In this paper we study the role of religiosity in political choices such as redistribution and individual liberties. To a standard model with consumption and effort, we add a third good: civil liberties with a cap established by law. More liberties, like divorce, abortion, gender parity, or gay marriage, may be considered good by the secular and detrimental by the religious individuals. With st...

It is conventionally thought impermissible to force treatment on a patient, even when his life is at stake. Following Kant or Mill, we may defend this convention either by appealing to the inviolability of autonomy, or to the benefits of treating liberty as inviolable, subject only to considerations of harm to others. In both cases, an exception might be made for mental illness. For Kant, auton...

o consider liberty in relation to the Constitution is to enter upon a subject of some ambiguity. Which Constitution are we to consider? The document has undergone dramatic shifts in its coverage and in its meaning over the course of our history. The unamended document ratified in 1787 had little explicit to say about individual liberties. Aside from provisions such as those barring states from ...

Issues arising in connection with genes and nutrition policy include both nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics. Nutrigenomics considers the relationship between specifc nutrients or diet and gene expression and, it is envisaged, will facilitate prevention of diet-related common diseases. Nutrigenetics is concerned with the effects of individual genetic variation (single nucleotide polymorphisms) on ...

This study investigated whether individualism and collectivism (IC) at country, individual, and situational level influence how quickly and accurately people can infer mental states (i.e. theory of mind, or ToM), indexed by accuracy and reaction time in a ToM task. We hypothesized that collectivism (having an interdependent self and valuing group concerns), compared to individualism (having an ...