Normative Ethics

In a recent article in this journal, Justin Klocksiem proposes a novel response to the widely discussed failure to benefit problem for the counterfactual comparative account of harm (CCA). According to Klocksiem, proponents of CCA can deal with this problem by distinguishing between facts about there being harm and facts about an agent's having done harm. In this reply, we raise three sets of problems for Klocksiem's approach.

Argues that given an appropriate understanding of objective probabilities, pure objective risk of harm can itself be a harm.

In this paper, we raise two points. First, any rights-based theory should provide a method by which to guide reasoning in addressing conflicts of rights. The reason, we argue, is that these theories must provide guidance on what should be done. Second, this method must contain two key recommendations: (1) We should try to find a deliberative mechanism through which none of the rights is simply eliminated from the scene; (2) these rights may be balanced against each other to define (...) which right should prevail, but without considering non-rights-interests as if they were rights in the process. These recommendations instantiate two crucial principles that underlie our common intuitions on rights, namely, the principle that rights deserve equal respect and the principle that rights should be taken seriously. (shrink)

Early in the 1930s, a number of French Catholic and secular philosophers debated the question of the meaning, even the very possibility, of Christian philosophy. Positions articulated during these debates provided intellectual background to debates about nature and grace, and the interaction of philosophy and theology that informed theological debate before and during the Second Vatican Council. These questions continue to be raised in theological debate today. -/- This selection of previously untranslated documents from the French debates about Christian philosophy (...) provides a long-needed complement to available English-language literature on the subject. These documents show that the debates were highly complex, involved multiple sides, and prompted development of certain participants' positions. Four of Maurice Blondel's contributions are included, as are selections by Gabriel Marcel, Etienne Gilson, Fernand Van Steenberghen, among others. A detailed historical introduction provides much-needed background to these intertwined debates. -/- The editor's thematic outline of seventeen different participants' positions and engagements includes but also goes beyond the selections translated in the volume. It provides a full and balanced treatment of the numerous participants, and sets the complex intellectual context for understanding the positions, issues, and main personalities of the debate. A chronological bibliography of literature comprising and commenting on the debates and their issues is also included and will serve as an invaluable aid to further scholarship. (shrink)

This is the first chapter of a book that I'm writing entitled Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends. The chapter has six sections: (1) The Distinction between a Moral Theory and a Complete Account of Morality, (2) The Best Explanation, (3) Fitting the Data as Opposed to the Facts, (4) Epistemic Justification and Phenomenal Conservatism, (5) Neither Overfitting nor Underfitting the Data, and (6) Trusting Our Moral Intuitions. Thus, the chapter begins by providing an account of what a moral theory is (...) and how that differs from a complete account of morality. It then argues that there are only four explanatory virtues: modesty, coherence, unifying power, and predictive power. Thus, it argues that simplicity is not itself a virtue. It explains how it's important for a theory to avoid either overfitting or underfitting the data. The chapter then explains that the data for our philosophical theories are our intuitions (which are intellectual seemings), and it defends phenomenal conservatism -- the view that we are justified in believing that things are as they seem unless and until grounds for doubt arise. Lastly, it responds to worries about the trustworthiness of our moral intuitions stemming from both experimental philosophy and evolutionary debunking arguments. (shrink)

In Dilek Huseyinzadegan’s analysis of Kant’s ‘impure’ politics what we have is a startling, innovative, and ultimately convincing portrait of Kant’s systematic attention to the material conditions underlying the everyday world of political subjects. Much as theorists have sought to enrich scholarly discussions of Kant’s moral philosophy by way of attention to Kant’s ‘practical anthropology’—the empirical counterpart to an a priori formal account of morals—in this book Huseyinzadegan provides us with a parallel look at Kant’s ‘political anthropology.’ By paying close (...) attention to Kant’s systematic appeal to a teleological, heuristic, and regulative approach to the nonideal political conditions faced by political subjects what we discover is not just a robust counterpart to his better-known ideal theory, but indeed a set of orientational tools or maps by which we might hope to better navigate the transition from politics to morals. Teleology provides reason with a ‘compass,’ as Huseyinzadegan puts it, ready to guide us as we set out on our political adventure. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

Only women can bear the burdens of gestating fetuses. That fact, I suggest, bears on the morality of abortion. To illustrate and explain this point, I frame my discussion around Judith Jarvis Thomson's classic defense of abortion and Gina Schouten's recent feminist challenge to Thomson's defense. Thomson argued that, even assuming that fetuses are morally equivalent to persons, abortions are typically morally permissible. According to Schouten's feminist challenge to Thomson, however, if fetuses are morally equivalent to persons, then abortions are (...) typically morally impermissible because there is a collective moral obligation to care for the vulnerable. The consideration that is my topic, however, poses a problem for that feminist challenge to Thomson. There is reason to believe, I argue, that it is unfair that only women can bear the burdens of gestating fetuses. And, if that is unfair, it would undermine that feminist challenge to Thomson. I show, in other words, that there is a plausible and well-motivated basis for believing that, even if fetuses are morally equivalent to persons and there is a collective obligation to care for the vulnerable, then abortions are nevertheless typically morally permissible. That is how fairness bears on the morality of abortion. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Objectives There is little research on moral uncertainties and distress of palliative and hospice care providers (PHCPs) working in jurisdictions anticipating legalising voluntary assisted dying (VAD). This study examines the perception and anticipated concerns of PHCPs in providing VAD in the State of Queensland, Australia prior to legalisation of the practice in 2021. The findings help inform strategies to facilitate training and support the health and well-being of healthcare workers involved in VAD. Design The study used a qualitative approach (...) to examine and analyse the perception and anticipated concerns of PHCPs regarding challenges of providing assisted dying in Queensland. Fourteen PHCPs were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy to obtain a broad representation of perspectives including work roles, geographical locations and workplace characteristics. Data were collected via one in-depth interview per participant. The transcripts were coded for patterns and themes using an inductive analysis approach following the tradition of Grounded Theory. Setting The study was conducted in hospital, hospice, community and residential aged care settings in Queensland, Australia. These included public and private facilities, secular and faith-based facilities, and regional/rural and urban facilities. Participants Interviews were conducted with fourteen PHCPs: 10 nurses and 4 physicians; 11 female and 3 male. The median number of years of palliative care practice was 17, ranging from 2 to 36 years. For inclusion, participants had to be practising palliative and hospice care providers. Results PHCPs are divided on whether VAD should be considered part of palliative care. Expectations of moral distress and uncertainty about practising VAD were identified in five areas: handling requests, assessing patient capacity, arranging patient transfers and logistical issues, managing unsuccessful attempts, and dealing with team conflicts and stigma. Conclusions The possibility of having to practise VAD causes moral distress and uncertainty for some PHCPs. Procedural clarity can address some uncertainties; moral and psychological distress, however, remains a source of tension that needs support to ensure ongoing care of both patients and PHCPs. The introduction of VAD post-legalisation may present an occasion for further moral education and development of PHCPs. (shrink)

In the Outlines of the History of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick writes that the subject of ethics includes “some examination of the question of human Free Will” (Sidgwick 1902: 11). When he addresses the question in his main work on ethics, The Methods of Ethics, he says he is anxious to avoid the “great” difficulties associated with the question and thus to develop a view on it that keeps “as much of my subject as possible as free from their perturbing influence” (...) (Sidgwick 1907: 57). In keeping with this aim, he attempts to argue that appearances to the contrary, resolution of the free will controversy is of “limited” importance to ethics (1907: 66; also 1889: 474-79; 1902: 261). Despite its initial attractions, surprisingly little (sustained) attention has been paid to Sidgwick’s view. This chapter tries to remedy this situation. Part one clarifies the premises of Sidgwick’s argument for the claim that resolving the free will controversy is of only limited importance to ethics. Part two examines and in part tries to deflect objections to Sidgwick’s position raised by J. B. Schneewind (1977) and Roger Crisp (2015) while raising some criticisms of its own. Part three engages and raises objections to Sidgwick’s claim that “it is practically impossible to be guided, either in remunerating services or in punishing mischievous acts, by any other considerations than those which the Determinist interpretation of desert [and responsibility] would include” (Sidgwick 1907: 72). The chapter concludes by noting that although Sidgwick’s view is not without problems, his discussion forces us to consider which aspects of moral thinking (if any) survive the conclusion that free will is illusory. (shrink)

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) contain detailed information about which controlled medications physicians prescribe individuals, including where, when, how much, by whom, and more. The programs allow physicians to glimpse into the life of each patient that visits them — sometimes before a single word is exchanged between them. Every state has a PDMP, and almost all states share the data they collect through it. In this paper, I argue that informed consent should be required for recording of prescriptions related (...) to addiction management into the PDMP. (shrink)

Global warming is a very complex collective harm. While various models have been proposed to assign moral responsibility in such cases, global warming presents an additional problem. The complexity of the climate system gives rise to ineliminable indeterminacy, which makes it impossible to determine the extent to which any particular emissions contribute to this collective harm. This indeterminacy poses an obstacle to assigning moral responsibility to individuals. To overcome this obstacle, I propose adopting a supervaluationist approach. This approach has several (...) benefits. Among other things, it supplies a framework for assigning moral responsibility that handles indeterminacy that commonly arises when dealing with complex, global collective-harm scenarios. (shrink)

As opposed to overdemanding principles which ask individuals to sacrifice too much, there are overpermissive principles which ask individuals to sacrifice too little. Determining the extent to which one should sacrifice often comes with the need of understanding what is of moral significance. By analysing different readings of moral significance, and singling out one specific interpretation of moral significance which links moral significance to gaining or losing a considerable amount of welfare, I demonstrate that one of the well-known principles of (...) Peter Singer, the Weaker Principle of Sacrifice, is overpermissive as it exempts deliberately cultivated morally significant lavish pursuits from the domain of sacrifice. Overpermissiveness not only renders moral principles unreasonably broad but also causes burdens to be distributed unjustifiably in a comparative sense, where some parties are assigned a moral obligation whereas others are not. (shrink)

في سنة 2015، ذهب قرابة عشرين شخصًا من سُكان بلدة «ياهابا» (وهي بلدة صغيرة تابعة لولاية «إيواتي» شمال شرق اليابان) إلى مبنى البلدية الخاص بهم للمشاركة في تجربة فريدة من نوعها. كان هدف التجربة هو تصميم سياسات من شأنها تشكيل مستقبل بلدتهم، ما يعني طرح الأسئلة المُخصصة للسياسيين ومحاولة الإجابة عنها: هل من الأفضل أن نستثمر في البنية التحتية أم في رعاية الأطفال؟ وهل يجب أن نُشجع الطاقة المُتجددة أم الزراعة الاصطناعية؟ وهل نعمل وفق خُطط قصيرة الأجل تُحقق مصالح الجيل (...) الحالي، أم وفق خُطط بعيدة الأجل تنظر بعين الاهتمام لحاجات الأجيال التالية؟ وللإجابة عن هذه التساؤلات وفق رؤية مستقبلية تم تقسيم المشاركين إلى مجموعتين؛ الأولى ظل أعضاؤها بملابسهم وهيئاتهم المعتادة كممثلين للجيل الحالي، والثانية ارتدى أعضاؤها معاطف احتفالية رمزية صفراء وطُلب منهم أن يتخيلوا أنهم يعيشون في سنة 2060، أي أنهم يُمثلون مصالح جيل من أجيال المستقبل خلال التجربة. (shrink)

Guido Löhr’s recent article makes several insightful and productive suggestions about how to proceed with the empirical study of collective action. However, their critique of the conclusions drawn in Gomez-Lavin & Rachar (2022) is undermined by some issues with the interpretation of the debate and paper. This discussion article clears up those issues, presents new findings from experiments developed in response to Löhr’s critiques, reflects on the role of experimental research in the development and refinement of philosophical theories, and adds (...) to Löhr’s suggestions about the path forward. (shrink)

I defend a necessary condition of local autonomy inspired by Aristotle and Marx. One does something autonomously, I argue, only if one does it for its own sake and not for the sake of further ends alone. I show that this idea steers an attractive middle path between the subjectivism of Dworkin- and Frankfurt-style theories of autonomy on the one hand and the objectivism of Raz-style theories on the other. By doing so, it vindicates and explains two important pieces of (...) common sense of which those theories struggle to make sense. First, it explains how external sources of compulsion, such as coercion by other people and duress by unfavorable circumstances, can compromise the autonomy of an activity. Second, it explains this by articulating the sense in which to act autonomously is to do what one really or truly wants to do, and the correlative sense in which to do something unfreely is instead to be forced or necessitated to do it. At the same time, my proposal brings into view distinctive species of external unfreedom beyond the traditional paradigm cases of coercion and duress. Most importantly, it implies that toil—labor which is not valued intrinsically but is done purely on account of its instrumental necessity—is essentially unfree. (shrink)

What are the main conditions that any theory of human rights should satisfy to guide action? If agents must take action for a fairer world as human rights discourse suggests, this is a crucial question to reflect upon. In this paper, I make a proposal. I argue that any theory of (moral) human rights that guides action on the basis of correlative duties must satisfy three key conditions. The first condition is focused on the specification of act-types, the second concerns (...) the distribution of correlative duties, and the third is focused on the resolution of (resolvable) conflicts of human rights. I show that this proposal has substantive implications because it implies to reject, challenge and, in some cases, resist ideas that are commonly accepted in the literature on human rights. (shrink)

There are many sorts of day-to-day choices that are such that, if enough people were to choose one way rather than another, serious harm could be avoided or reduced, and yet it does not seem that any one such choice will itself make a difference. Consider, for example, how our collective consumer choices have various serious environmental and social consequences, and yet for many products, it is doubtful that one purchase more or less will itself make a difference to these (...) outcomes. How are we to understand what each of us ought to do in these sorts of contexts? This paper further advances and illuminates a thesis that I have argued for elsewhere: that a purely ‘non-instrumental’ approach to this question is not satisfactory. A necessary and central part of understanding how to think about an individual choice in these contexts is showing that it does matter for instrumental reasons - for reasons having to do with its ability to have an influence on the outcome. Once a core instrumental solution is found, other moral considerations can build on top. I argue for this by way of an examination of a new non-instrumental approach advanced by Wieland and van Oeveren: a participation-based approach. I also identify what I think is the main source of resistance to my thesis: a mistaken conflation of two different problems. (shrink)

In this article, we take the case of racism in contemporary Italy as a starting point for a discussion about moral responsibility for racism in cases where ignorance is involved. We focus on the issue of the normalization of racism and its contribution to different forms of ignorance to assess the extent to which these might potentially mitigate judgments of responsibility for racism, thereby grounding an Exculpatory Stance. After illustrating the phenomenon of the normalization of racism and offering an outline (...) of how the normalization of racism contributes to ignorance, we argue against the Exculpatory Stance by appealing to a socially situated variety of capacitarian approach to the epistemic condition of moral responsibility. This approach provides us with the tools to claim that the moral ignorance favored by the normalization of racism does not mitigate judgments of individual responsibility. Finally, we point out that the interdependence of individual responsibility and the social environment is such that, in addition to backward-looking individual responsibilities for racism, there are also forward-looking, both individual and shared, responsibilities to counter racism in its various manifestations and the increased risk of moral ignorance connected to its normalization. (shrink)

The paper addresses objections to Aristotle's notion of happiness as inconsistent and confused given the expositions of happiness in Book I and Book X of NE. It argues that such objections are rooted in the erroneous interpretation of Aristotle's description of happiness in Book I as living a "good life", and an unwarranted assumption that when Aristotle identifies happiness with contemplation, he has a professional philosopher in mind and contemplation as an activity one engages in leisurely and as a means (...) of intellectual conditioning. It further shows that happiness as Aristotle understands it is a reward for cultivating virtuous character. And though everyone has the capacity for it, only the few attain happiness since it requires exertion and effort and the many are unwilling to make such acquirement a priority. (shrink)

The importance of the self (nafas) with which heart is assumed to be connected is significantly present in Islamic ethics that could be derived from the primary sources of Islam, the scripture and Sunnah. However, the human heart (Qalb) is in need of further exploration concerning its relationship to ethics. Ethics is part of the Islamic worldview and authentic ethical behavior in such a worldview is connected to intentionality which is an attribute of the heart. The Islamic sources show that (...) the sound heart is at the center of an ethical agent that is free of vices, and the strength and motivation for good actions originate from the heart by the virtue of belief, Iman. Therefore, the right ethical behavior emanates from the heart. The important point is that intentionality as the property of the heart matters in Islamic ethics because ethical accountability is ultimately before God in Islam. Therefore, there is a responsibility for a Muslim to safeguard his heart from temptations and vices. Hearts can get ethically sick and one reason for such sickness and hardness could be because of committing sins repeatedly which are mostly unethical actions by their very nature. Therefore, a Muslim should keep his heart clean from vices. In ethical decision-making, the heart plays its role as its purity will lead to good actions and better understanding. The heart has intellectual and cognitive powers that can help in making ethical decisions. (shrink)

We can often find in the literature (both popular and academic) ascriptions of complex collective duties to extensive unstructured collections of individuals. By ‘complex collective duties’, I mean collective duties that, plausibly, require that the individual members of an extensive unstructured collection should enact different contributory act-types to achieve an end jointly – for example, the alleged universal collective duty to end global poverty. In this paper, I argue that these duties are not action-guiding. The reason is that they do (...) not pass what I call the ‘test of action-guidance’. This test assumes the intuitive belief that a moral duty is action-guiding only if it is clear to the duty-bearer the act-type that she should enact after the ascription of the duty. Complex collective duties ascribed to extensive unstructured collections fail to pass this test because, even though each duty-bearer (that is, each member of the collection) receives guidance on the end that they should achieve jointly, it is not clear to these agents the act-type that each of them should put into practice. (shrink)

According to the well-known “claimability objection” posed by O’Neill, it is unjustified to hold that each individual has a human right to socioeconomic goods because the duty-bearers are not sufficiently determined. Even though this objection has been defended in the literature from many counter-arguments, attacks against the claimability objection based on non-conventional conceptions of human rights remain unexplored. In this paper, I aim to fill this significant gap in the philosophical literature. I defend the claimability objection from arguments that aim (...) to undermine such an objection on the basis of non-conventional conceptions of human rights. By doing so, I reinforce the defence of the claimability objection. (shrink)

Why does ethics only weakly contribute to the most crucial problems of the current world? Relational Agency and Environmental Ethics: A Journey Beyond Humanism as We Know It explores how the concept of moral agency embedded in modern humanist ethics, in its reliance on environmentally harmful and scientifically implausible presuppositions, prevents ethics from efficiently supporting a sustainability transition. The modernist individualist notion of agency includes conceptual dichotomies between moral agency and human nature, mind and body, reason and emotion, and knowledge (...) and will, yet it should be revised without dismissing responsibility, normativity, and a shared ground for critical assessment. Suvielise Nurmi proposes an agential shift resting on a relational concept of agency, combining ecofeminist and evolutionary criticisms of modernism together with various interdisciplinary discussions involving philosophy of mind, cognitive science, anthropology, social ontology, and developmental biology and psychology. This book argues that the relational shift can resolve the dilemma and bring environmental relationships to the core of ethical discourse: there is no ethics distinct from environmental ethics. Environmental responsibilities can be justified as responsibilities for one’s relationally considered agency. (shrink)

A number of recent articles have invoked the republican ideal of non-domination to justify either open borders, and/or the reduction of states’ discretionary powers to unilaterally determine immigration policy. In this paper, I show that such arguments are one-sided, as they fail to fully account for the deep ambiguity of the very ideal which they invoke. In fact, non-domination lends just as powerful support to maintaining state border controls as it does to dismantling them. There are only two exceptions to (...) the rule. It is well established that promoting non-domination demands, one the one hand, that refugees be admitted, and second, that all migrants have a right to contest decisions concerning their own admission. But aside from these things, the policy implications of the ideal are unclear. In itself, therefore, it is insufficient to justify either open borders, or the reduction of states said discretionary powers. Such arguments will have to rely on other, additional moral criteria. -/- . (shrink)

While various definitions of moral distress have been proposed, some agreement exists that it results from illegitimate constraints in clinical practice affecting healthcare professionals’ moral agency. If we are to reduce moral distress, instruments measuring it should provide relevant information about such illegitimate constraints. Unfortunately, existing instruments fail to do so. We discuss here several shortcomings of major instruments in use: their inability to determine whether reports of moral distress involve an accurate assessment of the requisite clinical and logistical facts (...) in play, whether the distress in question is aptly characterized as moral, and whether the moral distress reported is an appropriate target of elimination. Such failures seriously limit the ability of empirical work on moral distress to foster appropriate change. (shrink)