The debate over the civilian use of nuclear power is highly polarised. We argue that a reasonable response to this deep disagreement is to maintain that advocates of both camps should modify their positions. According to the analysis we propose, nuclear power is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but rather right and wrong to some degree. We are aware that this non-binary analysis of nuclear power is controversial from a theoretical point of view. Utilitarians, (...) Kantians, and other moral theorists make sharp, binary distinctions between right and wrong acts. However, an important argument speaking in favour of our non-binary analysis is that it better reflects our considered intuitions about the ethical trade-offs we face in discussions of nuclear power. The aim of this article is to make this argument sharp by explaining how it can be rendered compatible with, and supported by, the Capability Approach, which is quickly becoming one of the most influential frameworks for thinking about human development. (shrink)

The controversial author discusses past theories of morality, the language of right and wrong, and the principles of modern ethics.

Franklin and Pickering agree that scientists in an experimental sequence, like the one to be discussed here, choose to accept certain experiments and their results as crucial, but disagree as to whether such choice can be justified in terms of an on-line estimate of evidential reliability. This paper suggests that it is possible to define a position between Franklin 's Bayesian objectivism and Pickering's social constructivism. This position depends on considering the sequence of improvement in material technique and instrumentation as (...) more important than any measure of reliability determined merely from such factors as evidential spread in relevant sequences, a factor that neither Franklin nor Pickering takes sufficiently into account. (shrink)

Socrates was not a moral philosopher. Instead he was a theorist who showed how human desire and human knowledge complement one another in the pursuit of human happiness. His theory allowed him to demonstrate that actions and objects have no value other than that which they derive from their employment by individuals who, inevitably, desire their own happiness and have the knowledge to use actions and objects as a means for its attainment. The result is a naturalised, practical, and demystified (...) account of good and bad, and right and wrong. Professor Reshotko presents a freshly envisioned Socratic theory residing at the intersection of the philosophy of mind and ethics. It makes an important contribution to the study of the Platonic dialogues and will also interest all scholars of ethics and moral psychology. (shrink)

The use of reproductive techniques and the eventual reproductive negligence from the provider of reproductive services gave rise to situations in which the intended parents are deprived of raising a child genetically connected to them. Courts have been dealing with cases of those for years, but have systemically denied claimants compensation, failing to recognise as damage the loss of genetic connection. In 2017, for the first time, the Singapore High Court provided compensation for that damage, labelled “loss of genetic affinity”. (...) This paper will argue that the damage in question is the loss of genetic connection and results from a violation of reproductive rights because a key element of reproductive rights is to have children with whom we keep a genetic bond and raise them. The paper will explain why the arguments classically argued against such compensation are unfounded and it will argue for a compensation covering both patrimonial and non-patrimonial damages. (shrink)

Conscientious objection in healthcare is often granted by many legislations regulating morally controversial medical procedures, such as abortion or medical assistance in dying. However, there is virtually no protection of positive claims of conscience, that is, of requests by healthcare professionals to provide certain services that they conscientiously believe ought to be provided, but that are ruled out by institutional policies. Positive claims of conscience have received comparatively little attention in academic debates. Some think that negative and positive claims of (...) conscience deserve equal protection in terms of measures that institutions ought to take to accommodate them. However, in this issue of The Journal of Clinical Ethics (JCE), Abram Brummett argues against this symmetry thesis. He suggests that the relevant distinction is not between negative and positive claims of conscience, but between negative and positive rights of conscience. He argues that conscientious refusals and positive claims of conscience are both already protected as negative rights of conscience, but that this does not require institutions to accommodate positive claims of conscience. In this article I will argue that both Brummett and the authors he criticizes share a wrong view about the existence of conscience rights in healthcare. I will argue that there is no right to conscientious objection in healthcare, whether positive or negative. Thus, contra Brummett, I argue that the question whether such rights are positive or negative is as irrelevant as the question whether the claims of conscience are positive or negative. (shrink)

We suggest that neither selectionism nor constructivism alone are responsible for learning-based changes in the brain. On the basis of quantitative structural studies of human brain tissue it has been possible to find evidence of both increase and decrease in tissue mass at synaptic and dendritic levels. It would appear that both processes are involved in the course of learning-dependent changes.

The central argument developed in this essay is that today we are seeing a proliferation of normative orders where once state normativity ruled and the dominant logic was toward producing a unitary normative framing. One synthesizing image we might use to capture these dynamics is that of a movement from centripetal nation-state articulation to a centrifugal multiplication of specialized assemblages. This multiplication in turn can lead to a sort of simplification of normative structures insofar as: these assemblages are partial and (...) often highly specialized formations centered in particular utilities and purposes. The valence of these particular utilities and purposes can range from the search for justice to narrow self-interest . While this is still a minor process in the larger scale of our geopolity, it signals the beginning of a multi-sited, though partial, disruption of its existing formal architecture. This raises questions about the future of crucial frameworks through which modern societies, economies, and polities have operated: the social contract of liberal states, social democracy as we have come to understand it, modern citizenship, and the formal mechanisms that render certain claims legitimate and others illegitimate in liberal democracies. These frameworks have held together complex interdependencies between rights and obligations, power and the law, wealth and poverty, allegiance and exit.Keywords: assemblages; normative; globalization; denationalization; centripetal; centrifugal; utilities; logics; liberal state; claims. (shrink)

Why does someone, S, deserve blame or reproach for an action or event? One part of a standard answer since Aristotle: the event was caused, at least in part, by S’s bad will. But recently there’s been some insightful discussion of cases where the event’s causes do not include any bad will from S and yet it seems that S is not off the hook for the event. Cheshire Calhoun, Miranda Fricker, Elinor Mason, David Enoch, Randolph Clarke, and others include (...) in this category some cases of glitches, forgetfulness, inattentiveness, the actions of one’s children or one’s country, and certain instances of explicit bias and implicit bias. Enoch and Mason argue that in these cases S should extend the realm of S’s responsibility. Drawing on Aristotle’s emphases on retrospective attitudes and the non-voluntary, this paper attempts to clarify the relation between quality of will and blameworthiness. I analyze cases where (1) S is clearly not morally responsible for an action or event, E, yet (2) S deserves reproach for E unless S has the appropriate retrospective attitudes (such as regret) or the absence of inappropriate attitudes toward E. (shrink)

In just a few years, the book became an underground classic. Neither Man Nor Beast takes Adams' thought one step further.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." So begins the U.S. Declaration of Independence. What follows those words is a ringing endorsement of universal rights, but it is far from self-evident. Why did the authors claim that it was? William Talbott suggests that they were trapped by a presupposition of Enlightenment philosophy: That there was only one way to rationally justify universal truths, by proving them from self-evident premises. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the authors of (...) the U.S. Declaration had no infallible source of moral truth. For example, many of the authors of the Declaration of Independence endorsed slavery. The wrongness of slavery was not self-evident; it was a moral discovery. In this book, William Talbott builds on the work of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, J.S. Mill, Amartya Sen, and Henry Shue to explain how, over the course of history, human beings have learned how to adopt a distinctively moral point of view from which it is possible to make universal, though not infallible, judgments of right and wrong. He explains how this distinctively moral point of view has led to the discovery of the moral importance of nine basic rights. Undoubtedly, the most controversial issue raised by the claim of universal rights is the issue of moral relativism. How can the advocate of universal rights avoid being a moral imperialist? In this book, Talbott shows how to defend basic individual rights from a universal moral point of view that is neither imperialistic nor relativistic. Talbott avoids moral imperialism by insisting that all of us, himself included, have moral blindspots and that we usually depend on others to help us to identify those blindspots. Talbott's book speaks to not only debates on human rights but to broader issues of moral and cultural relativism, and will interest a broad range of readers. (shrink)

Two ethical frameworks have dominated the discussion of organ donation for long: that of property rights and that of gift-giving. However, recent years have seen a drastic rise in the number of philosophical analyses of the meaning of giving and generosity, which has been mirrored in ethical debates on organ donation and in critical sociological, anthropological and ethnological work on the gift metaphor in this context. In order to capture the flourishing of this field, this article distinguishes between four frameworks (...) for thinking about bodily exchanges in medicine: those of property rights, heroic gift-giving, sacrifice, and gift-giving as aporia. These frameworks represent four different ways of making sense of donation of organs as well as tissue, gametes and blood, draw on different conceptions of the relations between the self and the other, and bring out different ethical issues as core ones. The article presents these frameworks, argues that all of them run into difficulties when trying to make sense of reciprocity and relational interdependence in donation, and shows how the three gift-giving frameworks (of heroism, sacrifice and aporia) hang together in a critical discussion about what is at stake in organ donation. It also presents and argues in favour of an alternative intercorporeal framework of giving-through-sharing that more thoroughly explicates the gift metaphor in the context of donation, and offers tools for making sense of relational dimensions of live and post mortem donations. (shrink)

It appears at least intuitively appropriate to claim that we owe it to victims to punish those who have wronged them. It also seems plausible to state that we owe it to society to punish those who have violated its norms. However, do we also owe punishment to perpetrators themselves? In other words, do those who commit crimes have a moral right to be punished? This work examines the sustainability of the right to be punished from the standpoint (...) of the two main theories of rights—the will and the interest conceptions. The right to be punished is shown to be largely indefensible on both accounts: on the will theory, the right to be punished conflicts with autonomy, and it can neither be claimed nor waived by a perpetrator; on the interest theory, a perpetrator’s interest in punishment, inasmuch as it exists, is not sufficient to ground a duty on the part of the state. (shrink)

In _The Ethics of Whistleblowing_ (2019), Boot engages with the current literature on unauthorized disclosure of information, critically examines some positions, and defends others. One early step of the book’s main argument is to claim that whistleblowing is _pro tanto_ wrong. This claim which many parties of the debate accept affects the narrative of the discussion and also plays a role against attempts to justify whistleblowing based on moral rights. In opposition to such a claim, I argue that one (...) can similarly ascribe _pro tanto_ rightness to whistleblowing. However, this would also be a mistake. In principle, such claims are inaccurate concerning how _pro tanto_ reasons work. Considering the motivations for taking up Ross’s idea of _prima facie_ duties, and having in mind the theoretical role they are supposed to play, I suggest that only simple type-acts (as contrasted with complex act-types) may be called _pro tanto_ right or wrong. Therefore, although widely appealed to, such claims about whistleblowing are neither helpful nor successful in the debate. (shrink)

A provocateur does not pose a threat of harm. Hence, a forceful response to provocation is generally considered wrongful. And yet, a provocateur is often denied recourse to a self-defence justification if she defends herself against such a violent response. In recent work, Kimberly Ferzan argues that a provocateur forfeits defensive rights but this forfeiture cannot be explained in the same way as an aggressor’s rights forfeiture. Ordinarily, one forfeits the right not to be harmed and to self-defend against (...) harm by threatening to violate another person’s rights. But provocateurs forfeit their defensive rights because they bring about the situation in which defence becomes necessary. As I argue here, positing these two types of forfeiture justifications is neither desirable nor necessary. I suggest a unified rights forfeiture account that grounds rights forfeiture in moral responsibility for an unjust threat. My account offers clearer distinctions than alternative unified accounts, which I briefly discuss. Furthermore, the account can provide better explanations of intuitively plausible judgements. A provocateur will have less extensive defensive rights than an innocent victim, but will not lose all her defensive rights simply because ‘she started it.’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Index to Volume Fifty-SixArticlesBernier, Bernard, National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, 1 : 84-105Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, Chai-sik Chung, 2 : 253-280Buxton, Nicholas, The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, 3 : 392-408Chan, Sin Yee, The Confucian Notion of Jing (Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : (...) 229-252Chong, Kim-chong, Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, 3 : 370-391Chung, Chai-sik, Between Principle and Situation: Contrasting Styles in the Japanese and Korean Traditions of Moral Culture, 2 : 253-280The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, Chenyang Li, 4 : 583-603The Confucian Notion of Jing.(Respect), Sin Yee Chan, 2 : 229-252The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? Jay L. Garfield, 2 : 201-228The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'āmirī, Paul L. Heck, 1 : 106-135The Crow and the Coconut: Accident, Coincidence, and Causation in the Yogavāiṣṭha, Nicholas Buxton, 3 : 392-408De Reu, Wim, Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, 2 : 281-300The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhaga-vadgītā, Christopher Framarin, 4 : 604-617Framarin, Christopher, The Desire You Are Required to Get Rid of: A Functionalist Analysis of Desire in the Bhagavadgītā, 4 : 604-617Garfield, Jay L., The Conventional Status of Reflexive Awareness: What's at Stake in a Tibetan Debate? 2 : 201-228Heck, Paul L., The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'ā mirī, 1 : 106-135Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel, 4 : 519-566Ho, Chien-hsing, Saying the Unsayable, 3 : 409-427Kantor, Hans-Rudolf, Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538-597) Tiantai Buddhism, 1 : 16-68Lai, Karyn, Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, 1 : 69-83Li, Chenyang, The Confucian Ideal of Harmony, 4 : 583-603Li in the Analects: Training in Moral Competence and the Question of Flexibility, Karyn Lai, 1 : 69-83Ma, Lin, and Jaap van Brakel, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566National Communion: Watsuji Tetsurō's Conception of Ethics, Power, and the Japanese Imperial State, Bernard Bernier, 1 : 84-105Ontological Indeterminacy and Its Soteriological Relevance: An Assessment of Mou Zongsan's (1909-1995) Interpretation of Zhiyi's (538- 597) Tiantai Buddhism, Hans-Rudolf Kantor, 1 : 16-68Right Words Seem Wrong: Neglected Paradoxes in Early Chinese Philosophical Texts, Wim De Reu, 2 : 281-300The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, Jinmei Yuan, 1 : 136-152Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, Jonathan Stoltz, 4 : 567-582Saying the Unsayable, Chien-hsing Ho, 3 : 409-427Schiltz, Elizabeth, Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, 3 : 451-468Spackman, John, The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, 3 : 428-450Stevenson, Frank W., Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, 2 : 301-331Stoltz, Jonathan, Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts, 4 : 567-582The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen's Philosophy of Language and Thought, John Spackman, 3 : 428-450 [End Page 709]Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato's Phaedrus, Elizabeth Schiltz, 3 : 451-468van Brakel, Jaap, and Lin Ma, Heidegger's Comportment toward East-West Dialogue, 4 : 519-566Yuan, Jinmei, The Role of Time in the Structure of Chinese Logic, 1 : 136-152Zhuangzi and the Nature of Metaphor, Kim-chong Chong, 3 : 370-391Zhuangzi's Dao as Background Noise, Frank W. Stevenson, 2 : 301-331Book NotesFenner, David E. W., Introducing Aesthetics (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516Introducing Aesthetics, by David E. W. Fenner (note by James McRae), 3 : 515-516McRae, James, a book... (shrink)

SummaryA liberal theology that values the individual, the person or the subject, is required to defend itself for its ally with individualism and human-centered philosophies, since the concept of the individual or the person has become problematic, as it is radicalized in neoliberalism and sharply criticized by postmodernism. After the First World War Ernst Troeltsch distinguished a German from a Western perspective at the basis of a liberal view of humanity, which he wanted to synthesize in order to secure human (...) dignity and advance the acceptance of universal human rights. Even though our situation has changed profoundly, Troeltsch’s distinction is still very helpful, since both neoliberalism and postmodernism can be described as one-sided radicalizations of what he labeled as ‘German’ and ‘Western’ ways of thought. Analysis shows that both neoliberalism and postmodernism fail to formulate the commonalities of a common human nature due to their radicalization. In contrast to neoliberalism and postmodernism, a liberal theology is challenged to value the individual within the bond of a common human nature and to describe this nature without the restrictions or prescriptions of an essentialist definition of what is human. The concept of a common humanity without essentials is defended with reference to Foucault and Hegel and supported by the classical notion of the image of God. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Whistleblowing (2019), Boot engages with the current literature on unauthorized disclosure of information, critically examines some positions, and defends others. One early step of the book’s main argument is to claim that whistleblowing is pro tanto wrong. This claim which many parties of the debate accept affects the narrative of the discussion and also plays a role against attempts to justify whistleblowing based on moral rights. In opposition to such a claim, I argue that one (...) can similarly ascribe pro tanto rightness to whistleblowing. However, this would also be a mistake. In principle, such claims are inaccurate concerning how pro tanto reasons work. Considering the motivations for taking up Ross’s idea of prima facie duties, and having in mind the theoretical role they are supposed to play, I suggest that only simple type-acts (as contrasted with complex act-types) may be called pro tanto right or wrong. Therefore, although widely appealed to, such claims about whistleblowing are neither helpful nor successful in the debate. (shrink)

The so-called ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ cases have been provoked by people’s desires to make their own determinations about what personal information is accessible online to others (and when, and how) in a world of data permanence. Legally at stake is how personhood is defined and defended. Thus far, European law has primarily concerned itself with the delisting of ‘data subjects’ from search results and the deletion or anonymization of personal information from and by search engine operators. As a (...) result, personhood has fallen into a kind of legislative void [ 43 ] I argue that this void is engendered by an old friction between the traditional Western secularist cognitive models that have formed the skeleton of Western law and the pulsing flesh of living human subject creation that pushes back against it. At the very least, the digital immortality of our images, voices, words and more, are bringing forth a variety of aspects of our ‘person.’ Meanwhile, religious worldviews have long understood and made use of phenomenological ideas of human becoming and transcendence that are far more congruous with how—even modern secular—people make meaning of their lives and self-creation, and how they think of posthumous existence. Moving through and with some of the most recent thinking in philosophy, anthropology, and cognitive science, I will develop the argument that human subjectivity is not only impossible to limit to the body, but that a radicalized ecological view is the only one that can ‘save’ us. (shrink)

'Microphysicalism', the view that whole objects behave the way they do in virtue of the behaviour of their constituent parts, is an influential contemporary view with a long philosophical and scientific heritage. In _What's Wrong With Microphysicalism?_ Andreas Hüttemann offers a fresh challenge to this view. Hüttemann agrees with the microphysicalists that we can explain compound systems by explaining their parts, but claims that this does not entail a fundamentalism that gives hegemony to the micro-level. At most, it shows (...) that there is a relationship of determination between parts and wholes, but there is no justification for taking this relationship to be asymmetrical rather than one of mutual dependence. Hüttemann argues that if this is the case, then microphysicalists have no right to claim that the micro-level is the ultimate agent: neither the parts nor the whole have 'ontological priority'. Hüttemann advocates a pragmatic pluralism, allowing for different ways to describe nature. _What's Wrong With Microphysicalism?_ is a convincing and original contribution to central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and metaphysics. (shrink)

According to its author, Engineered Death is not a book about the morality of homicide but about intellectual self-consistency—in particular about the self-consistency of the “liberal” view of homicide. The “liberal” view is defined by Woods as the view that murder is morally wrong because, and only because, it is a violation of rights. He tells us that he is concerned to defend neither liberalism in general nor its notion of individual rights in particular, but only to work (...) out the implications of these assumptions for the problems of abortion, suicide, euthanasia, and senecide. It is only in this sense that Woods' disclaimer about the non-ethical nature of his book can be taken seriously. In every other respect it is a treatise on ethics. It puts forward and defends moral theses that are independent of, and in some cases even contrary to, traditional ethical liberalism. (shrink)

Adorno's moral philosophy has often been accused of making aporetic prescriptions that are too taxing for moral agents. In this article, I defend his approach in terms of a theory of moral dilemmas. My guideline is Adorno's famous sentence that wrong life cannot be lived rightly. I argue that this claim is not distinctly prescriptive, as most of Adorno's critics believe, but is a claim about moral reality. Emphasizing realist aspects of his moral theory, I suggest that wrong (...) life is neither inconceivable nor an amoral or skeptical trope. Instead, Adorno's sentence about wrong life can be interpreted as a claim about the salience of particular moral facts. This, I conclude, allows Adorno to envisage moral reasons that motivate moral conduct case by case, although they are blocked overall. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a paper published in Bioethics, Jason Eberl has argued that early embryos are not persons and should not be granted the status possessed by them.1 Eberl bases this position upon the following claims: (1) The early embryo has a passive potentiality for development into a person. (2) The early embryo has not established both ‘unique genetic identity’ and ‘ongoing ontological identity’, which are necessary conditions for ensoulment. (3) The early embryo has a low probability of developing into a (...) more developed embryo. This paper examines these claims. I argue against (1) that a plausible view is that the early embryo has an active potentiality to grow into a more developed embryo. Against (2), I argue that neither ‘unique genetic identity’ nor ‘ongoing ontological identity’ are necessary conditions for ensoulment, and that ‘ongoing ontological identity’ is established between early embryos and more developed embryos. Against (3), I argue that the fact that the early embryo has a low probability of developing into a more developed embryo, if true, does not warrant the conclusion that the early embryo is not a person. If Eberl is right that the human soul is that which organises the activities of a human being and that ensouled humans are persons, embryos are persons from conception. (shrink)

In response to the April 2017 Critical Research on Religion editorial “On a balanced critique:,” the author suggests first that defining religion is possible and helpful, and that even those who claim not to define the subject demonstrate knowledge of its boundaries. Academic research on religion can offer useful generalizations and insights, while having no impact on the fortunes of religion in the real world. When believers perceive academic research as hostile to religion, they are absolutely right. All academic (...) approaches to religion reflect its loss of authority under secularization. Our work is always a critique in the strongest sense, especially when it deals with the psychological foundations of religious beliefs. Even a “balanced” critique undermines belief plausibility and will incur the wrath of true believers. (shrink)

In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick presented his doctrine of right libertarianism, largely a contemporary restatement of Locke’s moral imperative that an individual’s rights to his life, liberty, and property are absolute and place limits on state action. Parallelly, Nozick espoused the free-market system as a framework that not only respects individual rights but ensures material benefits. While the free market results in radical inequalities in holdings and widespread dispossession, Nozick treats the process as morally just and any state (...) redistribution through taxation as wrong. However, neither Nozick nor his many critics fully considered the role of money in capitalist free markets, an omission I begin to address. Nozick asserts that money emerges pre-politically through the uncoerced actions of individuals, and that it derives its value from the commodity that underpins it. This conception of money underpins Nozick’s claims that a minimal state can be just and that the free-market system is a moral, efficient, and neutral allocator of resources. However, Nozick’s approach omits addressing how money’s general acceptability and stability are achieved. Answers can be found in heterodox economic paradigms, which put the state at the center of money creation, rendering money (and the state) incompatible with natural rights. Furthermore, by insisting on money’s commodity nature, Nozick ignores the seventeenth century revolution in money, necessitated by the emergence of free-market capitalism and commodity money’s inability to underpin it. In other words, it is not commodity money but credit money that should be the proper object of Nozick’s analysis. I go on to analyze what credit money is, how it arose, and why some form of it is necessary in a free-market context. Ultimately, I argue that it is not compatible with natural rights and is itself redistributive. Key words: money, distributive justice, Nozick, Locke, free market capitalism, natural rights. (shrink)

In “Happiness Is the Wrong Metric,” Amitai Etzioni largely argues that human beings are motivated by more than just their own happiness, whether conceived in terms of pleasant experiences or fulfilled preferences, and that the state should attend to more than merely people’s happiness. He contends that people are often disposed to seek out, and that public policy ought to promote, what is morally right and good. While not disagreeing with this thrust of Etzioni’s position, I maintain in (...) my contribution that it is too narrow. There is a large range of goods that people tend to pursue, and that social and political institutions should plausibly foster, which are reducible to neither happiness nor morality. They are values that are instead well captured by the concept of what makes a life meaningful. If Etzioni is correct that the state ought to enable people to live morally upright lives, then it has no less reason to enable them to live meaningful ones, too. (shrink)

As part of his defence of panpsychism, Strawson introduces the notion of 'brute' emergence, and hints at a contrasting notion of 'true' emergence. Panpsychism is true not least because brute emergence is incoherent. The alternative relation of true emergence is coherent and congruent with panpsychism. Strawson's distinction suggests that panpsychists endorse true emergence, while emergentists endorse brute emergence. I show that this yields a false dichotomy, which wrongly associates traditional emergentism with an implausible notion of emergence. I clarify the nature (...) and purpose of true and brute emergence, and I argue that traditional emergentists should reject both of them. (shrink)

A recurrent topic among philosophers as well as social scientists since Novalis, Comte, Weber, modem existentialists, and post-modern sociologists, etc. is that in the absence of what Tocqueville called "dogmatic beliefs” values cannot be grounded : you prefer liberty, I prefer equality; none of us would be neither right nor wrong. Contemporary writers as Rawls and Habermas defend, against this current view, the idea that value statements can be grounded rationally. Habermas' theory of communicational rationality remains procedural, (...) formal and on the whole mysterious, however: how can this peculiar type of rationality be definied and made analytical? A cognitive theory of axiological rationality is developed here starting from the basic point that normative statements and axiological beliefs should be analyzed as grounded on reasons with a transsubjective validity, as positive statements are. This theory is checked in a tentative fashion against some examples of axiological belieft from ordinary experience and against a few pieces ofdata drawn from experimental social psychology. (shrink)

We discuss ethical aspects of risk-taking with special focus on principlism and mid-level moral principles. A new distinction between the strength of an obligation and the degree to which it is valid is proposed. We then use this distinction for arguing that, in cases where mid-level moral principles come into conflict, the moral status of the act under consideration may be indeterminate, in a sense rendered precise in the paper. We apply this thought to issues related to pandemic influenza vaccines. (...) The main conclusion of the paper is that on a principlist approach some acts may be neither right nor wrong (or neither permissible nor impermissible), and we claim that this has important implications for how we ought to make decisions under risk. (shrink)

Derrick Darby’s book Rights, Race, and Recognition defends the seemingly startling thesis that all rights, moral as well as legal, are dependent upon social recognition. So there are no “natural” rights independent of social practices, and subordinated groups in oppressive societies do not have rights. Darby appeals to intersubjectivist constructivism to make his meta-ethical case, but in this critique, I argue that he conflates, or at least fails to consistently distinguish, two radically different varieties of constructivism: idealized intersubjectivist constructivism, which (...) is objectivist, and non-idealized conventionalist constructivism, which is relativist. In neither case, then, can Darby establish the shocking thesis that white supremacy objectively takes away blacks’ moral standing. (shrink)

Today we know that the planet is both too small for the globalization of progress and too large, active, and complex to remain within the local. Latour at this point in his argument postulates an alternative vector that is present and real enough to attract our thoughts from current political-economic categories such as progressive vs. conservative, left vs. right. This alternative vector—the Modern/Terrestrial--is attractive because there is a lingering sense that there was once such a thing as the common (...) good, while today too often it is all about power and self-interest, mine and yours. (shrink)

Morality, as commonly conceived, is a delusion; it is, however, indispensable for the flourishing both of society and of individuals. These are the main theses, one concerning the status, the other the content of morality,, of J. L. Mackie’s Ethics, Inventing Right and Wrong. In part 1, with much fresh, useful, if subsidiary discussion of more standard meta-ethical fare—meanings of normative terms and analysis of moral argument—Mackie argues that the morality of the plain man is not, what it (...) is commonly taken to be, revelatory of a realm of objective values. Such values, he contends, making no secret of his empiricism, are ontologically too queer to exist, epistemologically too alien to be known. Nor are they needed to account for the specious objectivity of common sense morality, for there are "patterns of objectification" which, with less philosophical extravagance, can explain how an agent’s subjective attitudes become objectified. Although Mackie does think that one’s moral principles are prescriptive, universal, and, in some sense, chosen, his skepticism is not the fruit of linguistic analysis. On the contrary. "[O]rdinary moral judgments include a claim to objectivity.... Any analysis of the meanings of moral terms which omits this claim to objective, intrinsic, prescriptivity is to that extent incomplete; and this is true of any non-cognitive analysis, any naturalist one, and any combination of the two". (shrink)

The polluter pays principle (PPP) has the form of a reparative principle. It holds that since some countries have historically contributed more to global warming than others, these countries have the follow-up responsibility now to do more to address climate change. Yet in the climate justice debate, PPP is often rejected for two reasons. First, so the objection goes, it wrongly burdens present-day individuals because the actions of their predecessors. This is the unfairness objection. The second objection is that early (...) polluters were not aware of the harm that they were doing, and so ought not to be held culpable. This is the objection from excusable ignorance. In this commentary, I defend PPP against these two objections. The aim of this short reflection is not to provide a full justification of PPP, or to respond to all objections that have been made against it. My more limited but, I hope, important goal is to show that PPP is neither immediately unfair (in making innocent parties pay) nor immediately unreasonable (in making excusably ignorant parties pay) as is commonly noted, and is therefore worthy of further consideration as a principle of climate justice. (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, (...) and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

_A unique philosophical look at the hit television series _Downton Abbey_ _ Who can resist the lure of _Downton Abbey_ and the triumphs and travails of the Crawley family and its servants? We admire Bates's sense of honor, envy Carson's steadfastness, and thrill to Violet's caustic wit. _Downton Abbey and Philosophy_ draws on some of history's most profound philosophical minds to delve deeply into the dilemmas that confront our favorite characters. Was Matthew right to push Mary away after his (...) injury in the war? Would Lord Grantham have been justified in blocking Lady Sybil's marriage to Tom Branson? And is Thomas really such a bad person? Offers fresh and intriguing insights into your favorite _Downton Abbey_ characters, plot lines, and ideas Addresses many of your most pressing questions about _Downton Abbey's_ story and characters, such as: Should Daisy have lied to William about her feelings toward him—especially to the point of marrying him? Should Mr. Bates have been upfront with Anna from the beginning about his past? Views _Downton Abbey_ through the lens of some of the most influential philosophical thinkers, from Saint Augustine and David Hume to Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill Ventures upstairs _and_ downstairs to examine key themes involving ethics, virtue, morality, class, feminism, the human condition, and more Philosophical speculation awaits on every page of this essential _Downton Abbey_ companion. So take a seat in your personal library, have the butler pour a cup of tea, and start reading! (shrink)

It is usually assumed to be possible, and sometimes even desirable, for consequentialists to make judgments about both the rightness and the goodness of actions. Whether a particular action is right or wrong is one question addressed by a consequentialist theory such as utilitarianism. Whether the action is good or bad, and how good or bad it is, are two others. I will argue in this paper that consequentialism cannot provide a satisfactory account of the goodness of actions, (...) on the most natural approach to the question. I will also argue that, strictly speaking, a consequentialist cannot judge one action to be better or worse than another action performed at a different time or by a different person. Even if such theories are thought to be primarily concerned with rightness, this would be surprising, but in the light of recent work challenging the place of rightness in consequentialism1, it seems particularly disturbing. If actions are neither right (or wrong) nor good (or bad), what moral judgments do apply to them? Doesn't the rejection of both rightness and goodness, as applied to actions, leave consequentialism unacceptably impoverished? On the contrary, I will argue that consequentialism is actually strengthened by the realization that actions can only be judged as better or worse than possible alternatives. (shrink)

This article considers the question of how much weight the infringement of children's right to bodily integrity should be given compared with competing considerations. It utilises the example of circumcision to explore this question, taking as given this practice's opponents' view of circumcision's harmfulness. The article argues that the child's claim against being subjected to circumcision is neither a mere interest nor a right so strong that it trumps all competing interests. Instead, it is a right (...) of moderate strength. Indeed, even the aggregate strength of children's rights against the practice of circumcision as a whole is not so weighty so as to always trump competing interests. The harms are not sufficiently serious to justify such a status. And the expressive wrongs associated with non-negligently benevolent harming are much less serious than those associated with intentional harming. The debate over banning circumcision thus cannot be conducted only in terms of competing rights. Competing interests, such as those that would be set back by the departure of religious citizens, should be considered as well and might plausibly justify allowing even a rights-infringing practice to continue. (shrink)

When in 1979 Zenon Pylyshyn, associate editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS, a peer commentary journal which I edit) informed me that he had secured a paper by John Searle with the unprepossessing title of [XXXX], I cannot say that I was especially impressed; nor did a quick reading of the brief manuscript -- which seemed to be yet another tedious "Granny Objection"[1] about why/how we are not computers -- do anything to upgrade that impression.

Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it (...) takes it as obvious that some of the truth is relative. Mark Richard's accessible book argues that when it comes to truth, common sense is right, philosophical orthodoxy wrong. The first half of the book examines connections between the performative aspects of talk, our emotions and evaluations, and the conditions under which talk and thought qualifies as true or false. It argues that the performative and expressive sometimes trump the semantic, making truth and falsity the wrong dimension of evaluation for belief or assertion. Among the topics taken up are: racial slurs and other epithets; relations between logic and truth; the status of moral and ethical talk; vagueness and the liar paradox. The book's second half defends the idea that much of everyday thought and talk is only relatively true or false. Truth is inevitably relative, given that we cannot work out in advance how our concepts will apply to the world. Richard explains what it is for truth to be relative, rebuts standard objections to relativism, and argues that relativism is consistent with the idea that one view can be objectively better than another. The book concludes with an account of matters of taste and of how it is possible for divergent views of such matters to be equally valid, even if not true or false. When Truth Gives Out will be of interest not only to philosophers who work on language, ethics, knowledge, or logic, but to any thoughtful person who has wondered what it is, or isn't, for something to be true. (shrink)

This paper defends a qualified version of moral vegetarianism. It defends a weak thesis and, more tentatively, a strong thesis, both from a very broad basis that assumes neither that animals have rights nor that they are entitled to equal consideration. The essay's only assumption about moral status, an assumption defended in the analysis of the wrongness of cruelty to animals, is that sentient animals have at least some moral status. One need not be a strong champion of animal (...) protection, then, to embrace moral vegetarianism. One need only assume some reasonable view of animals' moral status. (shrink)

Scientific ideas neither arise nor develop in a vacuum. They are always nutured against a background of prior, partially conflicting ideas. Systemic hypothesistesting is the problem of testing scientific hypotheses relative to various systems of background knowledge. This paper shows how the problem of systemic hypothesis-testing (Sys HT) can be systematically expressed as a constrained maximimization problem. It is also shown how the error of the third kind (E III) is fundamental to the theory of Sys HT.The error of (...) the third kind is defined as the probability of having solved the ‘wrong’ problem when one should have solved the ‘right’ problem. This paper shows howE III can be given both a systematic as well as a systemic treatment. Sys HT gives rise to a whole host of new decision problems, puzzles, and paradoxes. (shrink)

How can we figure out what’s right or wrong, if moral truths are neither self-evident nor something we can perceive? Very roughly, the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) says that we should begin moral inquiry from what we already confidently think, seeking to find a a match between our initial convictions and general principles that are well-supported by background theories, mutually adjusting both until we reach a coherent outlook in which our beliefs are in harmony (the equilibrium (...) part) and we know why and how they support each other (the reflective part). It has been central to the self-understanding of normative ethics and other branches of philosophy in the last half a century. In this chapter, we examine the history of the idea of RE and introduce a schema for generating 256 variants. We explain why RE is subject to serious objections insofar as it purports to yield epistemic justification in virtue of achieving coherence. However, we also develop a new argument to the effect that RE is the best feasible method for us to achieve moral understanding and the ability to justify our judgments to others. It may thus be crucial for responsible moral inquiry, even if coherence among considered judgments and principles is neither sufficient nor necessary for justified moral belief. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mettle of Moral Fundamentalism: A Reply to Robert Baker*Tom L. Beauchamp (bio)AbstractThis article is a reply to Robert Baker’s attempt to rebut moral fundamentalism, while grounding international bioethics in a form of contractarianism. Baker is mistaken in several of his interpretations of the alleged moral fundamentalism and findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He also misunderstands moral fundamentalism generally and wrongly categorizes it as morally (...) bankrupt. His negotiated contract model is, in the final analysis, itself a form of the moral fundamentalism he declares bankrupt.Robert baker’s imaginative and incisive articles on international bioethics (Baker 1998a & b) are rich in history and philosophy, but they are as profoundly misguided as they are misdirected. In this comment, I will concentrate both on a pivotal interpretation and criticism that he offers of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE 1996) and on his philosophical thesis that a moral fundamentalism of principles and rights is bankrupt. Baker seriously misinterprets the ACHRE report, distorts and fails to refute moral fundamentalism, and ultimately embraces a form of the very fundamentalism that he declares bankrupt. These three topics are connected in that Baker’s misconceptions of the ACHRE report launch his critique of moral fundamentalism and his mistaken understanding of moral fundamentalism drives his critique of the ACHRE report. 1 [End Page 389]Some Misunderstandings of the Human Radiation CommitteeBaker proclaims a conflict between ACHRE’s moral fundamentalism and multiculturalism. He presents this conflict as primarily a factual issue regarding whether different cultures and eras accept different moral principles—“the difference claim,” in his vernacular (Baker 1998a, pp. 208–9). This interpretation eventuates in a critique of the work of both ACHRE and Ruth Macklin:[W]hen Macklin and the Radiation Committee consider the challenge of multiculturalism, they construe this challenge, not as dispute about anthropological fact, but as a dispute about philosophical theory. More specifically, they treat any assertion of the difference claim as a form of “ethical relativism.”... They thus respond to the multiculturalist’s factual observations—even to factual observations by anthropologists—as if they were philosophical analyses.(Baker 1998a, p. 209)Baker thinks that a factual question has been fallaciously transformed into a philosophical one. However, this false dilemma is a figment of his fancy. He provides no citation to ACHRE to show that it holds this view, and for an understandable reason: This position is neither stated nor presumed in the Report. ACHRE is quite clear that relativism involves both an anthropological (I would prefer to say historical) dispute about fact and a philosophical dispute about value—and that they are not the same.The Committee and its staff proceeded as follows: They first collected a large body of historical documents and facts about the practices, policies, and values that prevailed during the period they were studying. Chapters 1 through 3 and 5 through 13, 12 of the Report’s 18 chapters, display the results of this empirical work. The Committee concluded, on this basis, that research investigators and government officials were aware of the obligations generated by universal principles. The ACHRE report specifically lists six “basic” moral principles and maintains that these principles were pervasively recognized at the time of the radiation experiments (ACHRE 1996, pp. 114ff, 124). ACHRE received testimony, conducted interviews, and compiled documents that indicated how deeply these principles were woven into the fabric of American culture at the time, so deeply that no responsible research investigator could have been unaware of them. ACHRE did not move beyond its list of six principles to a broader thesis about the (factual) universality of other principles and did not examine other cultures or periods of history; such work would [End Page 390] have exceeded ACHRE’s mandate and would have done more to obscure than to further its arguments.ACHRE also found that some government officials had attempted to hide their wrongdoing—a clear indication that these officials were aware of the relevant moral principles and knew that they should not have been treating persons as they did (ACHRE 1996, pp. 152–53; Chapman 1946). These factual findings were not armchair philosophy or empirical guesswork... (shrink)