I argue that women's health is unnecessarily endangered because of low standards of risk assessment in areas of cosmetic and reproductive technology, and that we need to change litigation practices such that women are no longer at a disadvantage. The current structure of tort law means that companies committing medical torts are rewarded for their negligence, since it renders women incapable of proving it. I argue that we should ease the burden of proof in medical torts by weakening the causation requirement, thus allowing the focus to be less on causation and more on the company's irresponsibility regarding adequate pre-market testing. In recent years, political theorists have been rethinking democracy given new appreciations of the diverse character of national populations. The talk will challenge the view that conceptual knowledge is a priori.
Empirical concepts seem to be prime counter-instances to the claim that it is.
The alternative lines that a priorists can take will be discussed and criticised. The talk should be of special interest to philosophers, psychologists, linguists, mathematicians, cognitive scientists, and generally anyone concerned with the nature of concepts, the relation between mind and world, or the nature and kinds of knowledge. Suppose there are rights which protect Jane from certain actions of others. This paper takes up these questions in the course of examining the structure of moderate deontological moral theories in which the consideration of consequences plays a role in determining the right action. In particular the paper asks whether there is a gap between the threshold point at which a right can justifiably be infringed and the threshold point for individual obligation.