compensation. Thus the point of this chapter is that there is no “natural” or “general” or “original” duty to militarily intervene (or to create a legal obligation) to stop a genocide. I will consider and refute a number of arguments to the contrary, for example by Lango, Tan, and Pattison. (shrink)

Several influential organisations have attempted to quantify the costs and benefits of expanding access to interventions-like contraceptives-that are expected to decrease the number of pregnancies. Such health economic evaluations can be invaluable to those making decisions about how to allocate scarce resources for health. Yet how the benefits should be measured depends on controversial value judgments. One such value judgment is found in recent analyses from the Disease Control Priority Network (DCPN) and the Study Group for the Global Investment Framework (...) for Women's and Children's Health. Noting the decrease in the number of pregnancies expected to result from providing access to family planning, DCPN and the Study Group claim that a substantial benefit of such interventions is averting the stillbirths and child deaths that would have resulted from those pregnancies. We argue that health economic analyses should not count such averted deaths as benefits in the same way as saved lives. First, by counting averted stillbirths and child deaths as a benefit but not counting as a cost the lives of babies who survive, DCPN and the Study Group implicitly commit themselves to antinatalism. Second, this method for calculating the benefits of family planning interventions implies that infertility treatments are harmful. Determining how potential people should be treated in health economic analyses will require grappling with population ethics. (shrink)

The framework leverages a hybrid cloud architecture, combining the scalability of public clouds with the security of private clouds. By employing a combination of client-side hashing, metadata indexing, and machine learning-based duplicate detection, the framework achieves significant storage savings without compromising data integrity. Real-time testing on a hybrid cloud setup demonstrated a 65% reduction in storage needs and a 40% improvement in data retrieval times. Additionally, the system employs blockchain for immutable logging of deduplication activities, enhancing transparency and traceability. (...) This study concludes with an evaluation of the deduplication framework's impact on cost efficiency, system performance, and potential scalability. Future enhancements aim to integrate multi-cloud interoperability and advanced compression algorithms to further refine storage management. (shrink)

One of the best-known members of the United Nations Commission which drafted the 1948 "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Jacques Maritain, famously held that the "natural rights" or "human rights" possessed by every human being are grounded and justified by reference to the natural law.' In many quarters today, the notion of the natural law, and arguments for a set of natural rights grounded in the natural law, have come under fierce attack. One common line of attack is illustrated by (...) the arguments of some utilitarians, for whom "natural law thinking" is mistaken insofar as it implies that there is an absolute moral prohibition against violating any human being's "natural rights." Even if there is such a thing as "natural rights," these utilitarians argue, such rights - including even the natural "right to life" - are necessarily relational, and thus have meaning only within the context of a larger social whole. As a result, the argument goes, the supposed "natural rights" possessed by individual human beings are never inviolable or unconditional, but instead always negotiable and subject to being "traded away" for the sake of greater social utility. Consider just one alleged counter-example to the notion that there are inviolable or unconditional "natural rights": it is well-known that approximately 36,000 people in the United States die every year as a result of influenza infections or influenza-related complications.' There is little doubt that hundreds, and probably even thousands, of human lives would be saved every year if local governments were to pass laws requiring flu vaccinations for all members of at-risk populations (e.g., the very young and the very elderly). It would seem that there would be broad support for mandated flu vaccinations- no matter what the expense - if human lives would be saved and if the natural "right to life" is inviolable or unconditional.' And yet no such life-saving laws exist, apparently because citizens and legislators believe that the social costs and inconveniences would be too great. According to the utilitarian position, this demonstrates - contrary to what Ronald Dworkin and others say about rights' - that rights do not trump utility, but in fact are quite regularly and reasonably trumped by utility. In light of such contemporary understandings and policies, can natural law thinking about natural rights be made credible? In what follows, I shall argue that utilitarian thinkers are correct to hold that rights are intrinsically relational; but they are wrong to conclude that the relational character of rights entails that "natural rights" are not inviolable or not unconditional. (shrink)

Programs of drug testing welfare recipients are increasingly common in US states and have been considered elsewhere. Though often intensely debated, such programs are complicated to evaluate because their aims are ambiguous – aims like saving money may be in tension with aims like referring people to treatment. We assess such programs using a proportionality approach, which requires that for ethical acceptability a practice must be: reasonably likely to meet its aims, sufficiently important in purpose as to outweigh harms incurred, (...) and lower in costs than feasible alternatives. In the light of empirical findings, we argue that the programs fail the three requirements. Pursuing recreational drug users is not important in the light of costs incurred, while dependent users who may require referral are usually identifiable without testing and typically need a broader approach than one focussing on drugs. Drug testing of welfare recipients is therefore not ethically acceptable policy. (shrink)