Published

• Nowak, P. G. (2023). Death as the Cessation of an Organism and the Moral Status Alternative. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, jhad018. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhad018
  
  The mainstream concept of death—the biological one—identifies death with the cessation of an organism. In this article, I challenge the mainstream position, showing that there is no single well-established concept of an organism and no universal concept of death in biological terms. Moreover, some of the biological views on death, if applied in the context of bedside decisions, might imply unacceptable consequences. I argue the moral concept of death—one similar to that of Robert Veatch—overcomes such difficulties. The moral view identifies death with the irreversible cessation of a patient’s moral status, that is, a state when she can no longer be harmed or wronged. The death of a patient takes place when she is no longer capable of regaining her consciousness. In this regard, the proposal elaborated herein resembles that of Veatch yet differs from Veatch’s original project since it is universal. In essence, it is applicable in the case of other living beings such as animals and plants, provided that they have some moral status.

• Serpico, D., & Petrolini, V. (2023). Crossing the Threshold: An Epigenetic Alternative to Dimensional Accounts of Mental Disorders. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/725188
  
  Recent trends in psychiatry involve a transition from categorical to dimensional frameworks, in which the boundary between health and pathology is understood as a difference in degree rather than as a difference in kind. A major tenet of dimensional approaches is that no qualitative distinction can be made between health and pathology. As a consequence, these approaches tend to characterize such a threshold as pragmatic or conventional in nature. However, dimensional approaches to psychopathology raise several epistemological and ontological issues. First, we review major sources of evidence usually recruited in support of the dimensional trend (focusing on clinical observation and biological data), and we show that these are connected to different conceptualizations of how dimensional traits extend across health and pathology. Second, we criticize two unquestioned assumptions that stand at the core of the dimensional trend: a) that there is continuity from health to pathology at the symptomatic level; b) that such continuity reflects an underlying continuity in the genetic liability for pathological conditions. Third, we argue against the idea of a conventional threshold by showing that such a view implies a linear relationship between the genotype and the phenotype. Fourth, drawing on epigenetics and developmental biology, we offer a characterization of mental disorders as stable and dynamic constellations of multi-level variables that differ qualitatively from ‘healthy states’. We conclude by showing that our account has several theoretical advantages over both categorical and dimensional approaches. Notably, it provides crucial insights into psychological development over time and individual differences, with major implications in terms of intervention and clinical decision-making.

• Neiders, I., & Dranseika, V. (2023). Is “terminally ill self-killing” suicide? Clinical Ethics, 14777509231164002. https://doi.org/10.1177/14777509231164002 
  
  When a terminally ill patient kills herself, using a drug prescribed by a physician for this purpose, in bioethical literature this would be described as a case of physician-assisted suicide. This would also be a case of suicide according to the standard account of suicide in the philosophical literature. However, in recent years, some authors have argued that terminally ill self-killing in fact should not be considered suicide. In this paper, we don’t try to address the philosophical merits of such arguments. Instead, we ask whether these considerations align with the way non-philosophers think about suicide. We present empirical evidence from four studies that address different concerns raised about terminally ill self-killing being a suicide. We conclude that the raised concerns cannot be supported by the folk understanding of suicide.

• Bystranowski, P., & Hannikainen, I. R. (2023). Justice before Expediency: Robust Intuitive Concern for Rights Protection in Criminalization Decisions. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-023-00674-0
  
  The notion that a false positive (false conviction) is worse than a false negative (false acquittal) is a deep-seated commitment in the theory of criminal law. Its most illustrious formulation, the so-called Blackstone’s ratio, affirms that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”. Are people’s evaluations of criminal statutes consitent with this tenet of the Western legal tradition? To answer this question, we conducted three experiments (total N = 2492) investigating how people reason about a particular class of offenses—proxy crimes—known to vary in their specificity and sensitivity in predicting actual crime. By manipulating the extent to which proxy crimes convict the innocent and acquit those guilty of a target offense, we uncovered evidence that attitudes toward proxy criminalization depend primarily on its propensity toward false positives, with false negatives exerting a substantially weaker effect. This tendency arose across multiple experimental conditions—whether we matched the rates of false positives and false negatives or their frequencies, whether information was presented visually or numerically, and whether decisions were made under time pressure or after a forced delay—and was unrelated to participants’ probability literacy or their professed views on the purpose of criminal punishment. Despite the observed inattentiveness to false negatives, when asked to justify their decisions, participants retrospectively supported their judgments by highlighting the proxy crime’s efficacy (or inefficacy) in combating crime. These results reveal a striking inconsistency: people favor criminal policies that protect the rights of the innocent, but report comparable concern for their expediency in fighting crime.

• Malinowska, J. K., & Żuradzki, T. (2023). Towards the multileveled and processual conceptualisation of racialised individuals in biomedical research. Synthese, 201(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-04004-2
  
  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 hypertension. We finish with a discussion on the potential application of our proposition to institutional guidelines on the use of racial categories in biomedical research.
   
• Bystranowski, P., Dranseika, V., & Żuradzki, T. (2022). The Disconnection That Wasn’t: Philosophy in Modern Bioethics from a Quantitative Perspective. The American Journal of Bioethics, 22(12), 36–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2022.2134490
  
  Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) situate their discussion of philosophy and bioethics in the context of (report- edly) 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 authors’ own words, by the phrase “philosophy’s glory days in bioethics are over.” While in no place of the article did they explicitly endorse the Disconnection Thesis, at least some of the authors had previously endorsed it in print (Savulescu 2015). Such expressions of collective expert wisdom might be a valuable source of information on the discipline’s history, but they should not be accepted uncritically. Given the explosion in the size and scope of bioethical research in recent decades, any scholar’s familiarity with the area is necessarily based on selective reading and might be biased. Hence, in this commentary, we examine what kind of more rigorous evidence could corroborate the Disconnection Thesis. In other words, if the role of philosophy in bioethics has been indeed diminishing, what kind of observable patterns should we expect to see?
• Malinowska, J.K., Żuradzki, T. (2022). Reductionist methodology and the ambiguity of the categories of race and ethnicity in biomedical research: an exploratory study of recent evidence. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-022-10122-y
  
  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 briefly reconstruct some of the biases of reductionism to which geneticists (as well as other researchers referring to genetic methods and explanations) are particularly exposed to, and we analyse the problem in the context of the biologization of ethnoracial categories. Our work constitutes a novel, in-depth contribution to the debate about reporting race and ethnicity in biomedical and health research. First, we reconstruct the theoretical background assumptions about racial ontology which researchers implicitly presume in their studies with the aid of a sample of recent papers published in medical journals about COVID-19. Secondly, we use the typology of the biases of reductionism to the problem of biologization of ethnoracial categories with reference to genetics and genomics.
• Hannikainen, I. R., Tobia, K. P., de Almeida, G. da F. C. F., Struchiner, N., Kneer, M., Bystranowski, P., Dranseika, V., Strohmaier, N., Bensinger, S., Dolinina, K., Janik, B., Lauraitytė, E., Laakasuo, M., Liefgreen, A., Neiders, I., Próchnicki, M., Rosas, A., Sundvall, J., & Żuradzki, T. (2022). Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(44), e2206531119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2206531119
  
  ​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 plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges. 
• Bystranowski, P., Janik, B., & Próchnicki, M. (Red.). (2022). Judicial Decision-Making: Integrating Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives (T. 14). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11744-2
  
  This book shares state-of-the-art insights on judicial decision-making from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. It offers in-depth coverage of the forefront of the field and reviews the most important issues and discussions connected with an empirical approach to judicial decision-making. It also addresses the challenges of judicial psychology to the ideal of rule of law and explores the promise and perils of applying artificial intelligence in law. In closing, it offers empirically-driven guidance on ways to improve the quality of legal reasoning.
• Żuradzki, T. (2022). Rational framing effects and morally valid reasons. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, E247. doi:10.1017/S0140525X22001121
  
  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.
• Maziarz, M., Stencel, A. The failure of drug repurposing for COVID-19 as an effect of excessive hypothesis testing and weak mechanistic evidence. HPLS 44, 47 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00532-9
  
  The current strategy of searching for an effective treatment for COVID-19 relies mainly on repurposing existing therapies developed to target other diseases. Conflicting results have emerged in regard to the efficacy of several tested compounds but later results were negative. The number of conducted and ongoing trials and the urgent need for a treatment pose the risk that false-positive results will be incorrectly interpreted as evidence for treatments’ efficacy and a ground for drug approval. Our purpose is twofold. First, we show that the number of drug-repurposing trials can explain the false-positive results. Second, we assess the evidence for treatments’ efficacy from the perspective of evidential pluralism and argue that considering mechanistic evidence is particularly needed in cases when the evidence from clinical trials is conflicting or of low quality. Our analysis is an application of the program of Evidence Based Medicine Plus (EBM+) to the drug repurposing trials for COVID. Our study shows that if decision-makers applied EBM+, authorizing the use of ineffective treatments would be less likely. We analyze the example of trials assessing the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 and mechanistic evidence in favor of and against its therapeutic power to draw a lesson for decision-makers and drug agencies on how excessive hypothesis testing can lead to spurious findings and how studying negative mechanistic evidence can be helpful in discriminating genuine from spurious results.

• Bystranowski, P., Dranseika, V., Żuradzki, T. (2022). Half a century of bioethics and philosophy of medicine: A topic-modeling study. Bioethics, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13087

  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 intertopic correlations, we group the content-based topics into eight clusters, thus providing a novel, fine-grained intellectual map of bioethics and philosophy of medicine. Moreover, we conduct a number of diachronic analyses, examining how the “prominence” of different topics has changed across time. In this way, we are able to observe the distinct patterns in which bioethics and philosophy of medicine have evolved and changed their focus over the past half a century.

• Wiśniowska K., Żuradzki T., Ciszewski W. (2022), Value choices in European COVID-19 vaccination schedules: how vaccination prioritization differs from other forms of priority setting, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Volume 9, Issue 2. 

  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 two types of priority categories: groups that have increased infection fatality rate (IFR) compared to the average for the general population and groups chosen because their members experience increased risk of being infected (ROI). Our findings show a clear trend: all researched schedules prioritized criteria referring to IFR (being over 65 years old and coexisting health conditions) over the ROI criteria (eg occupation and housing conditions). This is surprising since, in the context of treatment, it is common and justifiable to adopt different allocation principles (eg introducing a saving more life-year approach or prioritizing younger patients). We discuss how utilitarian, prioritarian, and egalitarian principles can be applied to interpret normative differences between the allocation of curative and preventive interventions.

• Żuradzki, T., & Dranseika, V. (2022). Reasons to Genome Edit and Metaphysical Essentialism about Human Identity, The American Journal of Bioethics 22(9): 34-36.

  The standard view in bioethics distinguishes between “person affecting” interventions that may harm or benefit particular individuals (e.g., by genome editing) and “identity affecting” interventions that determine which individual comes into existence (e.g., by genetic selection). Sparrow questions one of the central assumptions of the debates about reproductive technologies in the past several decades. He argues that direct genetic modification of human embryos should be classified not as “person affecting” but as “identity affecting” because any genome editing in the foreseeable future “will almost certainly” involve creating and editing multiple embryos, as well as selecting the “best possible” embryo by preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Sparrow also assumes that the distinction between “person affecting” and “identity affecting” interventions has crucial ethical significance: “the reasons we have to select embryos are weaker than the reasons we have to modify them” (Sparrow 2022). Thus, classifying genome editing as an “identity affecting” intervention, he concludes that there is no justification for laws requiring enhancement, even if one assumes that enhancement is morally obligatory.

  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 approaches. It would also challenge the idea that normative reasons we have in these two types of cases markedly differ in strength.

• Sant’Anna, A., Dranseika, V. (2022). Does Macbeth See a Dagger? An Empirical Argument for the Existence-Neutrality of Seeing. Erkenn.

  ​In a recent paper, Justin D’Ambrosio (2020) has offered an empirical argument in support of a negative solution to the puzzle of Macbeth’s dagger—namely, the question of whether, in the famous scene from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth sees a dagger in front of him. D’Ambrosio’s strategy consists in showing that “seeing” is not an existence-neutral verb; that is, that the way it is used in ordinary language is not neutral with respect to whether its complement exists. In this paper, we offer an empirical argument in favor of an existence-neutral reading of “seeing”. In particular, we argue that existence-neutral readings are readily available to language users. We thus call into question D’Ambrosio’s argument for the claim that Macbeth does not see a dagger. According to our positive solution, Macbeth sees a dagger, even though there is not a dagger in front of him.

• Dranseika, V. (2022). Memory as evidence of personal identity. A study on reincarnation beliefs. in Kevin Tobia (ed.), Experimental Philosophy of Identity and the Self, Bloomsbury Publishing.

  ​In this chapter, I report two studies aimed at understanding how people think about the role of memory claims in establishing facts about personal identity. In particular, would cases like Parfit’s Celtic warrior case be taken by study participants to provide evidence supporting the belief in reincarnation? If yes, would they be taken to provide evidence of personal identity retained through cycles of reincarnation? What exactly in these cases would be taken to constitute such evidence? Reported studies suggest that the extent to which verifiable memory claims are taken to constitute evidence of personal identity in reincarnation depends on study participants’ background beliefs. Furthermore, it seems that when potential past lives memories are considered, the element of verifiable memory claims that calls for an explanation—and that is sometimes explained in terms of reincarnation—is the possession of otherwise-hard-to-obtain knowledge about past events rather than whether the memory claim is presented as based on personally remembering the event.

• Maziarz, M. (2022). Is meta-analysis of RCTs assessing the efficacy of interventions a reliable source of evidence for therapeutic decisions?, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 91: 159-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.11.007.

  Literature-based meta-analysis is a standard technique applied to pool results of individual studies used in medicine and social sciences. It has been criticized for being too malleable to constrain results, averaging incomparable values, lacking a measure of evidence's strength, and problems with a systematic bias of individual studies. We argue against using literature-based meta-analysis of RCTs to assess treatment efficacy and show that therapeutic decisions based on meta-analytic average are not optimal given the full scope of existing evidence. The argument proceeds with discussing examples and analyzing the properties of some standard meta-analytic techniques. First, we demonstrate that meta-analysis can lead to reporting statistically significant results despite the treatment's limited efficacy. Second, we show that meta-analytic confidence intervals are too narrow compared to the variability of treatment outcomes reported by individual studies. Third, we argue that literature-based meta-analysis is not a reliable measurement instrument. Finally, we show that meta-analysis averages out the differences among studies and leads to a loss of information. Despite these problems, literature-based meta-analysis is useful for the assessment of harms. We support two alternative approaches to evidence amalgamation: meta-analysis of individual patient data (IPD) and qualitative review employing mechanistic evidence.

• Elkin, L. (2021). Regret Averse Opinion Aggregation, Ergo 8: 16. https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.1153

  It is often suggested that when opinions differ among individuals in a group, the opinions should be aggregated to form a compromise. This paper compares two approaches to aggregating opinions, linear pooling and what I call opinion agglomeration. In evaluating both strategies, I propose a pragmatic criterion, No Regrets, entailing that an aggregation strategy should prevent groups from buying and selling bets on events at prices regretted by their members. I show that only opinion agglomeration is able to satisfy the demand. I then proceed to give normative and empirical arguments in support of the pragmatic criterion for opinion aggregation, and that ultimately favor opinion agglomeration.

• Dranseika, V., McCarroll, C.J., Michaelian, K. (2021). Are observer memories (accurate) memories? Insights from experimental philosophy. Consciousness and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2021.103240.

  A striking feature of our memories of the personal past is that they involve different visual perspectives: one sometimes recalls past events from one’s original point of view (a field perspective), but one sometimes recalls them from an external point of view (an observer perspective). In philosophy, observer memories are often seen as being less than fully genuine and as being necessarily false or distorted. This paper looks at whether laypeople share the standard philosophical view by applying the methods of experimental philosophy. We report the results of five studies suggesting that, while participants clearly categorize both field and observer memories as memories, they tend to judge that observer memories are slightly less accurate than field memories. Our results suggest, however, that in lay thought, the difference between field and observer memories is not nearly as clear-cut as philosophers have generally taken it to be.

• Earp, B.D., Lewis, J., Dranseika, V. & Hannikainen, I. (2021). Experimental Philosophical Bioethics and  Normative Inference. Theoretical Medicine & Bioethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-021-09546-z

  This paper explores an emerging sub-field of both empirical bioethics and experimental philosophy, which has been called “experimental philosophical bioethics” (bioxphi). As an empirical discipline, bioxphi adopts the methods of experimental moral psychology and cognitive science; it does so to make sense of the eliciting factors and underlying cognitive processes that shape people’s moral judgments, particularly about real-world matters of bioethical concern. Yet, as a normative discipline situated within the broader field of bioethics, it also aims to contribute to substantive ethical questions about what should be done in a given context. What are some of the ways in which this aim has been pursued? In this paper, we employ a case study approach to examine and critically evaluate four strategies from the recent literature by which scholars in bioxphi have leveraged empirical data in the service of normative arguments.

• Elkin, L. (2021). The Precautionary Principle and Expert Disagreement. Erkenn. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-021-00457-y

  The Precautionary Principle is typically construed as a conservative decision rule aimed at preventing harm. But Martin Peterson (JME 33: 5–10, 2007; The ethics of technology: A geometric analysis of five moral principles, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017) has argued that the principle is better understood as an epistemic rule, guiding decision-makers in forming beliefs rather than choosing among possible acts. On the epistemic view, he claims there is a principle concerning expert disagreement underlying precautionary-based reasoning called the ecumenical principle: all expert views should be considered in a precautionary appraisal, not just those that are the most prominent or influential. In articulating the doxastic commitments of decision-makers under this constraint, Peterson precludes any probabilistic rule that might result in combining expert opinions. For combined or consensus probabilities are likely to provide decision-makers with information that is more precise than warranted. Contra Peterson, I argue that upon adopting a broader conception of probability, there is a probabilistic rule, under which expert opinions are combined, that is immune to his criticism and better represents the ecumenical principle.

• Bystranowski, P., Janik, B., Próchnicki, M. et al. (2021). Do Formalist Judges Abide By Their Abstract Principles? A Two-Country Study in Adjudication. Int J Semiot Law. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09846-6

  Recent literature in experimental philosophy has postulated the existence of the abstract/concrete paradox (ACP). One recent study supports the thesis that this effect influences judicial decision-making, including decision-making by professional judges, in areas such as interpretation of constitutional principles and application of clear-cut rules. Here, following the existing literature in legal theory, we argue that the susceptibility to such an effect might depend on whether decision-makers operate in a legal system characterized by the formalist or particularist approach to legal interpretation, with formalist systems being less susceptible to the effect.

• Maziarz, M. (2021). Resolving empirical controversies with mechanistic evidence. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03232-2

  The results of econometric modeling are fragile in the sense that minor changes in estimation techniques or sample can lead to statistical models that support inconsistent causal hypotheses. The fragility of econometric results undermines making conclusive inferences from the empirical literature. I argue that the program of evidential pluralism, which originated in the context of medicine and encapsulates to the normative reading of the Russo-Williamson Thesis that causal claims need the support of both difference-making and mechanistic evidence, offers a ground for resolving empirical disagreements.

• Bystranowski, P., Janik, B., Próchnicki, M., & Skórska, P. (2021). Anchoring effect in legal decision-making: A meta-analysis. Law and Human Behavior, 45 (1): 1-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000438

  We conducted a meta-analysis to examine whether numeric decision-making in law is susceptible to the effect of (possibly arbitrary) values present in the decision contexts (anchoring effect) and to investigate which factors might moderate this effect.

• Dranseika, V. (2021). Authenticity, Self-Defining Memories, and the Direction of Change. AJOB Neuroscience, 12 (1): 48-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2020.1866112

  An open peer commentary to Zawadzki and Adamczyk's target article: "Personality and Authenticity in Light of the Memory-Modifying Potential of Optogenetics".

• Maziarz, M. & Zach, M. (2021). Assessing the quality of evidence from epidemiological agent-based models for the COVID-19 pandemic. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 43 (10). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00357-4

  Agent-based models (ABMs) are one of the main sources of evidence for decisions regarding mitigation and suppression measures against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. These models have not been previously included in the hierarchy of evidence put forth by the evidence-based medicine movement, which prioritizes those research methods that deliver results less susceptible to the risk of confounding. We point out the need to assess the quality of evidence delivered by ABMs and ask the question of what is the risk that assumptions entertained in ABMs do not include all the key factors and make model predictions susceptible to the problem of confounding.

• Żuradzki, T. (2021). Against the Precautionary Approach to Moral Status: The Case of Surrogates for Living Human Brains. American Journal of Bioethics, 20 (1): 53-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1845868

  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 problem for animal welfare scientists (Birch 2018). I elucidate upon the possible meanings of the phrase “a too good human brain surrogate” used by Henry T. Greely (2021), and I demonstrate that the evaluation of the practical and regulatory implications of the “goodness” of such surrogates created for research purposes should be sensitive to the possible consequences of two types of errors: the under-attribution and over-attribution of moral status to such beings. Many authors writing about this topic (including Greely 2021, but see also, e.g., Koplin and Savulescu 2019) concentrate only on the first type of error, neglecting the negative consequences of the second type, i.e., over-attribution.

• Żuradzki, T. & Wiśniowska, K. (2020). A data-driven argument in bioethics: why theologically grounded concepts may not provide the necessary intellectual resources to discuss inequality and injustice in healthcare. American Journal of Bioethics, 12 (20): 25-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1832617

  In this paper, we use an innovative, empirical, and–as yet–rarely applied method in bioethics, namely corpus analysis. By demonstrating the ambiguity of the concept of dignity discernible when analyzing its use in normative contexts, our work is a novel contribution to the debates among the historians of ideas about conceptual identity and conceptual drift.

• Wiśniowska, K. (2020). Etyczne aspekty „obrzezania” [Ethical aspects of medically unnecessary child genital cutting]. Analiza i Egzystencja, 51: 45-64. https://doi.org/10.18276/aie.2020.51-03

  Female genital mutilation includes procedures which remove or cause injury to some or all women’s external genital organs. There are a lot of medical risks involved - nevertheless, in some societies it is mainstream practice, carried out mostly on girls younger then fifteen years of age. In this paper, it is considered if it would be acceptable to make compromise in the case of female genital mutilation in the form of so-called Seattle compromise.

• Wroński, L. (2020). Objective consequentialism and the plurality of chances. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02851-5

  I claim that objective consequentialism (OC) faces a problem stemming from the existence in some situations of a plurality of chances relevant to the outcomes of an agent’s acts. I suggest that this phenomenon bears structural resemblance to the well-known Reference Class problem. I outline a few ways in which one could attempt to deal with the issue, suggesting that it is the higher-level chance that should be employed by OC.

• Maziarz, M. & Zach, M. (2020). Agent-based modeling for SARS-CoV-2 epidemic prediction and intervention assessment. A methodological appraisal. J Eval Clin Pract, 26: 1352–1360. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13459

  Our purpose is to assess epidemiological agent‐based models—or ABMs—of the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic methodologically. The rapid spread of the outbreak requires fast‐paced decision‐making regarding mitigation measures.

• Malinowska, J.K. & Żuradzki, T. (2020). Non-Epistemological Values in Collaborative Research in Neuroscience: The Case of Alleged Differences between Human Populations. AJOB Neuroscience, 11 (3): 203-206. https://doi.org/10.1080/21507740.2020.1778126

  What constitutes bias?; how biases may be embedded in the selection of research programs?; is it possible to conduct completely unbiased research? Joanna K. Malinowska and Tomasz Żuradzki try to notice possible answers to these questions in their commentary "Non-Epistemological Values in Collaborative Research in Neuroscience: The Case of Alleged Differences Between Human Populations".

• Żuradzki, T. (2020). The Fifth Face of Fair Subject Selection: Population Grouping. American Journal of Bioethics, 20 (2): 41-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2019.1702737

  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. In my commentary article, written from the philosophical perspective, I notice a number of interrelated problems which I believe have not been discussed thoroughly in the target article: (1) the precise way in which health care priority setting should influence the content of health research priority setting and fair inclusion principles; (2) the distinction between group and individual benefits and burdens from clinical research; (3) the reference class problem in medical research.

• Paulo, N. & Pölzler, T. (2020). X-Phi and Impartiality Thought Experiments: Investigating the Veil of Ignorance. Diametros, 17 (64): 72-89. https://doi.org/10.33392/diam.1499

  This paper discusses “impartiality thought experiments”, i.e., thought experiments that attempt to generate intuitions which are unaffected by personal characteristics such as age, gender or race. We focus on the most prominent impartiality thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance (VOI), and show that both in its original Rawlsian version and in a more generic version, empirical investigations can be normatively relevant in two ways: First, on the assumption that the VOI is effective and robust, if subjects dominantly favor a certain normative judgment behind the VOI this provides evidence in favor of that judgment; if, on the other hand, they do not dominantly favor a judgment this reduces our justification for it. Second, empirical investigations can also contribute to assessing the effectiveness and robustness of the VOI in the first place, thereby supporting or undermining its applications across the board.

• McFarlane, S. & Cipolletti Perez, H. (2020). Some Challenges for Research on Emotion and Moral Judgment: The Moral Foreign-Language Effect as a Case Study. Diametros, 17 (64): 56-71. https://doi.org/10.33392/diam.1476

  In this article, we discuss a number of challenges with the empirical study of emotion and its relation to moral judgment. We examine a case study involving the moral foreign-language effect, according to which people show an increased utilitarian response tendency in moral dilemmas when using their non-native language. One important proposed explanation for this effect is that using one’s non-native language reduces emotional arousal, and that reduced emotion is responsible for this tendency. We offer reasons to think that there is insufficient evidence for accepting this explanation at present. We argue that there are three themes that constrain our current ability to draw firm empirical conclusions: 1) the frequent use of proxies or partial measures for emotions, 2) the lack of a predictive and generalizable theory of emotion and specific emotion-types, and 3) the obscurity of a baseline level of neutrality with respect to participant emotion. These lessons apply not only to research on the moral foreign-language effect, but to empirical research in moral psychology more generally.

• Bush, L. S. & Moss, D. (2020). Misunderstanding Metaethics: Difficulties Measuring Folk Objectivism and Relativism. Diametros, 17 (64): 6-21. https://doi.org/10.33392/diam.1495

  In this article, we discuss a number of challenges with the empirical study of emotion and its relation to moral judgment. We examine a case study involving the moral foreign-language effect, according to which people show an increased utilitarian response tendency in moral dilemmas when using their non-native language. One important proposed explanation for this effect is that using one’s non-native language reduces emotional arousal, and that reduced emotion is responsible for this tendency. We offer reasons to think that there is insufficient evidence for accepting this explanation at present. We argue that there are three themes that constrain our current ability to draw firm empirical conclusions: 1) the frequent use of proxies or partial measures for emotions, 2) the lack of a predictive and generalizable theory of emotion and specific emotion-types, and 3) the obscurity of a baseline level of neutrality with respect to participant emotion. These lessons apply not only to research on the moral foreign-language effect, but to empirical research in moral psychology more generally.

• Maziarz, M. & Mróz, R. (2020). A rejoinder to Henschen: the issue of VAR and DSGE models. Journal of Economic Methodology, 27 (3): 266-268. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2020.1731102

  In his recent paper in the Journal of Economic Methodology, Tobias Henschen puts forth a manipulationist definition of macroeconomic causality that strives for adequacy. As the notion of ‘adequacy’ remains underdeveloped in that paper, in this study we offer a discussion of what it means for a definition of causality to be adequate to macroeconomics. One of the meanings of adequacy is that the definition of causality describes the types of relations for which macroeconomic causal models stand for. On this understanding of adequacy, we take issue with Henschen’s claim. We argue that his manipulationist definition is only applicable to a sample of causal models used by macroeconomists. There are other sets of macroeconomic causal models to which probabilistic and mechanistic definitions seem more adequate. We show relevant examples to support this claim and conclude that a moderate causal pluralism is an adequate stance with respect to macroeconomic causal models.

• Żuradzki, T. & Nowak, P.G. (2019). Deep Uncertainties in the Criteria for Physician Aid-in-Dying for Psychiatric Patients. American Journal of Bioethics, 10 (19): 54-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2019.1654028

  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 comparing the worseness of two possible scenarios: letting someone die (who could have been helped) with not letting someone die (whose suffering could only be alleviated by death). In our commentary, we argue that creating such standards is more difficult than the  authors assume because of the many types of deep uncertainties we have to deal with: (1) diagnostic, (2) motivational, and (3) existential.

In preparation

• Dranseika, V. Two Ships of Theseus.

• David Rose and his colleagues (2020) argue on the basis of a large cross-cultural study that the story of the Ship of Theseus is a genuine puzzle in a sense that people who consider it feel inclined to assert two prima facie inconsistent propositions (‘Ambivalence’). In response, Marta Campdelacreu and her colleagues (Forthcoming) argue that the data reported by Rose et al. fail to support Ambivalence. Namely, the data show that there is sharp interpersonal disagreement among different readers of the Ship of Theseus story, but they fail to demonstrate intrapersonal conflict or indecision. Should intrapersonal Ambivalence be demonstrated, this, according to Campdelacreu et al., would be a good indicator of the presence of a puzzle. Here, I provide empirical evidence for intrapersonal Ambivalence about the story of the Ship of Theseus.

• Hannikainen, I., Tobia, K., Almeida, G., Struchiner, N., Kneer, M., Bystranowski, P., ... & Żuradzki, T. Coordination Favors Legal Textualism by Suppressing Moral Valuation.

  A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a general tendency to rely on a rule’s text over its purpose when deciding which acts violate the rule. This tendency’s strength varied markedly across (k = 13) field sites, owing to cultural differences in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Next, we observed that legal experts were more strongly inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether, and they consequently demonstrated stronger textualist tendencies than did laypeople. Finally, we examined a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism in a two-player coordination game: Incentives to coordinate without communicating reinforced participants’ reliance on rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total N = 5109) help clarify the origins and allure of legal textualism. While diverse legal actors may have varied personal assessments of rules’ moral purposes, rules’ literal meanings serve as clear focal points—easily identifiable points of agreement that enable coordination among diverse agents and judges.

• Żuradzki, T. Regulating scientific research under deep uncertainty: the case of ontologically ambiguous entities

  Human embryos in the early stages of development are ontologically ambiguous entities. The same concerns e.g. induced pluripotent stem cells reprogrammed from human somatic cells, embryo-like products of parthenogenesis, human-nonhuman chimeras, human organoids. This ontological ambiguity (an example of deep uncertainty) which has been discussed extensively by philosophers and bioethicists in recent years is an underlying reason for the uncertainty about the moral and legal status of these beings. In my presentation – a part of a larger project aimed at analyzing decision theory as a model for reasoning in ethics – I want to discuss whether this uncertainty about status cast doubt on the arguments claiming strong or even full protection of these beings. Or is it the other way around: does it give a reason for acting in a cautious way and treating these entities as if they had very high status (a higher-order precautionary principle). In recent years there have been a number of attempts to understand and to find the relevant criteria for making decisions under deep uncertainty, but this topic is still unexplored in the case of ontologically ambiguous entities. Some scholars have proposed the decision theoretic approach modeled on the cases of factual risk according to which we ought (although the very nature of this ought may be contested) to represent any higher-order uncertainties in terms of those first-order (e.g. that we ought to evaluate the subjective probabilities of different doctrines about ontologically ambiguous entities and combine them with the disvalues attached by these doctrines to the creation/destruction of these entities and/or social benefits of this kind of research). I will show that this approach faces serious objections (e.g. the problem of inter-theoretical comparisons of values) and the decision theoretic approach should be understood in this case as a metaphor (not a model).

• Żuradzki, T. Reporting incidental findings under uncertainty

  When conducting biomedical research (e.g. genomic), researchers may obtain information that is beyond the aims of the study but may be relevant to the participants. An emerging consensus says that reporting incidental findings to participants should be based on the potential for medical benefit. Schaefer & Savulescu (2018) have recently criticized this “best-medical-interests” standard as being too narrow. They have argued that research subjects have a right to know about any comprehensible piece of information about them which is generated by the research which they are participating in, even if it is of no direct medical benefit to them. In my paper I will criticize their three main arguments based on the notions of autonomy, interests and privacy. I will show that they use a very narrow concept of autonomy as the ability to make informed decisions; they do not take into account the psychology of genetic risk perception; and they rely on an overly individualistic approach to research ethics.

• Żuradzki, T. The conceptualization of vaccination refusals: between science denial and violation of rational choice

  Vaccination programmes have been acknowledged as the greatest public health achievement of the last decades. Therefore, it may be surprising that growing number of people are opting not to vaccinate their children (Omer 2012).[1] On the one hand, vaccination refusals seem to be clear examples of science denial that may result, among others reasons, from exposure to scientific fraud (an infamous report linking the measles vaccine to autism, later retracted). On the other hand, some countries (e.g. the US and Australia) offer non-medical exemptions from mandatory vaccination. It is surprising, because these kinds of exceptions are usually limited to value disagreements, but are not accepted in cases of science denial (e.g. objections to teaching evolution in schools). Moreover, reputable journals in medicine, bioethics or social science publish papers defending parental “conscientious objection” to mandatory vaccination programmes (Salmon 2006; Navin, Largent 2017). In my presentation I show there are no good reasons to assume that anyone should be allowed to refuse “to vaccinate their dependants on conscientious grounds” (Clarke et al. 2017).
  First, I want to analyze a suitable ethical framework for mandatory vaccination of children or specific populations (e.g. health care personnel): public health ethics (that implies a consequentialist approach) versus traditional bioethics (that concentrates on autonomous consent and individual risk-benefit ratio).
  Second, I want to discuss vaccination refusals in the context of philosophical (or legal) theories of responsibility of those who opt out for harms to others, including: i) collective action problem (e.g. few persons being unvaccinated, where herd immunity is achieved, are very unlikely to cause harm); ii) responsibility for imposing mere risks of harm to others (Jamrozik et al. 2016).
  Third, I want to analyze explanations of vaccination refusal (see systematic reviews: Mills et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2014). i) Free-riding without rejecting scientific consensus. Some individuals may be pro vaccination in general, but prefer to keep children unvaccinated as long as enough others are vaccinated and risks have largely been eliminated. I will show that even if someone agrees that free-riding is not always objectionable (Dare 1998), it would be hard to establish the content of beliefs about vaccination refusal (cf. Jamrozik 2017). ii) Religious reasons. Despite of the fact that no major organized religion prohibits vaccination (Grabenstein 2013), some Catholics have questioned some vaccines as “morally illicit” (Carson, Flood 2017), because they were developed in cell cultures derived from tissue originally taken from an aborted fetus (WI-38; MRC-5). The Catholic teaching permits parents to use a vaccine despite its “illicit origin” (CDF 2008), although every act of vaccination is “a form of very remote mediate material cooperation” (PAL 2006) with the evil. Both documents underline that parents “should take recourse… to the use of conscientious objection with regard to the use of vaccines produced by means of cell lines of aborted human fetal origin” (PAL 2006). But in this context “conscientious objection” does not mean vaccination refusal, but only a symbolic act (e.g. signing a petition). iii) A mistrust concerning the necessity, safety, and efficacy of vaccines. Some people may disagree about the authority of science, and same individuals reject only the orthodox account of the risks and benefits of immunization. But these views are clearly related to the different biases that make pro-vaccination beliefs more counter-intuitive, and anti-vaccination beliefs – more intuitive, especially once vaccinations have made some diseases rare (Miton, Mercier 2015). For example: omission bias (Wroe at al. 2005); in-group favoritism (Kahan et al. 2010); identified victim effect (Hare 2012).

Publications affiliated at the Institute of Philosophy

• Żuradzki, T. (2020). The Normative Significance of Empirical Moral Psychology. Diametros, 17 (64): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.33392/diam.1626

• Żuradzki, T. (2020). Decyzje w sytuacjach niepewności normatywnej [Decisions in situations of normative uncertainty]. Przegląd Filozoficzny, 29 (2): 53-72. doi.org/10.24425/pfns.2020.133137

• Maziarz, M. & Mróz, R. (2020). Response to Henschen: Causal pluralism in economics. Journal of Economic Methodology, 27 (2): 164-178. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2019.1675897

• Bystranowski, P. (2020). References to Kuhnian philosophy of science in the law and economics literature, [in:] Law and economics as interdisciplinary exchange: philosophical, methodological and historical perspectives, Routledge.

• Żuradzki, T. (2019). The normative significance of identifiability. Ethics and Information Technology, 21 (4): 295–305. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9487-z

• Maziarz, M. (2019). Methodological pluralism in economics : the "why" and "how" of causal inferences. Filozofia Nauki, 28 (4): 43-59. DOI: 10.14394/filnau.2019.0025

• Żuradzki, T. & Nowak, P.G. (2019). Withdrawal Aversion as a Useful Heuristic for Critical Care Decisions. American Journal of Bioethics, 19 (3): 36-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1563656

• Nowak, P.G. (2018). Pobieranie narządów po zatrzymaniu krążenia. O nadrzędności neurologicznego kryterium śmierci nad krążeniowym – Kwestie regulacyjne [Donation after circulatory determination of death. About the precedence of neurological criterion of death over circulatory criterion – Regulatory issues]. Analiza i Egzystencja, 42: 35-53. DOI: 10.18276/aie.2018.42-02

• Nowak, P.G. (2018). Pobieranie narządów po zatrzymaniu krążenia. O nadrzędności neurologicznego kryterium śmierci nad krążeniowym – Kwestie filozoficzne [Donation after circulatory determination of death. About the precedence of neurological criterion of death over circulatory criterion – Philosophical issues]. Analiza i Egzystencja, 42: 55-71. DOI: 10.18276/aie.2018.42-03

• Nowak, P.G. (2018). Brain death as irreversible loss of a human’s moral status. Ethics and Bioethics (in Central Europe), 8 (3-4): 167-178. DOI:10.2478/ebce-2018-0013

• Ciszewski, W. & Żuradzki, T. (2018). Conscientious refusal of abortion in life-threatening emergency ​circumstances and contested judgments of conscience. American Journal of Bioethics, 18 (7): 62-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1478033

• Galewicz, W. (2017). Czy wartość życia wzrasta wobec bliskiej śmierci? [Does the value of life increase in the face of imminent death?]. Roczniki Filozoficzne, 65 (4): 5-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.18290/rf.2017.65.4-1

• Malinowska, J.K. & Żuradzki, T. (2017). The practical implications of the new metaphysics of race for a post-racial medicine: biomedical research methodology, institutional requirements, patient-physician relations. American Journal of Bioethics, 17 (9): 61-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2017.1353181

• Żuradzki, T. (2017). The saving/creating distinction and the axiology of the cost-benefit approach to neonatal medicine. American Journal of Bioethics, 17 (8): 29-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2017.1340998

• Galewicz, W. (2017). O normatywistycznej koncepcji choroby [On the normativist concept of disease]. Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki, 46 (1): 151-166

• Dryla, O. (2017). O pojęciu choroby genetycznej [On the concept of genetic disease]. Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki, 46 (1): 167-182

• Nowak, P.G. (2017). Pluralistyczna Teoria Alokacji Narządów [Pluralistic Theory of Organ Allocation]. Diametros, 51: 65–89. DOI: 10.13153/diam.51.2017.1032

• Żuradzki, T. (2017). Normatywne implikacje preferencji wobec osób zidentyfikowanych [The Normative Implications of the Preference for Identified People]. Diametros, 51: 113-36. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.51.2017.1034

• Galewicz, W. (2016). Dobro dla kogoś i dobro dla świata. Przegląd Filozoficzny – Nowa Seria, 97 (1): 33-44

• Żuradzki, T. & Marchewka, K. (2016). Organ donor registration policies and the wrongness of forcing people to think of their own death. American Journal of Bioethics, 16 (11): 35-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2016.1222016

• Nowak, P.G. (2016). Umiarkowanie liberalna koncepcja śmierci jako uzasadnienie dla neurologicznch kryteriów śmierci. Przegląd Filozoficzny – Nowa Seria, 98 (2): 199-212

• Żuradzki, T. (2016). Uzasadnienie sprzeciwu sumienia: lekarze, poborowi i żołnierze [Conscientious Objection and the Requirement of Justification: Physicians, Conscripts and Soldiers]. Diametros, 47: 98-128. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.47.2016.871

• Żuradzki, T. (2015). The preference toward identified victims and rescue duties. American Journal of Bioethics, 15 (2): 25-27. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2014.990168

• Nowak, P.G. (2015). Pobieranie narządów od zmarłych. Ocena porównawcza polskiej regulacji braku sprzeciwu oraz Systemu Aktywnej Rejestracji Dawców. Prawo i Medycyna, 60 (3): 140-144.

• Żuradzki, T. (2014). Moral uncertainty in bioethical argumentation: the new understanding of the ‘pro-life’ view on early human embryos. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 35 (6): 441-457. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11017-014-9309-1

• Żuradzki, T. (2014). Preimplantation genetic diagnosis and rational choice under risk or uncertainty. Journal of Medical Ethics, 40 (11): 774-778. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2013-101470

• Żuradzki, T. (2014). A situation of ethical limbo and preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Journal of Medical Ethics, 40 (11): 780-781. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2014-102278

• Żuradzki, T. (2014). Nowa liberalna eugenika: krytyczny przegląd argumentów przeciwko biomedycznemu poprawianiu ludzkiej kondycji fizycznej lub umysłowej [The New Liberal Eugenics: a Critical Review of Arguments against Biomedical Enhancement of Human Physical or Mental Capabilities]. Diametros, 42: 204–226. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.42.2014.688

• Galewicz, W. (2014). Zdrowie jako prawo człowieka [Health as a Human Right]. Diametros, 42: 57-82. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.42.2014.682

• Nowak, P.G. (2014). Problemy etyczne transplantologii. Perspektywa niedoboru narządów do przeszczepu [Ethical Issues in Transplantation. Perspective of Organ Shortage]. Diametros, 42: 150-177. https://doi.org/10.13153/diam.42.2014.686

• Żuradzki, T. (2013). Ślepy traf a preimplantacyjna diagnostyka genetyczna. Przegląd Filozoficzny – Nowa Seria, 85 (1): 31-46

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2019). Ochrona zdrowia psychicznego. Antologia bioetyki. Tom 6. Universitas, Kraków

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2018). Prawda, poufność, autonomia – problemy informacji w etyce medycznej. Antologia bioetyki. Tom 5 [Truth, Confidentiality, Autonomy: Problems of Information in the Medical Ethics. An Anthology of Bioethics. Volume 5]. Universitas, Kraków

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2015). Sprawiedliwość w medycynie. Antologia bioetyki. Tom 4 [Justice in healthcare. An Anthology of Bioethics. Volume 4], część 1: Wokół prawa do opieki zdrowotnej, część 2: Dystrybucja zasobów w opiece zdrowotnej. Universitas, Kraków

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2011). Badania z udziałem ludzi. Antologia bioetyki. Tom 3 [Research on people. An Anthology of Bioethics. Volume 3]. Universitas, Kraków

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2010). Początki ludzkiego życia. Antologia bioetyki. Tom 2 [Beginning of human life. An Anthology of Bioethics. Volume 2]. Universitas, Kraków

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2009). Wokół śmierci i umierania. Antologia bioetyki. Tom 1 [On death and dying. An Anthology of Bioethics. Volume 1]. Universitas, Kraków

• Galewicz, W. (ed.) (2010). Moralność i profesjonalizm. Spór o pozycję etyk zawodowych [Morality and professionalism. The dispute over the position of professional ethics].  Universitas, Kraków

• Żuradzki, T. & Kuniński, T. (ed.) (2009). Etyka wojny. Antologia [The ethics of war. Anthology]. Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa