Risk, ethics and compliance requirements are a daily reality for most organisations. Regulators and stakeholders (including employees) demand more of most organisations, from equality, to anti-corruption, to supply chain ethics. Start-ups stutter and unicorns crash to earth when they get risk wrong. What should be done? Where should you start? How can risk management enable, not hinder, the organization's strategic goals? This book answers these questions -- rightsizing risk for every organization -- using frontline-tested tools, tips, and techniques. Whether you're (...) a purpose-driven changemaker or just struggling to comply with a seemingly unending stream of regulation, we will make risk work for you. (shrink)

Government lawyers and other public officials sometimes face an excruciating moral dilemma: to stay on the job or to quit, when the government is one they find morally abhorrent. Staying may make them complicit in evil policies; it also runs the danger of inuring them to wrongdoing, just as their presence on the job helps inure others. At the same time, staying may be their only opportunity to mitigate those policies – to make evils into lesser evils – (...) and to uphold the rule of law when it is under assault. This Article explores that dilemma in a stark form: through the moral biographies of two lawyers in the Third Reich, both of whom stayed on the job, and both of whom can lay claim to mitigating evil. One, Helmuth James von Moltke, was an anti-Nazi, and a martyr of the resistance; the other, Bernhard Lösener, was a Nazi by conviction who nevertheless claimed to have secretly fought against the persecution of Jews from the improbable post of legal adviser on Jewish matters. The Article critically examines their careers and self-justifications. It frames its analysis through two philosophical arguments: Hannah Arendt’s stern injunction that staying on the job is self-deception or worse, because like it or not, obedience is support; and a contemporary analysis of moral complicity by Chiara Lepora and Robert Goodin. The chief question, with resonance today as well as historically, is whether Arendt is right – and, if not, under what conditions lesser-evilism can succeed. This article will appear in a symposium with comments by Leora Bilsky and Natalie Davidson, Kathleen Clark, Erica Newland, and Shannon Prince. (shrink)

This essay addresses what we can call epistemology’s Prime Evils. These are the three demons epistemologists have conjured that are the most troublesome and the most difficult to dispel: Descartes’ classic demon; Lehrer and Cohen’s New Evil Demon; and Schaffer’s Debasing Demon. These demons threaten the epistemic statuses of our beliefs—in particular, the statuses of knowledge and justification—and they present challenges for our theories of these epistemic statuses. This paper explains the key features of these three central demons, highlights (...) their family resemblances and differences, and attempts to show that a certain kind of internalist view of justification provides the resources to handle these demons well. (shrink)

This article distinguishes and evaluates the various forms of legal moralism from a liberal vantage point. It devotes special attention to the most plausible form of the theory, That which is often called "the conservative thesis," and to that supporting argument which is based on the need to prevent "freefloating social-Change evils." freefloating evils are defined as evils that are imputable to human beings but which do not give rise to personal grievances as harms, Offenses, And "harmless (...) exploitative injustices" do. I conclude that the need to prevent such evils is a relevant, But generally inferior, Reason for coercion. (shrink)

What remains of moral judgment when truth itself is mistrusted, when the validity of every belief system depends on its context, when power and knowledge are inextricably entangled? Is a viable moral theory still possible in the wake of the postmodern criticism of modern philosophy? The Order of Evils responds directly to these questions and dilemmas with one simple and brilliant change of focus. Rather than concentrating on the age-old themes of justice and freedom, Adi Ophir offers a moral (...) theory that emphasizes the existential and political nature of evil. Ophir's main contention is that evil is neither a diabolical element residing in the hearts of men nor a meaningless absence of the good. Rather, it is the socially structured order of "superfluous evils." Evils, like pain, suffering, loss, and humiliation, are superfluous when they could have been -- but were not -- prevented. Through close analysis of seminal works by modern and postmodern philosophers -- from Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Sartre, and Arendt to Foucault, Levinas, Derrida, and Lyotard -- Ophir forges a new perspective for thinking about what it means to be a moral being: to be moral, he argues, is to care for others, and to be committed to preventing, at all costs, their suffering and distress.A theoretically sophisticated work, The Order of Evils also bears the traces of Ophir's own political and personal experiences as an Israeli philosopher and activist. Two major events in recent Jewish history have profoundly influenced his thinking: the Holocaust and the prolonged Israeli domination of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Ophir does not compare the two events. Instead, he introduces a typology of disasters that allows them to be located within the wide spectrum of humanly generated calamities whose specificity and general patterns emerge clearly and distinctly as what they are and are not. (shrink)

Transhumanism is a scientific and philosophical movement that proposes to overcome, through new technologies, the restrictions imposed on us by our biological condition. Some transhumanists assume that the struggle against natural limits could lead to a radical change in our body or even to its replacement. Other authors, such as Nicholas Agar, propose a moderate enhancement that does not exceed the framework of what we understand to be human. In this article, I will offer a plausible interpretation of the project (...) of human enhancement from a Thomistic perspective. To carry out my analysis, I will focus on three fundamental metaphysical and anthropological questions: How do advocates of radical enhancement understand the relationship between limits, imperfections and evils in human nature? How is this relationship understood from moderate positions? And Is any of these proposals compatible with Aquinas’ anthropology? I will conclude that the identification of limits with imperfections and evils assumed by radical positions is incompatible with Aquinas’ anthropology. Nevertheless, this does not entail that any bio-modification is unacceptable. Aquinas’ peculiar metaphysics, together with its anthropology in which the natural, the supernatural and the preternatural realms intertwine, can offer an interesting framework to assess the human enhancement project. (shrink)

1. Comparing the weight of different evils is highly problematic; neither a positivist, interpretive account nor an exclusively aspirational account is satisfactory. 2. Alexander is correct that choosing a lesser evil is sometimes a mandate, not a mere permission, but the point has wider application than he indicates. 3. Is a choice of lesser but not least evil justifiable? Alexander’s affirmative answer is only partially convincing. 4. Alexander endorses a striking claim: the very notion of a reckless belief or (...) reckless mistake (as to the factual grounds for a justification) is incoherent. This claim is insupportable, but the flaws in his argument demonstrate the complexity of the concept of reckless belief, especially in the context of justification defenses, where the probabilistic aspect of the distinction between permissible and impermissible risk-taking is especially salient. 5. Alexander aptly notes that the legislatively preclusion doctrine (which denies application of the lesser evils defense) creates a fundamental tension between legal actors’ power to articulate the content of the defense and the democratic pedigree of the criminal law. I conclude that genuinely democratic principles can be served by permitting juries considerable latitude to recognize a defense when the legislature has not yet had occasion to formulate an exception, or even, in some cases, by authorizing de facto civil disobedience. (shrink)

I am persuaded both by the theory of evil advanced by Claudia Card in The Atrocity Paradigm and by the idea that there are evils done to the environment; however, I argue that the theory of evil she describes has difficulty living up to her claim that it "can make sense of ecological evils the victims of which include trees and even ecosystems" (2002, 16). In this paper, I argue that Card's account of evil does not accommodate the (...) kinds of harms inflicted on ecosystems and such nonhuman individuals as trees. I consider the possibility that Card intends a much broader version of evils than the language of the atrocity paradigm lets on, with its attention to sentience and dignity. I'm so persuaded by the atrocity paradigm, however, that I retain the centrality of suffering and introduce the idea that atrocities are intuitively massive, that is, done to groups or generations and not an individual person, animal or tree, so that the paradigm encourages us to think of evil as it relates to far more holistic entities which include the sentient. Evil may require the sort of suffering that only sentience can give rise to, which is not to say we let out trees but says rather that it is impossible to identify wrongs to ecosystems and groups that are not also intertwined with the fates of their sentient dependents. I conclude that Card is right to emphasize victims' suffering as a chief component of evil, and that the ontology of what constitutes a victim must be interpreted broadly, not the notion of suffering. (shrink)

In 1937 Joan Robinson proposed that “when capitalism is rightly understood, the rate of interest will be set at zero and the major evils of capitalism will disappear”. A permanent zero rate would abolish capitalist profit except in limited cases, leaving nearly all output to be claimed by labour as wages. It would allow capital to be allocated on the basis of prospective social benefit rather than short-term profitability and a collateral basis that favours the wealthy. It would remove (...) some of the economic pressure to use resources unsustainably. So why not do this? I argue that the few available philosophical arguments for positive interest rates are unsatisfactory. Those who want a just and sustainable form of capitalism should target net zero for the interest rate. (shrink)

The release of over 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes (GMM) into uninhabited Malaysian forests in 2010 was a frantic step on the part of the Malaysian government to combat the spread of dengue fever. The field trial was designed to control and reduce the dengue vector by producing offspring that die in the early developmental stage, thus decreasing the local Aedes aegypti population below the dengue transmission threshold. However, the GMM trials were discontinued in Malaysia despite being technologically feasible. The lack (...) of systematic studies in terms of cost-benefit analysis, questionable research efficacy and safety-related concerns might have contributed to the termination of the field trial. Hence, this research aims to evaluate the feasibility of GMM release in Malaysia by using a holistic approach based on an Islamic ethical-legal assessment under the maslahah-mafsadah (benefit-risk) concept. Three main strategies based on the maslahah-mafsadah concept approach have been applied: 1) an evidence-based approach, 2) an impact-based approach and, 3) a priority approach. The analysis concluded that GMM could be categorised as zanniyyah (probable). GMM is a promising alternative for dengue control, but many issues must be addressed before its widespread adoption. (shrink)

The traditional accounts of pain’s intrinsic badness assume a false view of what pains are. Insofar as they are normatively significant, pains are not just painful sensations. A pain is a composite of a painful sensation and a set of beliefs, desires, emotions, and other mental states. A pain’s intrinsic properties can include inter alia depression, anxiety, fear, desires, feelings of helplessness, and the pain’s meaning. This undermines the traditional accounts of pain’s intrinsic badness. Pain is intrinsically bad in two (...) distinct and historically unnoticed ways. First, most writers hold that pain’s intrinsic badness lies either in its unpleasantness or in its being disliked. Given my wider conception of pain, I believe it is both. Pain’s first intrinsic evil lies in a conjunction of all the traditional candidates for its source. Pain’s second intrinsic evil lies in the way it necessarily undermines the self-control necessary for intrinsic goods like autonomy. (shrink)

In Practical Ethics Peter Singer argues for an ‘obligation to assist’: First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it. Second premise: Absolute poverty is bad. Third premise: There is some absolute poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. Conclusion: We ought to prevent some absolute poverty. This paper is dedicated to a criticism of four readings of the first premise and an undesirable link the first (...) premise has with the third. The paper ends by offering a alternative formulation of an ‘obligation to assist,’ which suffers from none of these problems. (shrink)

Many atheists argue that because gratuitous evil exists, God (probably) doesn’t. But doesn’t this commit atheists to wishing that God did exist, and to the pro-theist view that the world would have been better had God existed? This doesn’t follow. I argue that if all that evil still remains but is just no longer gratuitous, then, from an atheist perspective, that wouldn’t have been better. And while a counterfactual from which that evil is literally absent would have been impersonally better, (...) it wouldn’t have been better for anyone, not even for those who suffered such evils. (shrink)

Dormandy argues that stubborn counterevidence provides a reason for Evidentialists to form negative beliefs about God. Focusing on ‘horrendous evils’ as a kind of stubborn counterevidence, I discuss two possible interpretations of Dormandy’s account (a stronger and a weaker view). Against the stronger view, I consider the case of a Committed Theistic Evidentialist, that is, an evidentialist who possesses a defeater belief against horrendous evils. I argue that it would be improbable that she would form negative beliefs about (...) God on the basis of horrendous evils alone. I consider the response of a Committed Theistic Evidentialist towards horrendous evils, arguing that for her, ‘honesty’, which results in a psychological struggle, is an excellent-making property of her faith. (shrink)

This chapter supposes that certain bads are necessary for substantial goods, and poses the question of how one ought to react emotionally to such bads. In recent work, Robert Adams is naturally read as contending that one ought to exhibit positive emotions such as gladness towards certain ‘necessary evils’. A rationale he suggests for this view is that love for a person, which involves viewing the beloved as good, requires being glad about what is necessary for her to exist, (...) even if it is something bad such as a war that should be hated considered apart from being required for her existence. I critically discuss this argument, aiming to enrich understanding of the implications of the normativity of love for proper emotions towards necessary evil. (shrink)

The practice of killing day-old chicks in the Dutch egg sector is a recurrent subject of societal debate. Preventing the killing of young animals and in ovo sex determination are the two main alternatives for this problem available. An online questionnaire was held to ask the opinion of the Dutch public about these alternatives. The results show that no alternative will be fully accepted, or accepted by more than half of Dutch society. However, the survey does provide an insight to (...) what people think is important for their choice: food safety and a good treatment of animals. Irrespective of the alternative chosen, these values should be safeguarded and communicated clearly. (shrink)

Virtually all monotheistic religions profess that there is a divine being who is extremely powerful, knowledgeable, and good. The evils of this world present various challenges for such religions. The starkest challenge is directed toward views that posit a being whose power, knowledge, and goodness are not just immense, but are as great as can be: an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being (for short, an oopg being). For it would seem that such a being would have the power, (...) the knowledge, and the moral disposition to prevent any evil whatsoever, and from this one might readily conclude that if there were such a being, there would be no evil at all. On one version of this challenge, the coexistence of evil with a God defined in this way is claimed to be logically impossible. This has come to be called the logical problem of evil. Another is that the existence of such a God is improbable given the evils of this world, or at least that the existence of these evils significantly lowers the probability that such an oopg God exists. The concern expressed is that these evils provide good evidence against the existence of such a God. This version is known as the evidential problem of evil. (shrink)

Replying to James Sterba’s argument for the incompatibility of the world’s evils with the existence of the God of traditional theism, I argue for their compatibility, using the proposition that God has reasons for permitting these evils. Developing this case involves appeal to an enlarged version of both the Free Will Defence and Hick’s Vale of Soul-Making Defence, in the context of God’s decision to generate the kind of natural regularities conducive to the evolution of a range of (...) creatures, including free and rational ones. Sterba writes as if God would be required to authorise frequent infringements of these regularities. Sterba’s arguments from ethics and from the inadequacy of post-mortem compensation are problematised. Predicates used of God must bear a sense appropriate to the level of creator, and not of a very powerful cosmic observer. The ethics that applies within creation should not be confused with the ethics of creating. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account of the intrinsic goodness of virtue and intrinsic evil of vice that can fit within a consequentialist framework. This treats the virtues and vices as higher-level intrinsic values, ones that consist in, respectively, appropriate and inappropriate attitudes to other, lower-level values. After presenting the main general features of the account, the paper illustrates its strengths by showing how it illuminates a series of particular vices. In the course of doing so, it distinguishes between the categories (...) of what it calls pure vices, vices of indifference, and vices of disproportion, and shows how each category is made vicious by a different general feature of the recursive account. (shrink)

In Ophir’s account, evil is not an absence, nor a diabolic supernatural intervention. It is instead a regular part of the world. We produce evil somewhat as we produce smog, as a byproduct of our economy. Reversing business as usual in moral theory, Ophir recognizes evil as a more important moral category than the Good. It is more important, morally, to prevent or limit superfluous evils—preventable suffering or loss—than to worry about the Right and the Good. Justice, fairness, equality, (...) and autonomy are displaced from the center of moral thought and practice, replaced by compassion, solidarity, gift, and sacrifice. This is a deep and deeply moving book, a masterpiece of philosophy, undoubtedly the best work ever written about evil. (shrink)

Why Does Inequality Matter?is the long-awaited book-length development of T. M. Scanlon's views on objectionable inequality, and our obligations to eliminate or reduce it. The book presents an impressively nuanced and thoughtful analysis as well as succinct explanations of different objections to various forms of inequality. It is not only set to further cement Scanlon's influence on philosophical debates about equality but also makes a good guide to the problems of inequality for the nonspecialist reader. The book is not without (...) faults, however. Even within a pluralist approach to inequality such as Scanlon's, it is not sufficiently clear what, if anything, his specific objections to status inequality, and to control over other people's lives, have in common with his other egalitarian objections to inequality of political influence, opportunity, and income and wealth—or whether, in the case of control, the objection is egalitarian at all. (shrink)

We develop and knit together several theodicies in order to find a more complete picture of why certain forms of animal suffering might be permitted by a perfect being. We focus on an especially potent form of the problem of evil, which arises from considering why a perfectly good, wise, and powerful God might use evolutionary mechanisms that predictably result in so much animal suffering and loss of life. There are many existing theodicies on the market, and although they offer (...) helpful resources, we combine and further develop several proposals to produce a composite theodicy that avoids certain shortcomings of the individual theodicies. An important element of our project is locating a role for randomness in cosmic and biological evolution. In particular, we show how randomness might enhance or enable certain goods, including everlasting goods, at the risk of temporary evils. (shrink)