In this paper I focus on duties we owe refugees from conflict zones. I argue that it is important to distinguish between two types of duties one might have with respect to refugees from conflict zones. Belligerents from wars that resulted in excess numbers of refugees, I argue, have a stringent duty to remedy past harms and provide for resulting refugees. Other states have a duty to aid which is context-dependent and can be in some cases as stringent as the (...) duty to remedy past harms. I argue that making a distinction between the grounds and types of duties different actors have with respect to refugees from conflict zones has significant consequences both for just war theory, but also for practical questions about how best to discharge our duties to refugees from conflict zones. (shrink)

The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations governing federally funded research on human subjects assumes that harmful research is sometimes morally justifiable because the beneficiaries of that research share a particular vulnerability with its subjects. In this article, I argue against this assumption, which occurs in every subpart of the Code of Federal Regulations that deals with specific vulnerable populations . I argue that shared vulnerability is no exception to the general principle that harming one person in order to benefit another (...) is no more justifiable if the two people have traits in common. Further, shared vulnerability is not a reasonable proxy for any morally relevant desideratum of research, in particular the desire to benefit the worst off, the desire to avoid exploitation, and the desire to use vulnerable populations in research only when necessary. (shrink)

In his article “Nudging and Informed Consent,” Shlomo Cohen (2013) argues, among other things, that 1) “to the extent that the nudge-influenced decision making is rational—in whatever sense,” there...

I argue that, according to ordinary morality, there is moral inertia, that is, moral pressure to fail to intervene in certain circumstances. Moral inertia is manifested in scenarios with a particular causal structure: deflection scenarios, where a threatening or benefiting process is diverted from a group of people to another. I explain why the deflection structure is essential for moral inertia to be manifested. I argue that there are two different manifestations of moral inertia: strict prohibitions on interventions, and constraints (...) on interventions. Finally, I discuss the connection between moral inertia and the distinction between killing and letting die (or doing and allowing harm). (shrink)

In “Nudging and Informed Consent,” ShlomoCohen (2013) attempts to address the common objection against nudges that they are autonomy-thwarting because they foster irrationality. He explicitly focuses on informed consent, which he contrasts with the policy context in which health nudges are usually discussed. I think Cohen’s rich article is a significant contribution to the nudge literature. However, I have some concerns with the way he frames and motivates his inquiry...

Multiple authorship is becoming increasingly common in bioethics research. There are well-established criteria for authorship in empirical bioethics research but not for conceptual research. It is important to develop criteria for authorship in conceptual publications to prevent undeserved authorship and uphold standards of fairness and accountability. This article explores the issue of multiple authorship in bioethics and develops criteria for determining who should be an author on a conceptual publication in bioethics. Authorship in conceptual research should be based on contributing (...) substantially to: (1) identifying a topic, problem, or issue to study; (2) reviewing and interpreting the relevant literature; (3) formulating, analyzing, and evaluating arguments that support one or more theses; (4) responding to objections and counterarguments; and (5) drafting the manuscript and approving the final version. Authors of conceptual publications should participate substantially in at least two of areas (1)?(5). (shrink)

Although much has been written on the dead-donor rule in the last twenty-five years, scant attention has been paid to how it should be formulated, what its rationale is, and why it was accepted. The DDR can be formulated in terms of either a Don’t Kill rule or a Death Requirement, the former being historically rooted in absolutist ethics and the latter in a prudential policy aimed at securing trust in the transplant enterprise. I contend that the moral core of (...) the rule is the Don’t Kill rule, not the Death Requirement. This, I show, is how the DDR was understood by the transplanters of the 1960s, who sought to conform their practices to their ethics—unlike today’s critics of the DDR, who rethink their ethics in a question-begging fashion to accommodate their practices. A better discussion of the ethics of killing is needed to move the debate forward. (shrink)

This article explores attempts at legalization of the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Although in many countries there have been high levels of public support for euthanasia and assisted suicide, in most of them, no legislative activity has taken place concerning these practices, and there is a lack of clarity about what is permitted and what is not. I argue that accurate definition of the relevant concepts and a clear delineation of the territory of the debate would help draw (...) a coherent roadmap for legalization. To this end, I analyze five legal approaches to the legalization euthanasia: maintenance of the status quo, legal defenses, de-prioritization, de-criminalization, and legislation. I conclude with a discussion of the moral and legal implications of the foregoing analysis. (shrink)

This chapter considers Arthur Danto's use of a particular thought experiment to support his theory of art and Richard Wollheim's discussion of it. It also considers a comparable thought experiment about conceptual issues in ethics. The chapter presents how some thought experiments in moral philosophy do and do not resemble Danto's gallery of indiscernibles. A. Surprisingly, in his own discussion of the permissibility of certain acts of killing and harming, Danto seems to have adopted a view similar to the one (...) Wollheim adopted about Danto's indiscernibles. Use of thought experiments in ethics is often unlike the use of thought experiments in Danto's work. The chapter explores how ethics employs thought experiments to determine permissibility of acts and whether thought experiments could comparably be used to determine the merit of artworks. (shrink)

Adherents of particularism draw rather strong implications of this view. However, particularism has never been stated in a canonical way. We locate the core of particularism as a claim about how different reasons combine to generate the Tightness or wrongness of an action. Using the notion of an ordering of alternatives containing separable factors, we show that particularism can be stated more generally as the denial that there exist separable factors.With this definition in place, we show that, once subjected to (...) a number of clarifications, particularism largely does have the implications often associated with it. However, we find the various arguments that have been given in support of particularism to be very poor. We conclude that particularists do have a point when they claim that some form of generalism cannot simply be taken for granted. But no particular reasons in favour of being a particularist have been offered. (shrink)

Some brain injured patients are left in a permanent vegetative state, i.e., they have irreversibly lost their capacity for consciousness but retained some autonomic physiological functions, such as breathing unaided. Having discussed the controversial nature of the permanent vegetative state as a diagnostic category, we turn to the question of the patients’ ontological status. Are the permanently vegetative alive, dead, or in some other state? We present empirical data from interviews with relatives of patients, and with experts, to support the (...) view that the ontological state of permanently vegetative patients is unclear: such patients are neither straightforwardly alive nor simply dead. Having defended this view from counter-arguments we turn to the practical question as to how these patients ought to be treated. Some relatives and experts believe it is right for patients to be shifted from their currently unclear ontological state to that of being straightforwardly dead, but many are concerned or even horrified by the only legally sanctioned method guaranteed to achieve this, namely withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration. A way of addressing this distress would be to allow active euthanasia for these patients. This is highly controversial; but we argue that standard objections to allowing active euthanasia for this particular class of permanently vegetative patients are weakened by these patients’ distinctive ontological status. (shrink)

Most theorists working on moral obligations to refugees conceive of western states as innocent bystanders with duties to aid refugees if they can do so at little cost to themselves. This paper challenges this dominant theoretical framing of global displacement by highlighting for the first time certain practices of western states in response to refugee flows such as border violence, detention, encampment and containment which may make us question whether states who engage in such practices are indeed innocent. This paper (...) provides the first normative analysis of these practices by seeking to classify them as either doing or allowing harm and invoking the fundamental moral imperative central to core common moral commitments - not to harm innocent people - to suggest that certain western states are not merely failing to aid refugees and allowing harm to come to them, but are instead responding to their calls for aid by harming them. (shrink)

The Animal Rights Thesis (ART) entails that nonhuman animals like pigs and cows have moral rights, including rights not to be unjustly harmed. If ART is true, it appears to imply the permissibility of killing ranchers, farmers, and zookeepers in defense of animals who will otherwise be unjustly killed. This is the Militancy Objection (MO) to ART. I consider four replies to MO and reject three of them. First, MO fails because animals lack rights, or lack rights of sufficient strength (...) to justify other-defensive killing. Second, MO fails because those who unjustly threaten animals aren't liable or, if they are liable, their liability is outweighed by other considerations (e.g., a strong presumption against vigilante killing). I then argue both of these fail. Third, MO succeeds because animal militancy is permissible. Fourth, MO fails because there aren't liability justifications for defensive killing in general (i.e., pacifism is true). I argue that there's thoroughgoing epistemic parity between the Militancy View (MV) and the Pacifist View (PV), and that two considerations favor PV over MV. First, because under conditions of uncertainty, we should believe rights-bearers retain rather than lose their rights, which PV affirms and MV denies. Second, because PV is intrinsically likelier than MV to be true since PV at worst affirms wrongful letting die and MV at worst affirms wrongful killing, the latter of which is intrinsically harder to justify than the former. (shrink)

We readily claim that great moral catastrophes such as the Holocaust involve evil in some way, although it' not clear what this amounts to in a secular context. This paper seeks to provide a secular account of what evil is. It examines what is intuitively the most plausible account, namely that the evil act involves the production of great suffering (or other disvalue), and argues that such outcomes are neither necessary nor sufficient for an act to be evil. Only an (...) appeal to distinctive patterns of motivation, so it is argued, will allow us to accommodate our intuitionsabout which acts are evil, and hence will provide an adequate account of the nature of evil. (shrink)

With few exceptions, the literature on withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment considers the bare fact of withdrawing or withholding to lack any ethical significance. If anything, the professional guidelines on this matter are even more uniform. However, while no small degree of progress has been made toward persuading healthcare professionals to withhold treatments that are unlikely to provide significant benefit, it is clear that a certain level of ambivalence remains with regard to withdrawing treatment. Given that the absence of clinical (...) benefit means treating patients is not only ethically questionable but also taxing on resources that could meet the needs of others, this ambivalence is troubling. Equally, the enduring ambivalence of professionals might be taken to indicate that the issue warrants further attention. In this paper, we review the academic literature on the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding medical treatment. While we are not in outright disagreement with the arguments presented, we suggest that asserting theoretical and decontextualized claims about the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment does not fully illuminate the moral questions associated with the relevant clinical realities. We argue that what is required is a broader perspective, one rooted in an understanding that withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment are different practices, the meanings of which are fully comprehensible only through an appreciation of their place within the practice of healthcare more generally. Such an account suggests that if one is to engage with the inappropriate protraction of life-saving treatment resulting from healthcare professionals’ disinclination to withdraw it, then the differences between these practices should be taken seriously. (shrink)

Those who defend physician‐assisted suicide often seek to distinguish it from active euthanasia, but in fact, the two acts face the same objections. Both can lead to abuse, both implicate the physician in the death of a patient, and both violate whatever objections there are to killing. Their moral similarity derives from the similar roles of the physician.

Pacifism is the view that necessarily, the nonconsensual harming of pro tanto rights-bearers is all-things-considered morally impermissible. Critics of pacifism frequently point to common moral intuitions about self-defenders and other-defenders as evidence that pacifism is false and that self- and other-defense are often morally justified. I call this the Justification View and defend its rival, the Excuse View. According to the latter, a robust view of moral excuse adequately explains the common moral intuitions invoked against pacifism and is compatible with (...) pacifism. The paper proceeds in five steps. First, I identify ten intuitive data points that require explanation. Second, I introduce the justification/excuse distinction. Third, I demonstrate the Excuse View’s equal explanatory power with respect to the intuitive data. Fourth, I defend the Fair Use Principle: When evaluating the plausibility of rival theories J and E, the use of datum d’s full intuitive force against E and for J is epistemically permissible only if (i) d is better explained by J than E and (ii) no intuitive components of d are equally well-explained by E. Finally, I conclude that the conjunction of pacifism and the Excuse View renders the intuitive defense of the Justification View largely moot, and that this is a substantial victory for pacifism. (shrink)