Dialogue Concerning Natural Appropriation

Two utilitarian defenses, traceable to Bentham and Mill, arecommonly offered for patents. It is contended that patents induce innovation, and thatpatents induce disclosure of innovation. Patents on some or all of the human genomepose particular challenges for these defenses. In the first instance, patents on nucleotidesequences entail the perverse notion of human reproduction qua infringement. In the second place, when such patents are available (as is presently the case), the two defenses involve a counterfactual claim, viz., that if there were no such patents, biotechnological progress would wane. Even if these challenges are met, concerns about respect for humanity generate opposition to property interests in compounds manipulated outside the human body but significantly homologous to compounds found in humans. This stance about things human might appear to commit the fallacy of division. In a dialogue between a Kantian and a utilitarian, arguments for and against property interests in the human genome are presented.     

Distributive Justice in Competitive Access to Intercollegiate Athletic Teams Segregated by Sex

A theory of justice for the basic structure of society may constrain though not directly govern colleges. The principle of "equal opportunity" commonly applied to jobs either does or does not apply to varsity opportunities. If it applies, it interdicts sex discrimination but, one fallacious argument notwithstanding, it states no obligation to expend resources on new teams. If it does not apply, an analogue of Rawls's difference principle may appropriately constrain inequalities between the sexes. In either case the preferences of a majority of the sex affected by any inequality are pivotal in fashioning any tenable distributive policy. Those preferences are neglected by a government policy that assimilates equal opportunity to equality of (i) the ratio of male:female varsity athletes and (ii) the ratio of male:female students. It is argued that such policy rests on affirming the consequent. Its effects include misallocations of resources and overvaluation of athletics. It is argued that what should approximately be equal is competitive access, the ratio of available positions to aspirants, for each sex. Two versions of a principle of equal competitive access are proposed, the recommended one of which pertains to teams whose net consumption of resources is positive.     

The Set Theoretic Ambit Of Arrow's Theorem

Set theoretic formulation of Arrow's theorem, viewedin light of a taxonomy of transitive relations,serves to unmask the theorem's understatedgenerality. Under the impress of the independenceof irrelevant alternatives, the antipode of ceteris paribus reasoning, a purported compilerfunction either breaches some other rationalitypremise or produces the effet Condorcet. Types of cycles, each the seeming handiwork of avirtual voter disdaining transitivity, arerigorously defined. Arrow's theorem erects adilemma between cyclic indecision anddictatorship. Maneuvers responsive theretoare explicable in set theoretic terms. None ofthese gambits rival in simplicity the unassistedescape of strict linear orderings, which, by virtueof the Arrow–Sen reflexivity premise, are notcaptured by the theorem. Yet these are therelations among whose n-tuples the effetCondorcet is most frequent. A generalization andstronger theorem encompasses these and all otherlinear orderings and total tierings. Revisions tothe Arrow–Sen definitions of `choice set' and`rationalization' similarly enable one to generalizeSen's demonstration that some rational choicefunction always exists. Similarly may onegeneralize Debreu's theorems establishing conditionsunder which a binary relation may be represented bya continuous real-valued order homomorphism.