•  20
    Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism
    with Ivar R. Hannikainen, Kevin P. Tobia, Guilherme da F. C. F. de Almeida, N. Struchiner, Markus Kneer, P. Bystranowski, V. Dranseika, N. Strohmaier, S. Bensinger, K. Dolinina, B. Janik, Egle Lauraityte, M. Laakasuo, A. Liefgreen, I. Neiders, M. Prochnicki, A. Rosas, and J. Sundvall
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 119 (44). 2022.
    A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a pl…Read more
  •  11
    Coordination Favors Legal Textualism by Suppressing Moral Valuation
    with Ivar R. Https://orcidorg357X Hannikainen, Kevin P. Tobia, Guilherme da F. C. F. Almeida, Noel Struchiner, Markus Https://Orcidorg Kneer, Piotr Bystranowski, Vilius Dranseika, Niek Strohmaier, Samantha Bensinger, Kristina Dolinina, Bartosz Janik, Egle Lauraityte, Michael Laakasuo, Alice Liefgreen, Ivars Neiders, Maciej Próchnicki, Alejandro Rosas Martinez, and Jukka Sundvall
  •  230
    A dogma accepted in many ethical, religious, and legal frameworks is that the reasons behind conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare cannot be evaluated or judged by any institution because conscience is individual and autonomous. This paper shows that this background view is mistaken: the requirement to reveal and explain the reasons for conscientious objection in healthcare is ethically justified and legally desirable. Referring to real healthcare cases and legal regulations, this paper arg…Read more
  •  177
    Rational framing effects and morally valid reasons
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 247 (45). 2022.
    I argue that the scope of rational framing effects may be broader than Bermúdez assumes. Even in many “canonical experiments,” the explanation of the judgment reversals or shifts may refer to reasons, including moral ones. Referring to the Asian disease paradigm (ADP), I describe how non-consequentialist reasons related to fairness and the distinction between doing and allowing may help explain and justify the typical pattern of choices in the cases like ADP.
  •  143
    With the limited initial availability of COVID-19 vaccines in the first months of 2021, decision-makers had to determine the order in which different groups were prioritized. Our aim was to find out what normative approaches to the allocation of scarce preventive resources were embedded in the national COVID-19 vaccination schedules. We systematically reviewed and compared prioritization regulations in 27 members of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Israel. We differentiated between tw…Read more
  • Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism
    with Ivar Hannikainen, Kevin Tobia, Guilherme de Almeida, Noel Struchiner, Markus Kneer, Piotr Bystranowski, Niek Strohmaier, Sammy Bensinger, Kristina Dolinina, Bartosz Janik, Egle Lauraityte, Michael Laakasuo, Alice Liefgreen, Ivars Neiders, Maciej Prochnicki, Alejandro Rosas, and Jukka Sundvall
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 (44). 2022.
    A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a widespread tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which acts violate the rule. This tendency’s strength varied markedly across (k = 15) field sites, owing to cultural variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared to laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether, and consequently exhibited more pronounced textualist tendencies. F…Read more
  •  229
    In this article, we analyse how researchers use the categories of race and ethnicity with reference to genetics and genomics. We show that there is still considerable conceptual “messiness” (despite the wide-ranging and popular debate on the subject) when it comes to the use of ethnoracial categories in genetics and genomics that among other things makes it difficult to properly compare and interpret research using ethnoracial categories, as well as draw conclusions from them. Finally, we briefl…Read more
  •  289
    In this paper, we discuss the processes of racialisation on the example of biomedical research. We argue that applying the concept of racialisation in biomedical research can be much more precise, informative and suitable than currently used categories, such as race and ethnicity. For this purpose, we construct a model of the different processes affecting and co-shaping the racialisation of an individual, and consider these in relation to biomedical research, particularly to studies on hypertens…Read more
  •  239
    Blumenthal-Barby and her colleagues (2022) situate their discussion of philosophy and bioethics in the context of (reportedly) widely held assumption that, when compared to the early days of bioethics, the role of philosophy is now diminished across the field – the assumption we call the Disconnection Thesis. This assumption can be summarized, to use the authors’ own words, by the phrase “philosophy’s glory days in bioethics are over“. While in no place of the article they explicitly endorse the…Read more
  •  366
    Topic modeling—a text‐mining technique often used to uncover thematic structures in large collections of texts—has been increasingly frequently used in the context of the analysis of scholarly output. In this study, we construct a corpus of 19,488 texts published since 1971 in seven leading journals in the field of bioethics and philosophy of medicine, and we use a machine learning algorithm to identify almost 100 topics representing distinct themes of interest in the field. On the basis of inte…Read more
  •  346
    Reasons to Genome Edit and Metaphysical Essentialism about Human Identity
    American Journal of Bioethics 22 (9): 34-36. 2022.
    In this commentary paper, we are taking one step further in questioning the central assumptions in the bioethical debates about reproductive technologies. We argue that the very distinction between “person affecting” and “identity affecting” interventions is based on a questionable form of material-origin essentialism. Questioning of this form of essentialist approach to human identity allows treating genome editing and genetic selection as more similar than they are taken to be in the standard …Read more
  •  3
    Wolność jako przekleństwo najsłabszych
    Civitas. Studia Z Filozofii Polityki 10 247-255. 2007.
  •  205
    My paper builds on the conceptual tools from three interrelated philosophical debates that—as I believe—may help structure important if chaotic discussions about surrogates for living human brains and resolve some practical issues related to regulatory matters. In particular, I refer to the discussions about the “moral precautionary principle” in research ethics (Koplin and Wilkinson 2019); about normative uncertainty in ethics (MacAskill, Bykvist, and Ord 2020), and about the inductive risk pro…Read more
  •  10
    In this paper, we use an innovative, empirical, and–as yet–rarely applied method in bioethics, namely corpus analysis, which is commonly used in literature studies (Moretti 2013), linguistics (Bake...
  •  259
    The goals and tasks of neuroethics formulated by Farahany and Ramos (2020) link epistemological and methodological issues with ethical and social values. The authors refer simultaneously to the social significance and scientific reliability of the BRAIN Initiative. They openly argue that neuroethics should not only examine neuroscientific research in terms of “a rigorous, reproducible, and representative neuroscience research process” as well as “explore the unique nature of the study of the hum…Read more
  •  241
    Many psychologists have tried to reveal the formation and processing of moral judgments by using a variety of empirical methods: behavioral data, tests of statistical significance, and brain imaging. Meanwhile, some scholars maintain that the new empirical findings of the ways we make moral judgments question the trustworthiness and authority of many intuitive ethical responses. The aim of this special issue is to encourage scholars to rethink how, if at all, it is possible to draw any normative…Read more
  •  185
    Until very recently, normative theorizing in ethics was frequently conducted without even mentioning uncertainty. Just a few years ago, Sven Ove Hansson described this state of affairs with the slogan: “Ethics still lives in a Newtonian world.” In the new Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Probability, David McCarthy writes that “mainstream moral philosophy has not been much concerned with probability,” understanding probability as “the best-known tool for thinking about uncertainty.” This specia…Read more
  •  220
    Decyzje w sytuacjach niepewności normatywnej
    Przeglad Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria 29 (2): 53-72. 2020.
    Etycy nie poświęcali dotąd wiele uwagi niepewności, koncentrując się często na skrajnie wyidealizowanych hipotetycznych sytuacjach, w których zarówno kwestie empiryczne (np. stan świata, spektrum możliwych decyzji oraz ich konsekwencje, związki przyczynowe między zdarzeniami), jak i normatywne (np. treść norm, skale wartości) były jasno określone i znane podmiotowi. W poniższym artykule – który jest rezultatem projektu dotyczącego różnych typów decyzji w sytuacjach niepewności związanej z postęp…Read more
  •  22
    Własność jako konwencja
    Diametros 15 102-110. 2008.
    Recenzja książki: Liam Murphy, Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership. Taxes and Justice, Oxford University Press, Oxford – New York 2002.
  • Recenzja książki Charlesa Taylora, Źródła podmiotowości. Narodziny tożsamości nowoczesnej.
  •  301
    Pascal’s mugging
    Analiza I Egzystencja 31 135-138. 2015.
  •  240
    The Fifth Face of Fair Subject Selection: Population Grouping
    American Journal of Bioethics 20 (2): 41-43. 2020.
    The article by MacKay and Saylor (2020) claims that the principle of fair subject selection yields conflicting imperatives (e.g. in the case of pregnant women) and should be understood as “a bundle of four distinct sub-principles” (i.e. fair inclusion, burden sharing, opportunity, distribution of third-party risks), each having conflicting normative recommendations (MacKay and Saylor 2020). The authors also offer guidance as to how we should navigate between subprinciples that may conflict with …Read more
  •  344
    In their insightful article, Brent Kious and Margaret Battin (2019) correctly identify an inconsistency between an involuntary psychiatric commitment for suicide prevention and physician aid in dying (PAD). They declare that it may be possible to resolve the problem by articulating “objective standards for evaluating the severity of others’ suffering,” but ultimately they admit that this task is beyond the scope of their article since the solution depends on “a deep and difficult” question about…Read more
  •  180
    Racje wewnętrzne i zewnętrzne
    with Bernard Williams
    Roczniki Filozoficzne 67 (1): 231-246. 2019.
    Artykuł, opublikowany po raz pierwszy w 1979 r., jest jednym z najczęściej cytowanych tekstów filozoficznych z drugiej połowy XX wieku. Tekst Bernarda Williamsa zainicjował kilka ważnych debat, toczących się do dziś w etyce i filozofii działania. Zaproponowana przez niego interpretacja pojęcia racji działania jest, z jednej strony, niezwykle wpływowa, ale z drugiej bardzo niejednoznaczna i często krytykowana. Williams broni stanowiska, które z czasem zaczęto określać jako internalizm racji: pewn…Read more
  •  359
    Withdrawal Aversion as a Useful Heuristic for Critical Care Decisions
    American Journal of Bioethics 19 (3): 36-38. 2019.
    While agreeing with the main conclusion of Dominic Wilkinson and colleagues (Wilkinson, Butcherine, and Savulescu 2019), namely, that there is no moral difference between treatment withholding and withdrawal as such, we wish to criticize their approach on the basis that it treats the widespread acceptance of withdrawal aversion (WA) as a cognitive bias. Wilkinson and colleagues understand WA as “a nonrational preference for withholding (WH) treatment over withdrawal (WD) of treatment” (22). They…Read more
  •  328
    The normative significance of identifiability
    Ethics and Information Technology 21 (4): 295-305. 2019.
    According to psychological research, people are more eager to help identified individuals than unidentified ones. This phenomenon significantly influences many important decisions, both individual and public, regarding, for example, vaccinations or the distribution of healthcare resources. This paper aims at presenting definitions of various levels of identifiability as well as a critical analysis of the main philosophical arguments regarding the normative significance of the identifiability eff…Read more
  •  393
    Lawrence Nelson (2018) criticizes conscientious objection (CO) to abortion statutes as far as they permit health care providers to escape criminal liability for what would otherwise be the legally wrongful taking of a pregnant woman’s life by refusing treatment (i.e. abortion). His key argument refers to the U.S. Supreme Court judgment (Roe v. Wade 1973) that does not treat the unborn as constitutional persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, Nelson claims that within the U.S. legal s…Read more
  •  360
    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.
  •  182
    The results of empirical research show that people prefer to help identified individuals rather than unidentified ones. This preference has an important influence on many private and public decisions, for example concerning vaccination or the distribution of healthcare resources. The aim of this article is to define the terms: “identified”, “unidentified”, “statistical”, and then to analyze three philosophical arguments concerning the normative implications of this preference: 1) contractualism …Read more