Online research in philosophy

abstract This article refutes Henry Shue's claim that in the case of preventive military attacks it is sometimes morally permissible to make an exception to the fundamental principle regarding the inviolability of individual rights. By drawing on a comparison between torture and preventive military attacks, I will argue that the potential risks of institutionalizing preventive military attacks — what I call the Institutionalizing Argument — are far too great to even contemplate. Two potential risks with setting up a bureaucracy which (...) specializes in preventive military attacks will be highlighted: that any preventive military strike may nourish a cycle of violence that will inevitably cause more deaths and destruction than could ever be justified; and that such preventive military strikes may be abused by political leaders in a desperate effort to hold on to power, including democratically elected political leaders working within a democratic framework. (shrink)

This article takes the first steps towards a new approach in applied philosophy, in the hope to encourage an idea of philosophy as a more empirical subject. Part I will provide an overview of the nature and scope of applied philosophy, followed in Part II by a critical evaluation of the “top-down” methodology still popular with many applied philosophers. Part III will then describe the basic axioms of “empirical philosophy,” explaining how the empirical approach differs from the top-down approach. Part (...) IV will provide a reply to the standard criticism regarding the proposed marriage between empirical research and philosophy. Part V will test the validity of “empirical philosophy” on practical terms. (shrink)

Is exploitation unjust? This essay attempts to resolve this famous question by suggesting a new approach to the relationship between exploitation and injustice. The literature on exploitation so far has focussed almost exclusively on the question of the circumstances of exploitation. This paper, by contrast, consists in investigating a different question, namely: what are the motives of exploitation? There are two different types of motive behind the act of exploitation: to secure an economic gain by using another person to one's (...) advantage, and to humiliate and degrade another person for the sake of identifying with power. Understanding exploitation in terms of the latter motive enables us to see the injustice of exploitation from a different angle, pushing us beyond the narrow perspective (popular amongst Marxists) that tends to equate exploitation with the economics of an unfair exchange. (shrink)