Moral Value, Misc

“Call no one happy until they are dead.” “Never speak ill of the dead.” If we still heed the injunctions of Solon and Chilon of Sparta, then obituaries, which represent a prominent way of expressing the human universal of grief, are a resource for philosophical anthropology. Philosophers have emphasized that we can determine what counts as a virtue for a given type of person in a given cultural context by analyzing what people say about the dead (Zagzebski 1996, p. 135). (...) Such judgments summarize the deceased’s life and place it in a meaningful narrative context. This is why practitioners of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ask patients to write their own obituaries: doing so helps people clarify what they value, how they want to live, and what their lives mean (Hayes et al. 2011). Moreover, praising the dead is a way of a performatively identifying with them; this is presumably why Aristotle said that Plato was a “man whom bad men have no right to praise” (Jaeger 1927). In well-known mourning texts from ancient Greece, Pericles and Plato compete to structure the meaning and value of Athenian citizenship by telling the story of recently-deceased soldiers in a way that emphasizes either their courage (in the case of Pericles) or their dedication to justice (in the case of Plato). Both understand that how we choose to remember the deceased expressively constitutes both individual and collective values, sentiments, and relationships. Pericles uses the occasion of patriotic grief to call for public recommitment to war and conflict with Sparta and her allies. Plato uses the same occasion to reorient Athens to justice, with militarism and empire side-lighted as merely sometimes instrumental to that higher value. Thus, obituaries and poetic elegies reveal a culture’s values, virtues, and constituents of wellbeing. Speaking well of the dead enables us to tell the story both of individuals who have passed away and of the cultures that shaped them and in which they participated. In so doing, we weave those we held dear into the fabric of human nature, human achievement, and human possibility. The present work contributes to our understanding of the rich tapestry of human values and virtues by examining and comparing obituaries, elegies, eulogies, and other funerary texts. In this book, we analyze such efforts to speak well of the dead. One of our guiding themes is the way in which the gender of the speaker and the deceased inflect the values and virtues transmitted by these texts. Starting in ancient Athens and the Eastern Han dynasty, we trace the virtues and values associated with different types of people in distinct cultures. We document both similarities and differences across geographic distance, era, gender, age, class, and other demographic categories. Subsequent chapters cover the Renaissance in Europe and the late Imperial period in China, before moving on to modernity. The book concludes with a philosophical reflection on the ethics of grief and mourning, drawing on diverse sources from Antigone to contemporary research on digital graveyards. Throughout, we employ new digital humanities tools that we have developed to aggregate, compare, and visualize a vast repository of necrologies: over twenty million texts from recent decades, as well as hundreds of texts from previous periods. (shrink)

When we quote Luther’s dictum, “Here I stand. I can do no other,” we refer to the composure of someone who experiences the necessity to follow a particular course of action against all odds. The incapacity of alternative action is not regarded as a deficit; in such cases, it seems to “lend some added weight” to the decision. This paper deals with the question what kind of value is attributed to experiences of practical necessities or incapacities, in particular, if these (...) derive from an individual’s psychological “structure” and the limits of someone’s personality. Finally, it distinguishes between different types of added weight that are related to different forms of personal and normative necessities. This weight can be legitimately attributed to the virtue of standing for something and being an example of what everybody should do, but it can also be attributed to the valid claim of standing by the demarcation line of one’s personality and defending it against the threat of losing oneself. (shrink)

Abstract -/- Many philosophers and non-philosophers are attracted to the view that moral truths are relative to moral framework or culture. I distinguish between two versions of such a view. I argue that one version is coherent but not plausible, and I argue that the second one can’t be made sense of. The upshot is that we have to make sense of at least some objective moral truths.

What does it mean to be a morally good person? It can be tempting to think that it is simply a matter of performing certain actions and avoiding others. And yet there is much more to moral character than our outward actions. We expect a good person to not only behave in certain ways but also to experience the world in certain ways within.

“Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world.” Sri Aurobindo -/- India was always rich in the establishment of centers even in Vedic times where the first principles of education were to be found in the Ashrams and Gurukuls and later on in the great universities of Nalanda and Taxila. The term education usually refers to the technical sense and is generally limited to the context of teachers instructing students. (...) Teachers may draw on many subjects, including reading, writing, mathematics, science and history. The true aim and principle of national education according to Sri Aurobindo is to take our culture as its foundation while not ignoring modern truth and knowledge. Education provides conditions for all human beings towards their divine perfection and to achieve the power, the harmony, the beauty and joy of self-realisation. According to him education brings out, “to full advantage, makes ready for the full purpose and scope of human life all that is in the individual man, and which at the same time helps him to enter his right relations with the life, mind and soul of the people to which he himself is a unit and his people or nation a living, a separate and yet inseparable member.”(Sri Aurobindo, Vol.17, p.198) -/- -/- In this approach we can study his ideas on the nature of education and objectives of education, its basic principles, how we develop curriculum for students, methods of teaching etc. Besides this we can also study the role of students and responsibility of a teacher to student’s education. Because according to him the teacher is only a guide and he shows the pupils how to perfect their instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages them in this process. Instead of imparting knowledge he shows how to acquire knowledge for himself. A teacher must be a student, so that he can understand student’s problems, motivate them to solve their problems and helps in the development of successful life. (shrink)

Current Controversies in Political Philosophy brings together an international team of leading philosophers to explore and debate four key and dynamic issues in the field in an accessible way. Should we all be cosmopolitans? – Gillian Brock and Cara Nine Are rights important? – Rowan Cruft and Sonu Bedi Is sexual objectification wrong and, if so, why? – Lina Papadaki and Scott Anderson What to do about climate change? – Alexa Zellentin and Thom Brooks These questions are the focus of (...) intense debate. Preliminary chapter descriptions, bibliographies following each chapter, and annotated guides to supplemental readings help provide clearer and richer snapshots of active controversy for all readers. (shrink)

In the last decade the systems approach to agricultural research has begun to subsume the older reductionist approaches. However, proponents of the systems approach often accept without critical examination a number of features that were inherited from previously accepted approaches. In particular, supporters of the systems approach frequently ignore the ironies and tragedies that are a part of all human endeavors. They may also fail to consider that all actual systems are temporally and spatially bounded. By incorporating such features into (...) a systems perspective, it becomes possible to consider them as involving the manipulation of things, the reconstruction of institutions, and the reformulation of policies in accordance with democratic goals and objectives as part of a single web of interrelationships. (shrink)

This paper discusses the recent trend in economics to reintroduce consideration of happiness or subjective well-being. The concept of happiness is discussed and a number of uses of "happiness" are distinguished. Several theories regarding the life use of "happiness" are identified. Some of the ways in which happiness is characterized in recent economic literature are discussed and critiqued. Helpful implications of a richer conception of happiness in understanding significant findings in recent studies, as well as the "paradoxes of happiness," are (...) noted. (shrink)

Institutionalized and internalized, competence intersubjectivity contain many user-illusions and an imaginary or manifest image of reality, including of themselves (Dennett and Sellars),. This can be contrasted we a comprehension or comprehensive, understanding intersubjectivity. It is possible and perhaps even necessary to transform or replace the competence intersubjectivity to a comprehension or understanding (scientific, Dennett and Sellars) image of reality and themselves.Ethics and morality and studies of ethics and morality deal with the reality of competence intersubjectivity (by means of socio-cultural practices (...) that are derived from, based on an created by means of this restrictive, misleading, unreal, illusory, unrealistic intersubjectivity and the life-worlds associated with it) and human life-worlds constituted on the basis of and in terms of this intersubjectivity. This is why I am a nihilist, a libertarian, at least a minarchist or rather an anarchist and epistemologically a sceptic. Kant’s things in themselves are similar to Dennett and Searle’s notions of manifest and scientific image. With my addition that we are socialized and internalize the competent, know how to do it, institutionalized manifest, everyday intersubjectivity, instead of the comprehension, insights and understanding knowing that, scientific intersubjectivity of all scientific disciplines. This piece can be read as independent as comments on meta-ethics, or it can be read as a chapter in my Book ‘Intersubjectivity (continued)’, or it can be read as an introduction to my thoughts on philosophy and more specifically Intersubjectivity as – Determining the nature of philosophy Determining the nature of the subject-matter of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, aspects of cognitive sciences, ethics, epistemology, etc, Determining the nature of philosophical methodology and approaches. (shrink)

In der Medizin gehören Kinder neben Ausländern, Behinderten und psychiatrisch Erkrankten zu den besonders vulnerablen Patientengruppen. Im Folgenden soll die Frage nach der Würde der Kinder in medizinethischer Hinsicht behandelt werden. Dazu werden drei Thesen erläutert und begründet: (1.) das Prinzip der Menschenwürde kann nicht ganz außer Acht gelassen werden, wenn Kinder als Patienten in medizinethischer Hinsicht thematisiert werden; (2.) das Prinzip der Menschenwürde wird in der Medizinethik nicht schon vollständig durch die medizinethischen Prinzipien der Patientenautonomie und der Fürsorge für (...) die Patienten abgedeckt; (3.) die habituelle und bewusste Achtung der Würde des Menschen bringt immer wieder neue und bisher noch wenig beachtete Aspekte des medizinischen, therapeutischen und pflegerischen Umgangs mit Patienten und Kindern als Patienten ans Licht. Diskussionen über den Gehalt des Prinzips der Menschenwürde gehen nicht nur in der Medizinethik, sondern auch in anderen Bereichen der angewandten Ethik in der Regel von Erwachsenen aus. Erwachsene gelten als die paradigmatischen Subjekte und Objekte der Wahrnehmung, Zuschreibung und Anerkennung von Würde. Meistens denkt man nur an Erwachsene, wenn man darauf besteht, dass die menschliche Würde (1.) vom moralischen und rechtlichen Standpunkt aus grundsätzlich zu achten ist, (2.) unter bestimmten psychologischen, sozialen und politischen Umständen gefährdet ist und (3.) in bestimmten Handlungssituationen mit anderen ethischen Forderungen in Konflikt geraten kann. Bei Erwachsenen ist es relativ leicht, ethische Intuitionen darüber, ob in bestimmten medizinischen Handlungssituationen die Würde eines Menschen verletzt wird, zu formulieren und zu begründen. Denn bei Erwachsenen steht die Würdeverletzung in einem engen Zusammenhang mit der Berücksichtigung verschiedener ethischer Forderungen: (1.) nach Achtung der willentlichen Selbstbestimmung und der normativen Autonomie, (2.) nach Berücksichtigung von persönlichen Lebenszielen und Wertpräferenzen, (3.) nach Bewahrung von mutmaßlichen Lebenschancen (4.) nach Berücksichtigung personaler Bedürfnisse nach Anerkennung, Gegenseitigkeit, Intimität, Integrität, etc. sowie (5.) nach Wahrnehmung und Anerkennung der unverwechselbaren Individualität des Anderen. Die Angemessenheit und Erfüllbarkeit dieser ethischen Forderungen hängt nun aber von soziologischen und psychologischen Gegebenheiten ab, die bei Kindern je nach Altersgruppe und individueller Ausprägung nicht in gleicher Weise gegeben sind. Deswegen soll hier gezeigt werden, welche besondere und zusätzliche Rolle eine medizinethische Erinnerung an die Würde der Kinder im Spannungsfeld zwischen Autonomie und Fürsorge spielen kann. Dabei zeigt sich, dass es gerade die Achtung vor der Würde des Kindes ist, die uns überhaupt erst ermöglicht, das Kind als Kind und damit als ein eigenständiges Subjekt und als ein besonderes menschliches Wesen zu entdecken. (shrink)

How wrong is it to deceive someone into sex by lying, say, about one's profession? The answer is seriously wrong when the liar's actual profession would be a deal breaker for the victim of the deception: this deception vitiates the victim's sexual consent, and it is seriously wrong to have sex with someone while lacking his or her consent.

THE STRUCTURE OF THIS PAPER IS AS FOLLOWS. I begin §1 by dealing with preliminary issues such as the different relations expressed by the “good for” locution. I then (§2) outline the Locative Analysis of good for and explain its main elements before moving on to (§3) outlining and discussing the positive features of the view. In the subsequent sections I show how the Locative Analysis can respond to objections from, or inspired by, Sumner (§4-5), Regan (§6), and Schroeder and (...) Feldman (§7). I then (§8) reply to an imagined objector who claims that the Locative Analysis generates implausible results with respect to punishment, virtue and agent-centered duties. (shrink)

The crucial distinction for ethics is between the good and the apparent good, between being and seeming. Tradition is useful for developing our ability to make this distinction and to live ethically or in self-responsibility, but it is also threatening to this ability. The phenomenology of Husserl and of others in the Husserlian tradition, especially Robert Sokolowski, are helpful in spelling out how tradition works; how the difference between the apparent good and the good is bridged in the experience of (...) moral truth but also a permanent, challenging feature of human life; what ethics requires regarding self-responsibility or authenticity; and what the proper voice of tradition is in the ethical or moral life. (shrink)

Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was a thinker of extraordinary depth and range - he wrote on philosophy, mathematics, psychology, physics, logic, phenomenology, semiotics, religion and ethics - but his writings are difficult and fragmentary. This book provides a clear and comprehensive explanation of Peirce's thought. His philosophy is presented as a systematic response to 'nominalism', the philosophy which he most despised and which he regarded as the underpinning of the dominant philosophical worldview of his time. The book explains (...) Peirce's challenge to nominalism as a theory of meaning and shows its implications for his views of knowledge, truth, the nature of reality, and ethics. It will be essential reading both for Peirce scholars and for those new to his work. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider the question of whether we have a duty to forgive those who repent and apologize for the wrong they have done. I shall argue that we have a pro tanto duty to forgive repentant wrongdoers, and I shall propose and consider the norm of forgiveness. This norm states that if a wrongdoer repents and apologizes to a victim, then the victim has a duty to forgive the wrongdoer, other things being equal. That (...) someone has a pro tanto duty to forgive a repentant wrongdoer means that he or she ought to forgive unless other considerations outweigh the norm of forgiveness. Furthermore, a distinction is made between what are termed 'general considerations' and 'case-relative considerations', and it is argued that only after all the relevant considerations have been examined can it be determined whether there is a duty to forgive, all things considered. (shrink)

Against Hume and Epicurus I argue that our selection of pleasure, pain and other objects as our ultimate ends is guided by reason. There are two parts to the explanation of our attraction to pleasure, our aversion to pain, and our consequent preference of pleasure to pain: 1. Pleasure presents us with reason to seek it, pain presents us reason to avoid it, and 2. Being intelligent, human beings (and to a degree, many animals) are disposed to be guided by (...) reason, and hence by what there is reason to choose, seek, and prefer, when they act. (shrink)

Something can be said to be good for a particular person, whether or not it is good for anyone else, let alone good ‘overall’ or ‘good simpliciter ’. Sometimes we speak of ‘John's good’ as well as of things that are ‘good for John’. What is ‘good for John’ is whatever enhances his ‘good’ or, to use an apparently synonymous term, his ‘well-being’. But what is a person's well-being: in what does it consist?

For centuries the pursuit of happiness was the preserve of either the philosopher or the voluptuary and took second place to the basic need to survive on the one hand, and the pressure to conform to social conventions and morality on the other. More recently there is a burgeoning interest in the study of happiness, in the social sciences and in the media. Can we really answer the question what makes people happy? Is it really grounded in credible methods and (...) data? Is there consistency in the determinants of happiness across countries and cultures? Are happiness levels innate to individuals or can policy and the environment make a difference? How is happiness affected by poverty? By economic progress? Is happiness a viable objective for policy? This book is an attempt to answer these questions, based on research on the determinants of happiness in countries around the world, ranging from Peru and Russia to the U.S. and Afghanistan. -/- The book reviews the theory and concepts of happiness, explaining how these concepts underpin a line of research which is both an attempt to understand the determinants of happiness and a tool for understanding the effects of a host of phenomena on human well being. The research finds surprising consistency in the determinants of happiness across levels of development. Yet there is still much debate over the relationship between happiness and income. The book explores the effects of many mediating factors in that relationship, ranging from macroeconomic trends and democracy to inequality and crime. It also reviews what we know about happiness and health and how that relationship varies according to income levels and health status. It concludes by discussing the potential - and the potential pitfalls - of using happiness surveys to contribute to better public policy. (shrink)

Discusses B. F. Skinner's proposal in Beyond Freedom and Dignity that reinforcing stimuli are important in the production and modification of value talk. The argument that the view that values are reinforcing leads to moral nihilism is discussed. It is concluded that moral standards can be objective without being universally deployable, and that Skinnerian morality is objective. It shows that certain actions are morally appropriate, others morally wrong. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

It is the focus of this paper to tackle the topic of how consumers affect their surrounding environment and, more specifically, how they can affect animal welfare. Through comparisons with the Darwinist survivalist consumption habits and Maslow´s hierarchy, our modern society´s needs and habits are evaluated. Finally a Utilitarian approach, with the goal of the rise of the conscious consumer, is suggested for our so-called advanced societies.

This paper presents a moral argument in support of the view that the mind is a nonphysical object. It is intuitively obvious that we, the bearers of conscious experiences, have an inherent value that is not reducible to the value of our conscious experiences. It remains intuitively obvious that we have inherent value even when we represent ourselves to have no physical bodies whatsoever. Given certain assumptions about morality and moral intuitions, this implies that the bearers of conscious experiences—the objects (...) possessing inherent value—are not physical objects. This moral evidence is corroborated by introspective evidence. (shrink)

Happiness research is a new, rapidly growing and provocative aspect of economic science. In fact, there are now over 1,800 published papers on the subject, and it might be said that the ‘dismal science’ has come to be obsessed with happiness. This research provides a number of interesting and unique contributions, scores of which relate to fundamental economic theories, including standard consumer behaviour theory, and, more generally, welfare economics. The best-known of these previous findings is the ‘Easterlin Paradox’ – the (...) finding that self-reported happiness does not always appear to grow in tandem with rising per capita income levels, thereby rather confronting the expectations of orthodox economics. One focus of this dissertation therefore is to extend the empirical evidence on this score and to test specific hypotheses designed to throw further light on this seemingly paradoxical relationship between income and happiness. ‘Happiness’ remains an elusive concept, and while its subject matter was long deemed to be so subjective and intangible as to make empirical ‘science’ impossible, that ‘impossibility’ is far from accepted now. Even today, however, definitional and conceptual issues remain a significant challenge, and for that reason this dissertation accepts the need to focus on both empirical and philosophical dimensions of happiness economics. The empirical side of this dissertation sets out to address two main research questions. First, we endeavour to test whether the relationship between income and subjective well-being is subject to a satiation or ‘basic needs’ point. This objective is achieved through a new technique developed in this dissertation and also through well-known econometric techniques used for detecting threshold effects. In the main, using data from multiple cross-country datasets, the results imply diminishing marginal utility to income, but no evidence of a satiation point. The second empirical objective addresses the issue of whether ‘ignorance is bliss’, and incorporates less familiar attitudinal questions within the empirical framework in order to investigate the question of whether an examined or an unexamined life is linked to happiness. Addressing this objective requires the use of factor variables and interaction terms in ordered choice models. In such contexts, the correct partial effects are not routinely calculated in standard econometric software, and, in consequence, correct formulae are derived here for calculating these partial effects for an ordered probit model. Using two international datasets, we find the direct effect on life satisfaction of often spending time reflecting on the meaning and purpose of life is negative, although this effect is mitigated if an individual reports to be religious.Moreover, attitudes towards the meaning of life are found to have differing effects on subjective well-being: individuals who do not believe that there is meaning to life or who believe that there is little one can do to change the course of their lives are unhappier than those who hold opposite views. In turn, individuals who believe that life is meaningful because God exists or who believe that the meaning of life must come from the individual are happier than those who disagree with such outlooks. Taken together, the results on both research questions imply a possible need to redefine some major welfare goals at both domestic and international levels. In order to ensure that the importance of highly significant definitional questions is not just glossed over, this dissertation includes a second, economic philosophy dimension, which broaches questions raised by alternative definitions of happiness. In this context it is necessary to address critiques of utilitarianism and welfare economics, and in so doing to address their underpinning a priori understandings of such keywords as ‘man’, ‘freedom’, ‘rationality’, ‘teleology’, and ‘ontology’ – and hence ‘happiness’. Several economists, including a small minority writing explicitly about ‘happiness economics’, have already sought to do this – for example Myrdal, Sen, Etzioni, Tilman, Schumacher and Aldred – but even within this group there remain controversies and divisions. An attempt is made here to add clarity to the understanding of the wellsprings of those divisions. This is done by exploring the recent methodology writings of Tony Lawson and others, and – in keeping with the present surge of emphasis on pluralism in the teaching of economics – by extending the range of alternative philosophical teachings about the meaning of happiness to include the alternative conception of human well-being embedded in the writings of prominent Catholic thinkers. In this way, the ability to offer a critical perspective on the claims made in the mainstream happiness economics literature is sharpened, as is the ability to be wary of prospective pitfalls in deriving possible public policy reforms from the extant empirical literature. In this dissertation, contributions are thus made in three areas, namely: in developing econometric techniques; in analysing data and extending extant empirical results; and in highlighting definitional and philosophical issues important to the apprehension of debates on happiness. Ultimately both the empirical and economic philosophy sections of this dissertation throw light on the derivation of policy implications. (shrink)

There are enigmas of defining happiness and of discerning what it is that really makes a life go well for someone – topics that positive psychologists have not adequately addressed to date. And this is despite the fact that Ed Diener sees positive psychology as “the endeavour by scientists to answer the classic question posed by philosophers: What is the good life?” What is rarely mentioned by positive psychologists is that, depending on how the specific happiness questions are worded, they (...) can adopt what philosophers see as radically divergent conceptions of happiness. (shrink)

Why does a baby who is otherwise cognitively similar to an animal such as a dog nevertheless have a higher moral status? We explain the difference in moral status as follows: the baby can, while a dog cannot, participate as a rearee in what we call “person-rearing relationships,” which can transform metaphysically and evaluatively the baby’s activities. The capacity to engage in these transformed activities has the same type of value as the very capacities (i.e., intellectual or emotional sophistication) that (...) explain unimpaired adult humans’ high moral status. We attempt to extend this account to individuals with severe cognitive impairments. (shrink)

This note explores how ideal subjectivism in metanormative theory can help solve two important problems for Fitting Attitude analyses of value. The wrong-kind-of-reason problem is that there may be sufficient reason for attitude Y even if the object is not Y-able. The many-kinds-of-fittingness problem is that the same attitude can be fitting in many ways. Ideal subjectivism addresses both by maintaining that an attitude is W-ly fitting if and only if endorsed by any W-ly ideal subject. A subject is W-ly (...) ideal when the most robust way of avoiding W-type practical problems is deferring to her endorsement. (shrink)

What values, if any, would be undermined by determinism?[i] Traditionally this question has been tackled by asking whether determinism is compatible with free will or whether it is compatible with moral responsibility. Compatibilists say that determinism would not threaten free will or moral responsibility, and hence that people’s values should not be influenced by whether or not they believe in determinism. Incompatibilists say that determinism would undermine free will or moral responsibility, and hence that a belief in determinism should have (...) a considerable impact on one’s values, precluding many popular evaluative beliefs. (shrink)

Response-dependent accounts of value claim that to understand what we are saying about the objects of our value judgments, we must take into account the responses those objects provoke. Recent discussions of the proposal that value is response-dependent are obscured by dogmas about response-dependence, that (1) response-dependency must be known a priori, (2) must hold necessarily, and (3) the terms involved must designate rigidly. These “dogmas” stand in the way of formulating and assessing a clear conception of value as response-dependent. (...) I point out these dogmas and argue that there is no good reason for subscribing to them. (shrink)

In such works as A Short History of Ethics, Against the Self-lmages of the Age, and After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that the intelligibility of the moral life hinges upon viewing the moral life as essential to the happy life, or eudaimonia. In my article I examine the reasons he gives for saying this, arguing that this thesis is not sufficiently defended by MacIntyre. I also draw connections between this thesis about the intelligibility of the moral life and other (...) aspects of MacIntyre’s thought, such as his communitarianism. In concluding I note that several of MacIntyre’s more significant claims about morality might well be true even if his thesis about the intelligibility of the moral life is false. (shrink)

This article forms part of a tribute to Anita L. Allen by the APA newletter on Philosophy and Law. It celebrates Allen's work, but also explains why her conception of privacy is philosophically inadequate. It then uses basic democratic principles and the example of the secret ballot to suggest how we might develop a more philosophically persuasive version of Allen's ideas.

Philosophers theorizing about ‘evil’ usually distinguish evil actions from acts of ordinary wrongdoing. They either attempt to isolate some quality or set of qualities shared by all evil actions that is not found in other wrongful actions, or they concede that their account of evil is only distinguished by capturing the very worst acts on the scale of moral wrongness. The idea that evil is qualitatively distinct from wrongdoing has recently been under contention. We explore the grounds for this contention, (...) and argue that there is a third option that might be useful for a variety of philosophical accounts of evil. The alternate form of distinctness we propose is called quality of emphasis distinctness. We illustrate this form of concept distinctness with a modified version of Hillel Steiner’s account of evil. We then explain how QE distinctness could also be applied to more complex theories of evil, such as the theories proposed by Claudia Card, John Kekes, and Todd Calder. (shrink)

J. S. Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures is often thought to conflict with his commitment to psychological and ethical hedonism: if the superiority of higher pleasures is quantitative, then the higher/lower distinction is superfluous and Mill contradicts himself; if the superiority of higher pleasures is not quantitative, then Mill's hedonism is compromised.

According to standard comparativist views, death is bad insofar as it deprives someone of goods she would otherwise have had. In The Ethics of Killing, Jeff McMahan argues against such views and in favor of a gradualist account according to which how bad it is to die is a function of both the future goods of which the decedent is deprived and her cognitive development when she dies. Comparativists and gradualists therefore disagree about how bad it is to die at (...) different ages. In this paper I examine two prominent criticisms of gradualism and show that both misconstrue McMahan. I develop a related criticism that seems to show that a gradualist cannot coherently relate morbidity and mortality. This criticism also fails, but has an instructive implication for how policy-makers setting priorities for health care investments should regard choices between life-saving interventions and interventions against non-fatal diseases in the very young. (shrink)

There was a consensus in late Scholasticism that evils are privations, the lacks of appropriate perfections. For something to be evil is for it to lack an excellence that, by its nature, it ought to have. This widely accepted ontology of evil was used, in part, to help explain the source of evil in a world created and sustained by a perfect being. during the second half of the seventeenth century, progressive early moderns began to criticize the traditional privative account (...) of evil on a variety of philosophical and theological grounds. Embedded in Scholastic Aristotelianism and applied to problems of evil, privation theory seemed to some like yet another instance of pre-modern pseudo-explanation.1Against this .. (shrink)

I propose an analysis of harm in terms of causation: harm is when a subject is caused to be worse off. The pay-off from this lies in the details. In particular, importing influential recent work from the causation literature yields a contrastive-counterfactual account. This enables us to incorporate harm's multiple senses into a unified scheme, and to provide that scheme with theoretical ballast. It also enables us to respond effectively to previous criticisms of counterfactual accounts, as well as to sharpen (...) criticisms of rival views. (shrink)