A lesson from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is that it is possible for people to change their beliefs and attitudes in ways that enhance mood. This chapter discusses mainly how the ideas from positive psychology combined with the therapeutic methods developed in CBT might provide ways of helping individuals to enhance their mood and increase happiness. The best single perspective from which to gain an understanding of positive psychology is that of evolutionary psychology, even though it is underdeveloped and contentious. (...) Evolutionary psychology bridges the gap between individual history and the general features of the human condition that helps to explain both our capacity for happiness and some of the barriers to achieving it. The modern general evolutionary view of emotions is that they help animals in regulating their effort: how they behave at any one time and how they apportion their time and energy between different types of behavior. (shrink)

Abstract:Human and animal research both operate within established standards. In the United States, criticism of the human research environment and recorded abuses of human research subjects served as the impetus for the establishment of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, and the resulting Belmont Report. The Belmont Report established key ethical principles to which human research should adhere: respect for autonomy, obligations to beneficence and justice, and special protections for vulnerable individuals and (...) populations. While current guidelines appropriately aim to protect the individual interests of human participants in research, no similar, comprehensive, and principled effort has addressed the use of (nonhuman) animals in research. Although published policies regarding animal research provide relevant regulatory guidance, the lack of a fundamental effort to explore the ethical issues and principles that should guide decisions about the potential use of animals in research has led to unclear and disparate policies. Here, we explore how the ethical principles outlined in the Belmont Report could be applied consistently to animals. We describe how concepts such as respect for autonomy and obligations to beneficence and justice could be applied to animals, as well as how animals are entitled to special protections as a result of their vulnerability. (shrink)

Kerstein and Bognar (2010) and Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel (2009) defend specific principles for the allocation of health care resources, but their choice of principles is influenced by the exa...

Important advances in biomedical and behavioral research ethics have occurred over the past few decades, many of them centered on identifying and eliminating significant harms to human subjects of research. Comprehensive attention has not been paid to the totality of harms experienced by animal subjects, although scientific and moral progress require explicit appraisal of these harms. Science is a public good and the prioritizing within, conduct of, generation of, and application of research must soundly address questions about which research is (...) morally defensible and valuable enough to support through funding, publication, tenure, and promotion. Likewise, educational pathways of re-imagined science are critical. (shrink)

This paper aims to resolve an unremarked-upon tension between Anne Conway’s commitment to the moral responsibility of created beings, or creatures, and her commitment to emanative, constant creation. Emanation causation has an atemporal aspect according to which God’s act of will coexists with its effect. There is no before or after, or past or future in God’s causal contribution. Additionally, Conway’s constant creation picture has it that all times are determined via divine emanation. Creaturely agency, by contrast, is fundamentally temporal, (...) occurring successively over time. It is unclear how creatures can count as emanative causes, which coexists with its effect, given that their agency is limited by time, proceeding from before to after, or past to future. Conway’s account of divine justice in the progress of time, however, requires that creatures are causally responsible. That is, moral responsibility requires causal responsibility. I propose that Conway’s distinction between vital motion and local motion enables a resolution of the tension. Vital motion contributes an atemporal aspect to creaturely agency so that creatures can count as secondary emanative causes. (shrink)

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is devoted to the topic of human happiness. Yet, although Aristotle's conception of happiness is central to his whole philosophical project, there is much controversy surrounding it. Hope May offers a new interpretation of Aristotle's account of happiness - one which incorporates Aristotle's views about the biological development of human beings. May argues that the relationship amongst the moral virtues, the intellectual virtues, and happiness, is best understood through the lens of developmentalism. On this view, happiness (...) emerges from the cultivation of a number of virtues that are developmentally related. May goes on to show how contemporary scholarship in psychology, ethical theory and legal philosophy signals a return to Aristotelian ethics. Specifically, May shows how a theory of motivation known as Self-Determination Theory and recent research on goal attainment have deep affinities to Aristotle's ethical theory. May argues that this recent work can ground a contemporary virtue theory that acknowledges the centrality of autonomy in a way that captures the fundamental tenets of Aristotle's ethics. (shrink)

The risks of harm to nonhuman primates, and the absence of benefits for them, are critically important to decisions about nonhuman primate research. Current guidelines for review and practice tend to be permissive for nonhuman primate research as long as minimal welfare requirements are fulfilled and human medical advances are anticipated. This situation is substantially different from human research, in which risks of harms to the individual subject are typically reduced to the extent feasible. A risk threshold is needed for (...) the justification of research on nonhuman primates, comparable to the way risk thresholds are set for vulnerable human subjects who cannot provide informed consent. Much of the laboratory research conducted today has inadequate standards, leading to common physical, psychological, and social harms. (shrink)

Health care systems across the world are unable to afford the best treatment for all patients in all situations. Choices have to be made. One key ethical issue that arises for health authorities is whether the principle of the “rule of rescue” should be adopted or rejected. According to this principle more funding should be available in order to save lives of identifiable, compared with unidentifiable, individuals. Six reasons for giving such priority to identifiable individuals are considered. All are rejected. (...) It is concluded that the principle of the rule of rescue should not be used in determining the allocation of health resources. (shrink)

I attempt first to disentangle three aspects of Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. There is the central distinction between principles of duty contrary to that which is contradictory in conception/consistent in conception but contradictory in will. There is also a distinction between essential and non-essential duties: those which cannot, or occasionally can, be passed over consistent with the requirements of morality. Finally, there is a distinction between duties that exhibit a scalar aspect – degrees of goodness or virtue (...) – and duties that do not. My aim is to show how these distinct considerations can be reconciled as aspects of a single distinction, and I conclude that the remarkable complexity of Kant’s perfect/imperfect distinction is actually a strength, rather than a weakness. (shrink)

It feels like there’s two of you inside—like there’s another half of you, which is my anorexia, and then there’s the real K [own name], the real me, the logic part of me, and it’s a constant battle between the two. The anorexia almost does become part of you, and so in order to get it out of you I think you do have to kind of hurt you in the process. I think it’s almost inevitable. We came to the (...) concept of authenticity belatedly, one might say. We had been talking to people who had a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa about their experiences of living with their condition, and though we had not raised issues of authenticity or identity ourselves, they often did. They struggled with questions of .. (shrink)

There is a long history of medical research that involves intentionally infecting healthy people in order to study diseases and their treatments. Such research—what might be called “human challenge studies”—are an important strand of much current research—for example, in the development of vaccinations. The many international and national guidelines about the proper conduct of medical research do not specifically address human challenge studies. In this paper we review the guidelines on the risk of harm that healthy volunteers may be exposed (...) to in the course of medical research. We examine the ethical arguments that are implicit or explicit in these guidelines. We then ask whether there is reason for limiting such studies on grounds independent of risk of harm. We conclude that the major ethical concern with challenge studies is that of risk of harm and that the fact that a study is a challenge study is not a wrong in itself. (shrink)

Issues in medical ethics are rarely out of the media and it is an area of ethics that has particular interest for the general public as well as the medical practitioner. This short and accessible introduction provides an invaluable tool with which to think about the ethical values that lie at the heart of medicine. Tony Hope deals with thorny moral questions, such as euthanasia and the morality of killing, and also explores political questions such as: how should health (...) care resources be distributed fairly? (shrink)

This article argues that hope is of value in clinical ethics and that it can be important for clinicians to be sensitive to both the risks of false hope and the importance of retaining hope. However, this sensitivity requires an understanding of the complexity of hope and how it bears on different aspects of a well-functioning doctor-patient relationship. We discuss hopefulness and distinguish it from three different kinds of hope, or ‘hopes for’, and then relate (...) these distinctions back to differing accounts of autonomy. This analysis matters because it shows how an overly narrow view of the ethical obligations of a clinician to their patient, and autonomy, might lead to scenarios where patients regret the choices they make. (shrink)

I address the usefulness of thinking about a human right to subsistence within conceptions of human rights grounded in ordinary moral reasoning. I argue that that natural rights should be understood as rights in rem, with their dynamism constrained by the requirements of justification and their scope constrained by the distinction between perfect and imperfect duty. I then suggest that many of the most pressing demands which the moral significance of subsistence needs create are plausibly imperfect duties, and so cannot (...) correlate to a natural right to subsistence. This restricts the helpfulness of a human right to subsistence in our reasoning about what we owe to others. (shrink)

The intent of this book focuses on Australia’s First Nations truth, voice, recognition, diversity, and respect. Hope O’Chin explains that knowledge about Australian First Nations culture and learning can be seen through new conceptual lens, which she refers to as an Ontology of Dreaming Hope for Australians. The book proposes to move from ontological propositions embedded in pedagogies and methodologies that center on the relevance of Indigenous epistemes and ways of doing. O’Chin offers a conceptual framing for engaging (...) with Indigenous peoples, and forming communities of belongingness and relationality. She offers suggestions for ways in which art and education can act as ‘healing’ and a way forward towards a more inclusive civil society. Reflexive practice, ethnographic principles, and action research is described in a way that methodologies provide an understanding of a sense of Belonging. O'Chin argues that theoretical research, art, and educational practice can add to the value of determining a strategy of Indigenous art investment within Australia, and to address how art and education can be used to validate contemporary expression of Aboriginality within contemporary Australian society. Ultimately, the book is about Indigenous strengths and what Indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing can offer, and how one might go about honouring and working in this way respectfully. (shrink)

The concept of need is often proposed as providing an additional or alternative criterion to cost-effectiveness in making allocation decisions in health care. If it is to be of practical value it must be sufficiently precisely characterized to be useful to decision makers. This will require both an account of how degree of need for an intervention is to be determined and a prioritization rule that clarifies how degree of need and the cost of the intervention interact in determining the (...) relative priority of the intervention. Three common features of health care interventions must be accommodated in a comprehensive theory of need: the probabilistic nature of prognosis (with and without the intervention); the time course of effects; and the fact that the most effective treatments often combine more than one intervention. These common features are problematic for the concept of need. We outline various approaches to prioritization on the basis of need and argue that some approaches are more promising than others. (shrink)

The non-identity problem arises when an intervention or behavior changes the identity of those affected. Delaying pregnancy is an example of such a behavior. The problem is whether and in what ways such changes in identity affect moral considerations. While a great deal has been written about the non-identity problem, relatively little has been written about the implications for physicians and how they should understand their duties. We argue that the non-identity problem can make a crucial moral difference in some (...) circumstances, and that it has some interesting implications for when it is or is not right for a physician to refuse to accede to a patient's request. If a physician is asked to provide an intervention (identity preserving) that makes a person worse off, then such harm provides a good reason for the physician to refuse to provide the intervention. However, in cases where different (identity-altering) interventions result in different people having a better or worse life, physicians should normally respect patient choice. (shrink)

Hope and Gabbert review and distil the relevant research examining the mnemonic consequences associated with conversations within an eyewitness context. In particular, they focus on how co‐witnesses’ retellings of witnessed events impair the quantity and quality of information subsequently reported to law enforcement authorities. Notably, they also provide interventions (e.g., careful witness management and post incident procedures, use of warnings, early individual accounts, etc.) to mitigate these negative, well‐documented mnemonic effects.

Both human research and animal research operate within established standards and procedures. Although the human research environment has been criticized for its sometimes inefficient and imperfect process, reported abuses of human subjects in research served as the impetus for the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, Declaration of Helsinki, and the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the resulting Belmont Report. No similar, comprehensive and principled effort has addressed the use of animals in (...) research. Although published policies regarding animal research provide relevant regulatory guidance, these policies have not emerged from the process of specifying consistent and reasoned ethical principles. The lack of a fundamental effort to explore the ethical issues and principles regarding the use of animals in research has led to unclear and disparate policies. Recent studies have increased our understanding of animal cognition and emotion, suggesting that animals' potential for experiencing a wide variety of harms, such as pain and fear, is greater than has been previously appreciated. Furthermore, relationships between methods of captivity and certain laboratory procedures and the resulting adverse physical, social and psychological effects have been established. In light of this information, current protections may need to be reconsidered and modified. This paper explores the historical convergence and divergence in the creation of human and animal research guidelines, as well as opportunities to align ethical frameworks with new scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Anne Conway’s commitment to the moral responsibility of creatures, or created beings, is seemingly in tension with her unique metaphysics. Conway is committed to individual moral responsibility. Conway insists that an innocent person ought not be punished for someone else’s sin. Interesting recent work highlights a unique aspect of Conway’s position that creatures are multiplicities: not only are creatures integrated into the larger whole of creation, but also their parts are mutually integrated into one another. The latter, which I will (...) call ‘ontological overlap,’ renders the boundaries between creatures unclear. However, creatures must be distinct enough from each other to provide a proper subject for individual moral responsibility. This contribution suggests that Conway’s account of vital power can resolve an apparent tension between ontological overlap and individual moral responsibility and, more broadly, that Conway has a relational metaphysics of moral subjecthood. (shrink)

David Hume famously states, in his A Treatise of Human Nature, “that ’tis only from the selfishness and confin’d generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin”.1 This is Hume’s summary of the conditions under which the very idea of rules of justice makes practical sense, and he effectively repeats it in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.2 To put it briefly at the outset, Hume’s point is simply (...) this: if there was either a superabundance or drastic scarcity of resources, or if everyone were either completely and unfailingly virtuous or completely and unfailingly wicked, we would not need rules. (shrink)

When interpreters orient Kant’s philosophy of time in relation to McTaggart’s distinction among different ways of characterizing a temporal order, they claim that he is best described as endorsing an A series position according to which there is a metaphysically privileged present that determines the past and the future. Whether Kant might also be understood as a proponent of the B series - according to which there is no privileged present, but rather time is comprised of relations of earlier than, (...) later than, and simultaneity - has not been discussed in the literature. I argue that, for Kant, the appearances can be described as an A series, while the phenomena are to be understood as a B series, neither of which is more fundamental than the other. Contra a common approach in the literature that neglects a metaphysical difference between appearances and phenomena, I argue Kant’s transcendental idealism about time is best understood in relation to his account of appearances and phenomena. (shrink)

Aristotle's chief ethical work, the Nicomachean Ethics , has given rise to a number of lively scholarly debates. Chief among them, is the debate about Aristotle's conception of the human good or eudaimonia. Aristotle defines eudaimonia as activity of the soul in accordance with virtue . But several different kinds of psychic virtues are all discussed in the NE, viz., ethical virtue and sophia. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether Aristotle identifies eudaimonia with the combination of ethical virtue and sophia, or (...) whether he believes that eudaimonia consists in the activity of sophia alone. Inclusivists endorse the former alternative, whereas intellectualists endorse the latter. ;Aristotle's "function argument" ---the argument which leads Aristotle to conclude that eudaimonia is "activity of the soul in accordance with virtue"---has become the locus of the dispute between intellectualists and inclusivists. The present work focuses on this dispute. I argue that both intellectualist and inclusivist interpretations of Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia , are flawed. For both accounts ignore Aristotle's views about the biological development of human beings. As I will show, Aristotle's views about human development play a crucial role in the function argument. Once this fact is appreciated, we are able to see that ethical virtue is a developmental prerequisite for sophia, and hence that sophia cannot be actualized without ethical virtue. This conclusion challenges those intellectualists who claim that in some cases, ethical virtue and sophia can come into conflict with one another.1 These intellectualists conclude from this that eudaimonia consists in contemplative activity alone, and that ethical virtue is merely instrumentally valuable. On this view, ethical virtue is valuable only to the extent that it helps one to be a better contemplator. I reject this view and argue that ethical virtue is necessary for the development of sophia. Thus, eudaimonia is activity in accordance with ethical virtue and sophia, but these virtues are hierarchically related since ethical virtue is a developmental prerequisite of sophia. This is the primary conclusion of this work. ;1See Cooper , Kraut. (shrink)

This brief text assists students in understanding Socrates' philosophy and thinking so that they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the "Wadsworth Philosophers Series,", ON SOCRATES is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher better enabling students to engage in the reading and to (...) discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

There are some ideas that at first seem simple, but which become more complex and profound the more they are explored. Great art, of course, is like that. When I first saw Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring I was excited by its fresh simplicity. I thought, however, it a painting I would soon understand. I was wrong. It becomes increasingly mysterious with increasing familiarity. It has recently inspired a novel.1The distinction between acts and omissions is one of these simple, (...) complex, ideas. When I first studied philosophy I thought I would rapidly be able to decide once and for all whether the distinction is of moral importance or not. I did in fact come to a decision. The problem is that I have kept revising that decision ever since. The issues raised by the arguments over acts and omissions continue to inspire philosophical discussion. They also continue to haunt doctors and relatives at the bedsides of those near the end of their lives.Donna Dickenson, in this issue of the journal,2 reports the results of a survey of opinions from those taking part in an Open University course on death and dying. She believes that for many bioethicists the acts/omissions distinction has been shown to be wrong as a distinction of moral worth. Her survey suggests, however, that for many health professionals this distinction is seen as morally important. She asks whether the bioethical consensus, as she sees it, against the distinction is a result of clear thinking, or whether the views of practitioners result from their taking into account, in a way bioethicists do not, the richness of reality.There is I believe, less consensus amongst bioethicists than Dickenson suggests. In this issue of the journal, Marc Stauch3 argues in favour of the acts/omissions …. (shrink)

This paper makes explicit some issues of gender that have been implicitly raised in recent discussions concerning the recovery of European women's contributions to the history of seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century philosophy. A useful way to bring these issues to light is to distinguish between the project of recovering women's contributions and the project of justifying their inclusion. The former project is an important effort to provide a more accurate understanding of the history of philosophy. Within the latter project, there is (...) a distinction between justifying the inclusion of a specific author and justifying women's inclusion in general. The suggestion that we need to justify women's inclusion in general is fundamentally illegitimate because it presumes that either women's philosophical ability is up for debate or that their contributions require special explanation, both of which are misogynist. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Conway characterizes freedom in apparently contradictory ways. She describes God as the most free, yet he is necessitated to act perfectly due to his wisdom and goodness. Created beings, by contrast, sin. They are not necessitated to do so. This suggests that Conway has a binary account of freedom: divine freedom is a matter of being necessitated by wisdom and goodness, whereas creaturely freedom consists in indifference, understood as a power to act, or not act. Despite the apparently conflicting remarks, (...) I argue that Conway has a single account of freedom as spontaneity. Conway defines spontaneity in terms of causing one’s own action independent of external causes. I suggest that spontaneity is more precisely understood as an intrinsic power aimed at the good in Conway’s metaphysics, and that this account of freedom can combine necessity and contingency. Rather than a binary, Conway offers an account of freedom in creation that has it on a continuum with divine freedom. (shrink)

When interpreters orient Kant in relation to contemporary philosophy of time, they claim that the B series is dependent on the A series. However, I claim that the opposite direction of dependence is also supported, due to Kant’s position that change is both intelligible and involves incompatibility. This paper extends the contemporary description of Kant’s philosophy of time to show that Kant endorses the interdependence of A series and B series views on time.

It is sometimes held that modern institutionally-focussed conceptions of social justice are lacking in one essential respect: they ignore the importance of civic friendship or solidarity. It is also, typically simultaneously, held that Aristotle’s thought provides a fertile ground for elucidating an account of civic friendship. I argue, first, that Aristotle is no help on this score: he has no conception of distinctively civic friendship. I then go on to argue that the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is (...) more useful than talk of civic friendship in capturing the non-institutional demands of social justice. (shrink)

In this paper I assess the possibility of advancing a modern conception of social justice under neo-Aristotelian lights, focussing primarily on conceptions that assert a fundamental connection between social justice and eudaimonia. After some preliminary remarks on the extent to which a neo-Aristotelian account must stay close to Aristotle’s own, I focus on Martha Nussbaum’s sophisticated neo-Aristotelian approach, which I argue implausibly overworks the aspects of Aristotle’s thought it appeals to. I then outline the shape of a deeper and more (...) general, and as yet unanswered, problem facing neo-Aristotelian accounts: how to justify the claim that the point of a just society is to assist or enable its members to flourish. (shrink)

Kant’s ethics provides surprising resources for addressing duties with respect to climate change. First, I show how Kant’s moral metaphysics, according to which the self is a phenomenon, provides a distinctive ground to mitigate the harm of climate change for future generations. In short, the physical appearances of our actions are grounded in an atemporal existence from which our intrinsic moral value derives. As such, the a priori basis for addressing climate duties to the present is no different from that (...) of duties to address climate duties to the future, though we must consider present circumstances in order to act effectively. Second, I show that recent helpful contributions towards understanding the resources of Kantian ethics for addressing climate face the following prima facie dilemma: perfect duties to reduce emissions are overly demanding because it requires reduction below subsistence levels, while imperfect duties to reduce emissions are not demanding enough to address the climate crisis. Without ruling out the existence of perfect duties to address climate, I analyze the latter horn of the dilemma and show how imperfect duties can be more demanding than one might have thought, given that we are in a climate emergency. Recent work on the role of emergency in Kant’s ethics has shown that there are resources for making sense of the prioritization of some concerns as more pressing. Overall, the aim of this contribution is to highlight some of the prospects and problems that face Kantian approaches to climate ethics. (shrink)

Ethics, communication skills, and the law ('practice skills') are important in all aspects of modern health care. Doctors and nurses must be sensitive to the ethical aspects of their work and understand the legal framework within which clinical decisions are made. Well developed skills of communication, with patients, their relatives and other members of the clinical team, are a key feature of good clinical practice Until recently, the important of practice skills has been relatively neglected in health care education. This (...) situation is changing. The UK General Medical Council, for example, has recently identified three aspects as part of the core of the medical course, and the move to degree courses in nursing has led to an increasing focus of practice skills in nurse education. The Oxford Practice Skills Project (OPSP) team have developed a course, within the University of Oxford Clinical School, which covers the teaching of practice skills in an integrated manner. This course is widely recognized as one of the most systematic developments of education in these areas. This manual describes the OPSP course in detail and provides teaching materials. Although developed initially for medical students, it should be helpful to all those involved in teaching ethics, communication skills, and law in health care. Each Seminar is described in detail Tutors' guides are provided Student handouts are included Contains guidelines for introducing 'practice skills' into a busy clinical curriculum Includes over forty case histories for teaching and examination Gives details of many useful sources and resources Details a variety of teaching methods together with their advantages and disadvantages Provides an ethics teaching toolkit for clinical teachers new to this area Readers are welcome to photocopy any part of this manual for their own teaching. (shrink)

Although the concept of food sovereignty is rooted in International Peasant Movements across the global south, activists have recently called for the adoption of this framework among low-income communities of color in the urban United States. This paper investigates on-the-ground processes through which food sovereignty articulates with the work of food justice and community food security activists in Oakland, California, and Seattle, Washington. In Oakland, we analyze a farmers market that seeks to connect black farmers to low-income consumers. In Seattle, (...) we attend to the experiences of displaced immigrant farmers from Latin America and their efforts to address their food needs following migration. In both cases, we find that US based projects were constrained by broader forces of neoliberalism that remained unrecognized by local activists. In Oakland, despite a desire to create a local food system led by marginalized African Americans, emphasis on providing green jobs in agriculture led activists to take a market-based approach that kept local food out of the economic grasp of food-insecure neighborhood residents. In Seattle, the marginalization of the immense agroecological knowledge of Latino/an immigrant farmers rendered local food projects less inclusive and capable of transformative change. Taken together, these very different cases suggest that a shift towards food sovereignty necessitates a broad acknowledgement of and resistance to neoliberalism. (shrink)

We describe the teaching programme in ethics, law and communication skills for clinical medical students which is being developed as part of the Oxford Practice Skills Project. These three elements of practice are approached in an integrated teaching programme which aims to address everyday clinical practice. The role of a central value of patient-centred health care in guiding the teaching is described. Although the final aim of the teaching is to improve actual practice, we have found three 'sub-aims' helpful in (...) the development of the programme. These sub-aims are: increasing students' awareness of ethical issues; enhancing their analytical thinking skills, and teaching specific knowledge. (shrink)

Some of the most important achievements in the field of empiricist ethics were made by the School of Moral Sentiment, comprising Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith. This book throws new light on their consensus theory of virtue. Hope works some of their ideas into a merit theory of rights applicable to conventional rights, defends ethical cognitivism, and analyzes pleasure.