Slippery slope argumentation features prominently in debates over assisted suicide. The jurisdiction of Oregon features prominently too, especially as regards parliamentary scrutiny of assisted suicide proposals. This paper examines Oregon’s public data (including certain official pronouncements) on assisted suicide in light of the two basic versions of the slippery slope argument, the empirical and moral-logical versions. Oregon’s data evidences some normatively interesting shifts in its assisted suicide practice which in turn prompts consideration of two elements of moral-logical slippage that are (...) not widely discussed. One is slippage from an initial autonomy-based public justification for assisted suicide which does not include burden-based concerns within its operative account of voluntariness to an evolved public justification that does. The other is an expansion of a terminal illness ground to include chronic illnesses effectively rendered terminal via a refusal of treatment. (shrink)

Christopher Cowley 1 has recently put forward three arguments against the legal accommodation of a general practitioner’s conscientious objection to abortion referrals. i He claims that the adoption of these arguments does not undermine a more general right to CO to involvement in abortion. I argue that Cowley is seriously mistaken. His three arguments, especially the second and third, proceed on a path directed towards the outright rejection of a right to CO in healthcare contexts. A common problem with Cowley’s (...) three arguments is that they overlook the peremptory significance for CO analysis of both the internal, deliberating perspective of those with a CO and the good of moral integrity. This paper supports the view that either there are strong prima facie grounds for holding that a right to CO extends in principle to the issue of referrals or the claim of a general right to CO is easily assailable. (shrink)

An intriguing though little noticed trend within moral theology over the last half century or so is the move towards re-conceptualising moral norms previously considered mandatory into ideals. The ideal-normative turn has been taken by official Catholic and Anglican ecclesial documents, in both cases as regards the closely related matters of marital permanence and extra/post-marital unions. Yet the turn has occurred with little or no scrutiny of the distinction at its heart, that between ideal and mandatory norms. This article applies (...) the distinction to an analysis of New Testament moral normativity, with particular focus on teachings on marriage. Through this examination core elements of New Testament normativity are clarified and the credibility of the ideal-normative turn as it pertains to marital permanence is thereby challenged. (shrink)

ABSTRACT“Ideals” are often invoked in contemporary theological discussion of moral norms, especially but not exclusively regarding norms of marriage/sex ethics. Seemingly absent from the discussion, however, is focused critical analysis of the distinction between ideal and mandatory normativity. Attempting to address this oversight, the following paper begins by highlighting a serious inconsistency between recent Catholic magisterial documents. It is proposed that the inconsistency is largely due to understanding the respective norms—relating to marriage and euthanasia—in divergent ways: per the very different (...) orders of ideal and mandatory normativity. After a philosophical clarification of the distinguishing features of ideal and mandatory normativity, one particularly indebted to the work of Joseph Raz, the paper illustrates how divergence between them operates to create the aforementioned magisterial inconsistency. This inconsistency is paralleled by neglect of—and consequent incoherence around—the ideal-mandatory norm distinction within wider moral theology. The last section considers how the distinction bears upon and helps illuminate the relationship between principles, rules, and rules' exceptions. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal Jonathan Pugh critiques the idea of intermediate ‘moral respect’ which some say is owed to embryos. This concept is inherent within the ‘principle of proportionality’, the principle that destructive research on embryos is permissable only if the research serves an important purpose. Pugh poses two specific questions to proponents of the idea of intermediate moral respect. This article argues that while the questions posed by Pugh are certainly pertinent to the debate, the hypothetical (...) responses he suggests to these questions do not quite get to the core of what is troublesome about the concept. The article suggests alternative responses to Pugh's questions in order to focus attention on more fundamental problems facing the idea of intermediate moral respect, while also pointing to how the intermediate moral respect proponent might best develop these responses. It goes on to argue that these hypothetical responses fail to answer convincingly the questions posed. More specifically, this article challenges two possible justifications for the distinct idea of intermediate moral respect, namely the argument from potentiality and an argument from the proportionality of fundamental moral status. The article also raises a dilemma inherent in the application of the principle of proportionality to cases involving beings to which intermediate moral respect is owed even where it is allowed, ex hypothesi, that both the category of intermediate moral respect and the general proportionality reasoning underpinning the principle of proportionality are basically cogent. This article thus develops and adds to the challenge laid down by Pugh to proponents of the idea of intermediate moral respect. (shrink)

The contemporary debate in phenomenology concerning the 'theological turn' raises the issue of the relationship between faith and reason. One of the foremost statements on the theological turn, that of Dominique Janicaud, is an affirmation of the faith—reason dichotomy in the context of phenomenology, specifically in relation to how thinkers like Emmanuel Levinas have abused the phenomenological project of its founder, Edmund Husserl. This article challenges the faith—reason dichotomy and shows that the role of faith in Levinas need not mark (...) him out as a deviant from Husserlian phenomenology. (shrink)

Background Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) designed to screen for fetal genetic conditions, is increasingly being implemented as a part of routine prenatal care screening in the United States (US). However, these advances in reproductive genetic technology necessitate empirical research on the ethical and social implications of NIPT among populations underrepresented in genetic research, particularly Black women with sickle cell disease (SCD).Methods Forty (N = 40) semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually with Black women in the US (19 participants with SCD; 21 (...) participants without SCD) from June 2021 to January 2022. We employed a qualitative approach to examine the study participants’ perceptions of the potential advancement of NIPT for screening SCD in the fetus. Data were analyzed using NVivo 12 qualitative software.Results The themes revealed the complexities involving the intersectional lived experiences of SCD, prenatal care, lack of synergy among health providers, and NIPT decision-making. The results further revealed that even when Black women have shared commonalities in their lived experiences while navigating SCD and motherhood, their perceptions of NIPT screening technologies are divergent.Conclusion Expanding the ethical discourse on the social implications of NIPT is critical to fully elucidate how Black women perceive NIPT’s utility, particularly as NIPT advances to screen for SCD in the fetus. Neglecting to include Black women with genetic conditions in empirical studies on NIPT may contribute to ongoing health inequities and limit and constrain reproductive choices among Black women with and without SCD. (shrink)

David Ekdahl (2023), in a constructive and thoughtful commentary, outlines both points of agreement with and suggestions for further research arising from our paper ‘Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far’ (Montefiore & Formosa, 2023).

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

The newly updated Right and Wrong 2nd Edition is an accessible introduction to the major traditions in western philosophical ethics, written in a lively and engaging style. It is designed for entry-level ethics courses and includes real-life ethical scenarios chosen to appeal directly to students. Greatly expanded and improved, this successful text introduces students to the major ethical traditions, and provides a simple methodology for resolving ethical dilemmas Treats teleological and deontological approaches to ethics as the two most important traditions, (...) but now includes chapters on virtue ethics and the ethics of care The very accessible writing style speaks directly to students’ own experience Draws examples from three types of real-life ethical scenarios submitted by students: academic dishonesty, partying, and personal relationships Provides a concise treatment of this notoriously complex subject, perfect for entry-level ethics and applied ethics courses. (shrink)

Mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers of physics often look to the symmetries of an object for insight into the structure and constitution of the object. My aim in this paper is to explain why this practice is successful. In order to do so, I present a collection of results that are closely related to (and in a sense, generalizations of) Beth’s and Svenonius’ theorems.

What are the truth conditions of want ascriptions? According to an influential approach, they are intimately connected to the agent’s beliefs: ⌜S wants p⌝ is true iff, within S’s belief set, S prefers the p worlds to the not-p worlds. This approach faces a well-known problem, however: it makes the wrong predictions for what we call (counter)factual want ascriptions, wherein the agent either believes p or believes not-p—for example, ‘I want it to rain tomorrow and that is exactly what is (...) going to happen’ or ‘I want this weekend to last forever, but of course it will end in a few hours’. We solve this problem. The truth conditions for want ascriptions are, we propose, connected to the agent’s conditional beliefs. We substantiate this connection by pursuing a striking parallel between (counter)factual and non-(counter)factual want ascriptions on the one hand and counterfactual and indicative conditionals on the other. (shrink)

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Personhood: A Start Are Dolphins Persons? Language and the Hand Personhood Redefined Conclusion: What Kind of Beings Are Dolphins?

This paper explores the idea of robust discursive equality on which respect-based conceptions of justificatory reciprocity often draw. I distinguish between formal and substantive discursive equality and argue that if justificatory reciprocity requires that people be accorded formally equal discursive standing, robust discursive equality should not be construed as requiring standing that is equal substantively, or in terms of its discursive purchase. Still, robust discursive equality is purchase sensitive: it does not obtain when discursive standing is impermissibly unequal in purchase. (...) I then showcase different candidate conceptions of purchase justice, and draw conclusions about the substantive commitments of justificatory reciprocity. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma is based on the intuitions that in single-player video games fictional acts of murder are seen as morally acceptable whereas fictional acts of sexual assault are seen as morally unacceptable. Recently, it has been suggested that these intuitions may apply across different forms of media as part of a broader Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. This study aims to empirically explore this issue by determining whether fictional murder is seen as more morally acceptable than fictional sexual (...) assault across different media types, and whether audio-visuality and the degree of agency afforded by the medium influences these judgments. An experimental survey study was developed where participants responded to imaginary fictional scenarios as part of a 2 (engages with fictional murder or fictional sexual assault) X 2 (in a high or low agency) X 2 (audio-visual or non-audio-visual medium) factorial design. It was found that fictional murder was seen to be more morally acceptable than fictional sexual assault across all media types, providing empirical support for the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. It was also found that the audio-visuality and degree of agency influenced judgments of moral acceptability. (shrink)

Die einfache Entgegensetzung von Vernunft und Religion wirkt nach der Religionskritik des 19. Jahrhunderts und der Vernunftkritik des 20. Jahrhunderts philosophisch naiv und historisch unaufgeklart. Dadurch fallt aber ein neues Licht auf das Projekt der Gottesbeweise, die fur die Religion zentrale Gottesvorstellung dem Denken argumentativ zuganglich zu machen. Die Autoren der hier versammelten Uberlegungen beleuchten auf je eigene Weise die traditionellen und aktuellen Gottesbeweise mit dem leitenden systematischen Erkenntnisinteresse, ein neues Verstandnis von Vernunft und Religion zu gewinnen. Mit Beitragen von: (...) Svend Andersen, Thomas Buchheim, Markus Enders, Markus Gabriel, Jens Halfwassen, Friedrich Hermanni, Gunnar Hindrichs, Axel Hutter, Christian Illies, Anton Friedrich Koch, Armin Kreiner, John Leslie, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Friedo Ricken SJ, Friedrike Schick, Rolf Schonberger, Christoph Schwobel, Robert Spaemann, Richard Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume questions one of the most fundamental tenets of social theory by focusing on detachment, an important but neglected aspect of social life. Going against the grain of recent theoretical celebrations of engagement, this book challenges us to re-think the relational basis of social theory. In so, doing it brings to light the productive aspects of disconnection, distance and detachment. Rather than treating detachment simply as the moral inversion of compassion and engagement, the volume brings together empirical studies (...) and theoretical comments by leading anthropologists, sociologists and science studies scholars. Taken together, these illustrate the range of contexts within which distance and disconnection can offer meaningful frameworks for action. Positioned at the cutting edge of social theory, this landmark volume will be of great interest to students and academics across the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Responsible innovation (RI), also termed Responsible Research and Innovation, has emerged due to increasing concern over how to integrate ethical and societal values into research and innovation policy and governance (Von Schomberg 2013), in response to questioning of the societal role of science as well as populist resurgence in some countries (Long and Blok 2017a). Within a RI approach, innovators must consider three dimensions of responsibility, including the dimensions of (1) ‘avoiding harm’ to people and the planet, (2) ‘doing good’ (...) through the offering of innovations that foster sustainable development, and (3) the development of facilitative global governance schemes (Voegtlin and Scherer 2017). (shrink)

We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood—one invoking genetic resemblance, and the other genetic inheritance—and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes’ second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.

Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book, which is a childrens' picture book, provides an excellent opportunity to discuss metaphysics. The book opens up for our reflection the viability of a certain metaphysical account of the nature of objects. In making a distinction between the important feature or property of an object and all the others that it simply is or has, The Important Book operates with the assumption that all objects have what metaphysicians call an essential property. As the book (...) has it, while there are many things that are true of any object, only one is essential to it. These other things are accidents or non‐essential properties of the object. Essentialism is the metaphysical view that objects have one property — their essential property — that cannot change while the object remains the same thing. (shrink)

The chapter talks about Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, which is a favorite of many children, adults, and teachers. The story of a relationship between a boy and a tree is charming for, despite the vicissitudes of the relationship, the two end up together at the end, with the boy — now an old man — sitting contentedly on the tree — itself reduced to a mere stump. The book raises an important issue in the field of environmental ethics. It (...) asks us to recognize that between childhood and old age, people operating within the Western tradition of ethics are not mindful of the value that the non‐human beings in their environment have for them as well as for future generations. Harkening to such warnings, environmental ethicists have attempted to raise important issues about our relationship with the other beings that make up our world. (shrink)

The Sneetches by Theodor Geisel (otherwise known as Dr Seuss) is a satirical story that targets illicit discrimination. The book presents its parable about discrimination by depicting a society in which one group discriminates against another group because of an easily perceptible difference between them. The real irrationality of discrimination in both The Sneetches and real life is that it is based on the false claim that members of the discriminated‐against group are inferior to members of the discriminating group. The (...) book ends with all of the Sneetches playing with one another, paying no attention to the presence or absence of stars on their bellies. The lesson that children draw from The Sneetches is clear: Discriminating against people in a different social group is wrong. (shrink)

Shrek! focuses on an issue in the philosophy of language, a relatively new area of philosophical investigation that first emerged during the twentieth century. Some philosophers disagree with the claim that you cannot separate the descriptive and evaluative elements of linguistic statements. This is because they take descriptive statements to be the basic elements of language, to which our subjective attitudes get attached later in a contingent manner. At its most basic level language presents a symbolic picture of facts in (...) the world. Shrek! presents what philosophers call a thought experiment that purports to show that the descriptive and evaluative contents of sentences are really distinct. The chapter ends by suggesting how to discuss the philosophy of language with children. (shrink)

In Daniel Manus Pinkwater's quirkily illustrated book, The Big Orange Splot, a strange accident leads a man to change his life. The book presents an important claim that the existentialists and other philosophers have embraced: That the life of conformity is one that people ought to avoid, despite its attractiveness. Instead of living a life just like everyone else and fulfilling expectations that others have for us, our lives should resemble the transformed facades of all the homes on Mr. Plumbean's (...) street: reflections of our own, individual dreams. (shrink)

Robert Mursch's picture book, The Paper Bag Princess, inverts many of the gender roles traditionally found in fairy tales: It's a prince (Roland) who gets abducted in this story, not a princess, though it's the princess (Elizabeth) who must come to the rescue and save him. Although these reversals are a source of the book's humor, they also underscore claims made in feminist philosophy, the specific branch of social and political philosophy considered in this chapter. Feminist philosophers and literary scholars (...) have pointed out that happy endings reassert harmful gender norms. Elizabeth's rejection of Roland marks her as a truly feminist hero, for she won't let him treat her in a demeaning manner even though she has staked her own life on saving him. With this story, you can hopefully steer children into a discussion of gender bias and oppression, and how traditional stories function to support it. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Human Adaptations to the Water: An Exercise in Imagination Life in the ocean: the importance of other people Dolphin Intelligence in the Wild Dolphin Communication Social Intelligence and Group Cohesion Dolphins and Sex The Cognitive and Affective Skills Involved in Group Living Conclusion: Dolphin Intelligence.

This chapter contains section titled: “Human” Versus “Person” Human, Person and Ethics Philosophical Ethics Ethics and Nonhumans “Alien Intelligence” Two Questions.

This chapter contains section titled: “Interspecies ethics” The Dolphin/Tuna Controversy Dolphins in Captivity So What Do We Do? The Ethics of Human/Dolphin Contact: Two Final Thoughts.

It is often presumed by those who use propositions in their theories that propositions are representational; that is, that propositions represent the world as being some way. This paper makes two claims against this presumption. First, it argues that it does not follow from the fact that propositions play the theoretical roles usually attributed to them that they are representational. This conclusion is reached by rebutting three arguments that can be made in support of the claim that propositions are representational. (...) This paper then advances the further claim that propositions are not representational. It considers several ways to overcome the difficulties traditionally associated with this claim, particularly how to account for falsity. (shrink)

Studies the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and his influence on Protestant theology, philology, and on literary and philosophical history and criticism in Europe.

Though it enjoys widespread support, the claim that perceptual experiences possess nonconceptual content has been vigorously disputed in the recent literature by those who argue that the content of perceptual experience must be conceptual content. Nonconceptualism and conceptualism are often assumed to be well-defined theoretical approaches that each constitute unitary claims about the contents of experience. In this paper I try to show that this implicit assumption is mistaken, and what consequences this has for the debate about perceptual experience. I (...) distinguish between two different ways that nonconceptualist proposals about perceptual content can be understood: as claims about the constituents that compose perceptual contents or as claims about whether a subject’s undergoing experiences with those contents requires them to possess the concepts that characterize those contents. I maintain that these ways of understanding conceptualism and nonconceptualism are orthogonal to one another. This is revealed by the conceptual coherence of positions in which the contents of experiences have both conceptual and nonconceptual features; positions which possess their own distinctive sources of philosophical motivation. I argue that the fact that there is a place in conceptual space for such positions, and that there may be good reason for theorists to adopt them, creates difficulties for both the central argument for nonconceptualism and the central argument for conceptualism. I set out each of these arguments; the Argument from Possession-Independence and the Epistemically-Driven Argument. I then try to show how the existence of mixed positions about perceptual content derived from a clear distinction between compositional and possessional considerations constitutes a significant obstacle for those arguments as they stand. The takehome message of the paper is that unless one clearly acknowledges the distinction between issues about the composition of perceptual content and issues about how subject’s capacities to undergo certain experiences relates to their possession of concepts one runs the risk of embracing unsatisfying philosophical arguments in which conclusions relevant to one conception of nonconceptual and conceptual content are grounded on arguments that concern only the other; arguments that cannot, in themselves, sustain them. (shrink)

Digital technologies can be an asset to serving communities and societies through data analytics and management to achieve greater good. However, care must be exercised in that societies without digital access do not get overlooked or, worse, face abuses of privacy disclosure or exploitation. Regulations exist to prevent this happening, but ethical considerations are important in deciding in what is allowable and what is not. The further risk of artificial intelligence where computers start to make autonomous decisions and the vulnerabilities (...) we are exposed to is considered. Steps are proposed to develop an ethics-based digital strategy and how to mitigate cyber risk. (shrink)

In public reason liberalism, equal respect requires that conceptions of justice be publicly justifiable to relevant people in a manner that allocates to each an equal say. But all liberal public justification also excludes: e.g., it accords no say, or a lesser say, to people it deems unreasonable. Can liberal public justification be aligned with the equal respect that allegedly grounds it, if the latter calls for discursive equality? The chapter explores this challenge with a focus on Rawls-type political liberalism. (...) I suggest that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect can cohere with the standing of the unreasonable in public justification if that standing is not impermissibly unequal in discursive purchase. I then consider one candidate view of the permissibility of purchase inequality. On this broadly sufficientarian view, purchase inequality is permissible provided relevant people have standing of enough purchase to be able to avoid relevant bads. A plausible variant of this view suggests that political liberalism’s commitment to equal respect does not cohere with the discursive standing of the unreasonable. It emerges that where liberal public justification accords actual people discursive respect but relevantly idealizes at least around its fringes, the permissibility of purchase inequality must be a central concern. (shrink)

Responding to the provocative phrase ‘The Age of Grammatology’, I propose to question the notion of ‘age’, and to interrogate the powers or forces, the dynameis or dynasties attached to the interpretative model of historical periodisation. How may we think the undeniable actuality of the event beyond the sempiternal history of ages, and beyond the traditional, onto-teleological chain of power, possibility, force or dynamis that undergirds such history?

This thesis is about the metaphysics of logic. I argue against a view I refer to as ‘logical realism’. This is the view that the logical constants represent a particular kind of metaphysical structure, which I dub ‘logico-metaphysical structure’. I argue instead for a more metaphysically lightweight view of logic which I dub ‘logical expressivism’. -/- In the first part of this thesis (Chapters I and II) I argue against a number of arguments that Theodore Sider has given for logical (...) realism. In Chapter I, I present an argument of his to the effect that logico-metaphysical structure provides the only good explanation of the semantic determinacy of the logical constants. I argue that other explanations are possible. In Chapter II, I present another argument of his to the effect that logico-metaphysical structure is something that comes along with ontological realism: the view that there is a non-language-relative fact of the matter about what exists. I argue that the connection between logical and ontological realism is not as close as Sider makes it out to be. -/- In the second part of this thesis (Chapters III – V) I set out a positive view of the logical constants that can explain both why their meanings are semantically determinate, and why they form part of our vocabulary. On that view, the primary bearers of logical structure are propositional attitudes, and the logical constants are in our language as vehicles for the expression of logically complex propositional attitudes. In Chapter III, I set out an expressivist theory of propositional logic. In Chapter IV, I use this theory to explain how the logical connectives end up having determinate meanings. In Chapter V, I extend the expressivist theory to predicate logic. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss several arguments against non‐therapeutic mutilation. Interventions into bodily integrity, which do not serve a therapeutic purpose and are not regarded as aesthetically acceptable by the majority, e.g. tongue splitting, branding and flesh stapling, are now practised, but, however, are still seen as a kind of ‘aberration’ that ought not to be allowed. I reject several arguments for a possible ban on these body modifications. I find the common pathologisation of body modifications, Kant's argument of duties (...) to oneself and the objection from irrationality all wanting. In conclusion, I see no convincing support for prohibition of voluntary mutilations. (shrink)