Announcement Brocher fellowship

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR VISITING RESEARCHERS IN 2011

Write a book, articles, an essay or your PhD thesis in a peaceful environment on the shore of the Lake of Geneva in 2011

Have the opportunity to meet other researchers from different disciplines and countries

Have the opportunity to meet experts from numerous International Organizations & Non Governmental Organizations based in Geneva (WHO, WTO, WIPO, UNHCR, ILO, WMA, ICRC, …)

THE BROCHER RESIDENCIES

The Brocher Foundation residencies last between one and six months. They give researchers the opportunity to work at the Brocher Centre on projects on the ethical, legal and social implications for humankind of recent medical research and new technologies. In 2011 the Brocher Centre will host up to ten researchers at any one time.

The Brocher Foundation offers to successful applicants an accommodation in the Villa Brocher, an office with all working facilities and a dinner with the other guests every evening. It also covers a plane or train ticket in economy class to Geneva (round trip) up to a maximum amount (cf “Statute for visiting researchers” available on www.brocher.ch).

“Junior” visiting researchers can apply for a scholarship in order to cover their local expenses in Geneva. This scholarship amounts to 33 Swiss francs a day (per diem). To be eligible, the applicant should be a PhD student or should have obtained his PhD degree in 2006 or later and should not perceive any other treatment during the time spent at the Foundation. Developing a research project involving cooperation with a Swiss university, an European university, a non-governmental organization or an international organization will be considered as an advantage. A researcher can apply with one or two other researchers to work on a collaborative project together.

TOPICS FOR THE YEAR 2011

Ethical, Legal & Social Implications of recent medical research and new medical technologies :

Among the following disciplines

Bioethics, Health Anthropology, Health Economics, Health Governance, Health Law, Health Philosophy, Health Psychology, Health Sociology, Medical Ethics , History of medicine

Ethical, Legal & Social Issues on the following topics:

Access to medicines, Biobanks, Biosecurity and Dual Use Dilemma, Clinical Trials and Research on Human Subjects, Genetic testing and screening, Health Care Reform, Nanotechnology, Neglected disease, Pandemic planning Reproduction & Technology, Stem Cells, Transplantation

HOW TO APPLY

To apply, please complete the application form available at www.brocher.ch and send it

by e-mail to scientificprog@brocher.ch

and

by mail to Fondation Brocher

471 Rte d’Hermance

CP 70

CH – 1248 Hermance

Switzerland

The deadline for submission is the 18th of January 2010

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about this call for proposals please visit the Brocher Foundation website www.brocher.ch or contact our staff at scientificprog@brocher.ch .

L’origine della vita complessa

Un giorno, un batterio entra dentro un altro batterio e nasce la vita complessa.

My new blog (on Italian political issues, in Italian)

diario politico

Fair Equality of Opportunity and self-realization

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls writes that:

‘[I]f some places were not open on a basis fair to all, those kept out would be right in feeling unjustly treated even though they benefited from the greater efforts of those who were allowed to hold them. They would be justified in their complaint not only because they were excluded from certain external rewards of office but because they were debarred from experiencing the realization of self which comes from a skillful and devoted exercise of social duties. They would be deprived of one of the main forms of human good.’ (TJ, 73 (emphasis added))

This claim appears to be the main justification of a principle Rawls called “Fair Equality of Opportunity” (from now on, FEO)  that forms part of the “democratic equality” interpretation of the second principle of justice. Rawls thinks that this principle has a higher priority than the difference principle (DP) that deals with economic inequality and is satisfied only when the least well off individual gets the highest amounts of good as compared to what he or she would get under any other viable institutional system. This means, basically, that if an economic system satisfies DP but not FEO than we should try to establish FEO even if by so doing we would reduce the amount of income and wealth that goes to the least economically well off members of society (to unskilled labour force). Self-realization must be a really important good indeed, if we are allowed to sacrifice the interests of the many economically disadvantaged members in order that a few of them (those with the best talents) have a reasonable opportunity to get to the positions of highest power and responsibility! What the priority of FEO basically means, in few word, is that  we should’t endorse a policy that would increase the wealth and income of the poorest among africanamerican if by so doing we significantly reduce the possibility for someone like Obama to become the President.

We shall therefore analyze the argument from self-realization in some detail. (Unfortunately the justification of FEO and of its relation to the DP is not at all clear and is subject to many intepretative disputes, as it was evident by listening to some talks at this conference). Here I shall argue that, under a somewhat plausible interpretation, the argument from self-realization fails its purpose.

I shall assume that the idea of the priority of self-realization rests on the following claims:
1) gains of self-realization should be weighed more strongly than gains in material goods like wealth,
2) gains of self-realization derive primarily from accessing those among existing social positions one feels more attracted to,
3) losses of self-realization follow from being unable to access those among existing social position one feels more attracted to;
4) the higher the share of existing social positions one is able to access, the higher a person’s chances of self-realization in that society (from 2 and 3).

The conjunction of (1) and (4) is understood as justifying the superiority of FEO with respect to a “natural aristocracy” where, despite higher abolute levels of wealth for those at the bottom, the children of those born at the bottom (or people subject to racist discrimination) have very little or no chances of accessing positions at the top.

If this is an unacceptable interpretation of the “priority of self-realization” idea, just ignore what I’m going to say next. If I am right, then please read the objection below.

My objection is that 1) 2) 3) and 4) are valid, they justify going beyond FEO+DP in the direction of “social equality”, namely in the direction of simple egalitarian society where DP has no or very little role to play. Consider the following example.

Call S1 a society which satisfies both FEO and DP, which is a complex post-industrial economy with income and wealth distributed more equally than in any society we know of. Now consider S2. You may imagine S2 as an economically more primitive society, e.g. an agricultural society with a lower degree of economic (functional) differentiation than advanced capitalistic society. I shall assume that S2 offers low-talent citizens higher “shares of opportunity”, than S1. What do I mean by that? Just imagine that S2 as simpler society, where social positions are more similar between each other than in S2, in terms of the prerogatives of power and responsibility attached to them and in terms of the qualifications required to access them. In this society, being born with relatively poorer natural talents does not close you off from as many possibility of career as in S1. So In S2 those of low talent and ability will have more “opportunity for opportunities” (access to a larger share of the normal opportunity range), than in S1. (S2 may be considered, if you want, a step ahead with respect to S1 with respect to A. Buchanan’s “morality of inclusion” idea)

If a person’s chances of self-realization are proportional to the share of normal opportunities open to him, the priority of self-realization leads us to prefer S2 over S1. The reasoning can be reiterated a couple of times until we get to a very functionally indifferentiated society with very little (too little!) room for the sort of incentive-generating inequalities that DP is supposed to justify. This clearly shows that the Democratic Equality interpretation of the second principle is incompatible with using the priority of self-realization as a justification of FEO.

(One way to reject my argument is to argue that self-realization does not depend only upon one’s share of the opportunity range, but also upon how vast an array of opportunities one can pick up from (which I accept), so that one reaches a point where any further sacrifice of functional differentiation would reduce a person’s chances of self-realization by reducing the variety of occupations within the normal range of opportunity in absolute terms, while increasing a person’s share of that range. I disagree because the existence of a higher variety of possible occupations to pick up from does not significantly contribute to the self-realization of the least talented individuals, who only have access to the least self-fulfilling ones)*.

A definition of talent

This is for use within the context of Rawls’ fair equality of opportunity principle

P=person

A=activity

P’s talent for A at time (t) = P’s capacity at t to acquire the skills required by activity A, at a certain absolute level of excellence, as standardly defined by the social practice to which S belongs, as measured by the hypothetical cost of making P acquire those skills at t,  discounting for costs deriving from the existence of social prejudices against P

With respect to A, P1 is equally talented as P2 at t <–> apart for the costs of removing the adverse effect of social prejudices, the cost of training P1 and P2 to the same level of excellence at all the skills required by A, at t, is the same

social prejudices about P =  false beliefs about P, held only in so far as P is recognized as a member of a certain social groups or community

The definition fits with current usage. Examples:

“At birth, blacks have generally the same level of talent as whites” <–> “for any human activity, apart from the cost of removing prejudice and its consequences, the average cost of training a black man or a white man from birth for the skills required by every human activity (at every level of excellence) is the same”

(some people deny this, because they believe hat blacks can be more easily be trained to become Olimpic runners)

“With respect to all intellectuctual jobs, before means of transportation and buildings are constructed, wheelchair users and normally gifted individuals have the same talents at birth” <–> “for any intellectual job, apart from the cost of removing prejudice and its consequence, and before means of transportation and buildings are constructed, wheelchair users and normally gifted individuals have the same talents at birth”

(This is one the things that disability activists claim when they claim that disability are socially constructred. It is true if building wheelchair accessible buildings and vehicles has roughly the same cost. If true, it could be used as a premise together with Rawls FEO for  claiming that a just society, when deciding to build means of transportation and buildings, ought to choose to build the wheelchair accessible ones)

Some people may believe the following:

“At birth, women and men are not equally talented as chil caretakers” <–> “the average cost of training men and women from birth to the same level of skill as child caretakers is different”

(It may be true if, suppose, women have statistically a higher amount of hormons making the acquisition of certain skills for them easier than for men)”

All reasonable people believe the following:

“at birth, deaf people are on average less talented than the rest of the population with respect to music” <–> “it is more expensive to train deaf people to acquire musical skills from birth than it is to train non deaf people”

Rescuing Justice as Fairness from Norman Daniels

Daniels’ extension of FEO seems unacceptable, for it seems to collapse two issues that ought to remain distinct in any “social structural” account of equality of opportunity, such as the one Justice as Fairness provides.

As I see things, Daniels starts from a good point, but then spoils it. The good point is that you can extend FEO in a plausible way to deal with certain cases where equality in the access to health care is at issue. He spoils it because he wants to extend it to an altogether different type of cases.

Consider:
Case 1. Here we have two individuals with roughly similar “natural endowments” (similar biological constitution) from different sectors of society (e.g. different socio-economic classes): P and R. Suppose that P is born in a poor family, which cannot afford health insurance, and as a result gets sick three times as often as R, who is born in a rich family. Because P gets sick so often, he fails to express and develop his talents to the same degree as R.

Daniels can appeal to our intuition about such cases to claim, quite plausibly,  that FEO extends to access to health care. After all it seems wholly correct to say that, just like unequal access to education, inequality in the access to health care affects opportunities between P and R, so that they end up with different social positions even if the two even if they are equally motivated and endowed .

Consider the second scencario (case 2). Here we have two individuals who are born with different “natural endowments” from the same sector of society: U and L. More precisely, U has a congenitally higher disposition to get sick than  L, and since none of them has access to high quality health care, U actually gets sick twice as often as L. Because of more days free of pain, U has a more successful education and gains access to a more rewarding professional career.

Ought case two figure as a violation of FEO? I think the answer is clearly: no! The case does not differ substantially from that of people born with different talents, for which equal access to opportunity according to Democratic Equality is not an issue. From the point of view of Democratic Equality, inequalities in income and wealth between U and L should satisfy the difference principle.

Daniels disagrees: he wants to extend FEO according to an intepretation that treats case 1 and case 2 as instances of the same scenario, while avoiding the “luck egalitarian” implication of his way of dealing with case 2 by placing a (seemingly arbitrary) constrain: only departures from normal functioning determine a violation of FEO.

I fail to see what could motivate Daniels’ solution, except wanting to respond to Sen’ and Arrows’ criticism of Rawls.

Germ-line enhancements and education.

So I had a chance to present some of my ideas concerning the lottery for germ-line enhancement to a very good audience at Oxford University (James Martin Seminar Series – Future of HUmanity Institute). As it happens, I have received some good feedbacks. One of these led me to revise my argument quite a lot.

Basically my old argument started by taking Mehlman’s “genetic nobility” hypothesis as a plausible description of the destiny of a society able to produce germ-line enhancements but lacking egalitarian institutions. The lottery solution had the purpose of achieving a more “egalitarian” distribution of access to germ-line enhancements.

One of the objections I received concerned the plausibility of the hypothesis in question. As it has been pointed out to me, genetic technology will lead to a genetic aristocracy only if genetic enhancements will always bee expensive, so they can only be afforded by the rich. But why shouldn’t we think that the price of genetic enhancements will go down, like that of computer or cell phones? If that happens, we won’t get a genetic aristocracy. The idea of a genetic aristocracy requires the possibility of an accumulation of good genes in the genomes of the most well off families, as the children of the richest members will both have higher than average chances of receiving enhancements and moreover will inherit germ-line enhancements from the previous generation. But if the price of enhancements goes down, old inherited enhancement will simply confer no competitive advantage, as new and probably better enhancements will be available to all. Inheriting your grandfather enhnacement will be like inheriting your grandfather’s computer and have no moral significance at all.

This criticism led to aks me if genetic enhancements in a society where everyone has access to them will pose a threat to justice. My answer is that they pose a threat to justice because genes are not magic, they need to be complemented with education. Rich  parents will be able to pay special education for their enhanced kids, while poor parents won’t. So rich kids will profit from enhancements while poor parents won’t. And this will lead to a greater gap between the abilities of the rich and the poor than is now thinkable.

It may be objected that this just assumes that education is not available to all on a fair basis. The problem can be fixed by simply making sure that people have fair access to education.

The answer to that is that fair access to education may become a more difficult goal to achieve in a post-geneticenhancment society. Some  enhanced talents and abilities may be very difficult to train and it is implausible to think that the school (under ordinary budget constraints) will be able to offer the needed services.

It may be objected that fair access to education cannot be too expensive: it simply requires making private education illegal. If people know that no opportunity to get special education is available, they will only buy those enhancements that confer an advantage under normal (that is public school) conditions.

This is an interesting result on its own right. The idea that justice requires prohibiting private schools is a controversial one for our societies. It signals a limitation most people (outside the academia) are less willing to accept than any limitation on human enhancement. So what looks as an argument for prohibiting private education could be turned into an argument for prohibiting enhancements, once non-ideal theory factors are factored in. Quite simply one may argue that:

1. access to germ-line enhancements leads to a fair society only if private schools are prohibited (or if parents stop sending their kids to private schools)

2. it will be much easier to make germ-line enhancements illegal than to make private schooling illegal (or to convince parents that they should not send their kids there)

3. hence a just legislator who takes into account the difficulty of enforcing norms that the public do not regard as fair would rather prohibit germ-line enhancements than prohibit private schooling

 

on reformulating equality of opportunity

I want to come back on a problem that I had already confronted in a previous post.

As I pointed out there, social barriers to access germ-line engineering appear to be outside the scope of the Rawls’ Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle (from now on FEO), at least in the formulation Rawls gives. This is, shortly, because the principle does not require equality of opportunity for people with different talents. ( “Fair” equality of opportunity is really inequality of opportunity, operationally defined). In other words FEO aims to abolish social barriers against the use of a person’s fully realized talent (careers open to talents), the cultivation and expression of talent potential/natural ability (through wide educational opportunities), but social barriers in the access to germ-line enhancements are not social barriers against the use of realized talent or the cultivation of talent-potential, they are social barriers to factors that pre-exist the ascription of talent-potential to one individual .

As I explain in this post this formulation leads to a bunch of counterintuitive consequences, since it would allow a sort of “genetic aristocracy” to exist without apparent violation of FEO. To avoid that implication, it seems, socially manipulable biological factors affecting talent-potential should not be considered  “natural”, even if they are biological.

It is unclear how FEO should be formulated – as to make clear that biological factors affecting talent potential should not be considered “natural” when they are subject to “social manipulation”. One possibility would be to stipulate that “natural talents” in the Rawlsian explanation of FEO only refers to “that portion of the determinants of a person’s talent that is not subject to manipulation”. This would exclude “genetically enhanced” (or engineered) abilities and disposition from a person’s asset of “natural talent” (with respect to FEO), but it would not work with another kind of “social manipulation” that closely resembles genetic enhancement in its social and moral consequences, but that does not count (at least, arguably) as a “manipulation” of a person’s biological (genetic, or otherwise) endowment: the selection of embryos and gametes with “desired” and “favorable” characteristics. (For by selecting embryos or gamates one is not changing (“manipulating”) biological matter; it is only deciding which among several possible configurations of biological matter to allow to exist.) The point I am making is that exclusive access to screening technology would also confer the families of the wealthy unfair advantage over the families of the poor as the richest would be able to have children with advantageous characteristics (say – children requiring less economic and human resources for achieving the same educational results).

For this reason, in this post, I suggested that “natural talents” in the context of Rawls’ FEO should be understood as those characteristics which do not  “[result] in a systematic and predictable manner from intentional human acts or from the working of human institutions”. The problem with this solution, however, is that many human characteristics that we normally consider talents result from the intentional actions of parents in a quite systematic and predictable fashion. For instance, a man who marries a very talented musician and decides to have a child with her certainly acts intentionally (by so doing) and can predict that her child will have higher than normal chances of being musically talented. A woman who marries a very handsome man and decides to have a child with him also certainly acts intentionally and can foresee some good chances that her child will be more than average handsome. The difference between such decision and the decision to use biological information to select gametes (or embryos) with “advantageous” genes is, at most, a matter of degree, rather than a qualitative gap. (Of course, I’m deliberately leaving aside questions on the moral status of embryos; if that is believed to imply disanalogies with respect to justice, the same questions can be framed in terms ofthe selection of gametes.)

Hence, if we decide that “natural talent” should be understood (in the context of RAwls’ FEO) as “a talent which does not result in a systematic and predictable manner from intentional human acts or from the working of human institutions” we end up denying the existence of natural talents (at least, among characteristics affecting access to offices and careers) and FEO becomes an empty principle.

For this reason, reflection suggests leaving FEO as it is and adding a further clause for dealing with genetic enhancements:

“In all sectors of society there should be rougly equal prospects to improve the inheritable genetic determinants of the “all-purpose-talents” or “natural primary goods” of one’s child.”

This principle, I believe, closely resembles FEO in meaning and function. It does not imply that society ougth to aim at the equalization (or more broadly, some form of patterned distribution) of the inheritable biological bases of talent (e.g. certain human genes), the sort of result that those embracing luck-egalitarian intuitions should embrace. But it is not also wholly indifferent with respect to the way in which social factors – in particular wealth and social standing – affect the distribution of “genes”. And its inclusion in a theory of justice would allow us to object in a principled manner to the distribution of “genes” that would lead to a genetic aristocracy.

In dialogue with John Harris. Part 2.

Pp. 19-20

“I wonder how many readers of this book, like me, use spectacles? All who do are using an enhancement technology.  Now you might say “yes, but that restores normal functioning or repairs or corrects disease, damage, or injury.” So it does.

Those who say this will probably know of the work of Boorse and Daniels, who have each defined health and, hence, illness, in terms of departures from normal functioning or departures from species-typical functioning.

Now consider the use of a telescope or pair of binoculars orr a microscope. These tools are not used to restore normalcy or treat disease or injury. They are done to enhance powers and capacities.

Again I wonder how many of those who have ever used binoculars thought they were crossing a moral divide when they did so? How many people thought (or now think) that there is a moral difference between wearing reading glasses and looking through opera glasses? That one is permissible and the other wicked?”

Commentary:

The reasoning is misleading in that it tacitly assumes that the moral boundary in question  must be one between permissible and impermissible (wicked) actions. But not everybody who thinks that there is a moral difference between restoring normal functioning and the enhancement of normal functions thinks that the moral difference in question consists in one being permissible and the other not so.

Another important moral boundary is the one between what we owe to each other, as a matter of justice, and personal desires (or needs) whose being unfulfilled does not impose an obligation on other people. Some people, perhaps many people, think that enhancing capacities and restoring normal functiong differ as a matter of justice. In this perspective, the rethorical question to ask should have been:

“How many people thought, or now think, that there is a moral difference between government funding of  reading glasses and government funding of opera glasses?”

The answer to this question is “many”. As a matter of fact, many countries – such as Germany – fund reading glasses as part of a comprehensive and largely state subsidized health care program for all German citizens. No state in the world has ever dreamed of funding opera glasses or binoculars.

Hence there is at least a superficial difference between enhancing normal functioning and restoring it, one that many people have reflectively endorsed (as it is reflected in the laws that several communities have adopted).

Whether this difference is only “superficial”, that is to say, one that can be explained by deeper moral principles and distinctions which may produce a justification for funding enhancements, is, of course, a different question.

(A counterexample to what I just wrote is provided by considering reading glasses against presbyopia, a difficulty which, being almost universal among humans over 40, may be regarded to be “part of normal functioning”. For it is not obvious that, if reading glasses are to be funded at all as part of a comprehensive program for health care, reading glasses against prebyopia should be excluded.

This objection raises difficult issues that I have discussed in other posts, such as the one whether the concept of “normalcy” that produces meaningful social obligation should be defined in a way that makes it age-group-relative. This is a serious difficulty for those who, like Boorse and Daniels, thinks so, and moreover think that the concept of health as normal functioning must be defined in this precise way, for reasons that are, broadly speaking, scientifically objective and naturalistic. But perhaps the present objection can be avoided by developing an alternative conception of citienzes’ health as normal functioning.)

new interesting blog

Il nuovo blog del mio amico e collega Alex Grossini

http://lamorale.wordpress.com/

enjoy

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