Can prophylactic cholecystectomy be justified?

Is Prophylactic Therapy for Varices Justified? Can the First Variceal Bleed be Predicted?

The North Italian Endoscopic Club for the Study and Treatment of Esophageal Varices. (1988) Prediction of the first variceal hemorrhage in patients with cirrhosis of the liver and esophageal varices. A Prospective Multicenter Study. The New England Journal of Medicine 319,983-989. We conducted a prospective study of 321 patients with cirrhosis of the liver and esophageal varices with no history...

Can claims for 'wrongful life' be justified?

The authors reject Joseph Fletcher's arguments that the choice to procreate is a privilege and that parents may be responsible in certain circumstances for producing genetically defective children. They argue instead that procreation is a conditional right, but nonetheless conclude that parents may be held responsible for the "wrongful life" of genetically damaged offspring based on the legal ...

Can Knowledge Be Justified True Belief?

Knowledge was traditionally held to be justified true belief. This paper examines the implications of maintaining this view if justication is interpreted algorithmically. It is argued that if we move sufficiently far from the small worlds to which Bayesian decision theory properly applies, we can steer between the rock of fallibilism and the whirlpool of skepticism only by explicitly building i...

Active euthanasia: can it be justified?

Can Bayes' Rule Be Justified by Cognitive Rationality Principles

The justification of Bayes' rule by cognitive rationality principles is undertaken by extending the propositional axiom systems usually proposed in two contexts of belief change: revising and updating. Probabilistic belief change axioms are introduced, either by direct transcription of the set-theoretic ones, or in a stronger way nevertheless in the spirit of the underlying propositional princi...