Just war morality draws an important distinction between soldiers and civilians. Unlike soldiers, civilians may never be intentionally killed because they are innocent. But the prohibition on intentionally killing civilians cannot be adequately explained by the wrongness of killing the innocent. This paper examines several views on the meaning of innocence in war, exposes difficulties with each that warrant their rejection, and proposes an alternative view on the wrongness of killing civilians that is independent of the wrongness of killing the (...) innocent. It concludes by noting some concerns with the proposed alternative. (shrink)

This essay discusses four recent books on the Western, and one book on the classical Chinese, traditions of just war. It concentrates on the jus ad bellum moral criteria, giving attention to the centrality of the state in just war morality, to some challenges in reconceptualizing the jus ad bellum in the context of non-state agents, and to controversies over a “presumption against war.”.

Introduction to the World Government /World Governance symposium.

This volume consists of fourteen chapters selected from papers presented at the conference 'Ethics, Medicine and Health Care: An Appraisal of the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.' along with a response to those chapters by Engelhardt and a Foreword by Laurence B. McCullough. The chapters direct primary attention to various aspects of Engelhardt's philosophy of medicine and bioethics as presented in The Foundations of Bioethics and Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality. Among the topics treated (...) are the economics of health care and the medical profession, the libertarian and communitarian aspects of Engelhardt's thought, the moral status of children, abortion, the moral foundations for a health care system, feminism and clinical epistemology, and the relation between secular and religious moralities. In response to the various challenges posed by the authors, Engelhardt considers the implications of the failure of the modern philosophical project, the role of reason in ethics, and the resolution of conflict among communities that do not share the same moral vision. The book will be of interest to professionals in medicine, philosophy, theology, health policy, and law, and to graduate students in those disciplines. (shrink)

The essays in this book engage the original and controversial claims from Michael Boylan's A Just Society. Each essay discusses Boylan's claims from a particular chapter and offers a critical analysis of these claims. Boylan responds to the essays in his lengthy and philosophically rich reply.

This essay explores some concerns about the quality of informed consent in patients whose autonomy is diminished by fatal illness. It argues that patients with diminished autonomy cannot give free and voluntary consent, and that recruitment of such patients as subjects in human experimentation exploits their vulnerability in a morally objectionable way. Two options are given to overcome this objection: (i) recruit only those patients who desire to contribute to medical knowledge, rather than gain access to experimental treatment, or (ii) (...) provide prospective subjects the choice to participate in standard doubleblind study or receive the experimental treatment. Either option would guarantee that patients in desperate conditions are given a more meaningful choice and a richer freedom, and thus a higher quality of informed consent, than under standard randomized trials. (shrink)

Among the various issues in Global Justice that I address in Morality and Global Justice: Justifications and Applications (2011-a), international immigration is one of the most important. Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez and Julie Kirsch have written sensitive queries about my position that I will address in order.

Preserving dignity during the dying process requires reviewing the roles of those involved in the treatment, care methods and decision-making. This article examines the participation and responsibility assigned to nurses regarding decision-making in the final stages of life, as laid out in the Rights to and Guarantee of Dignity for the Individual During the Process of Death Act. This text has been analysed on the levels of socio-cultural practice and discourse practice, using the critical discourse analysis methodology. The results show (...) that, although the law is another result of the social trend of patient empowerment, the responsibility of the nurses is not recognised, and they are left out of the decision-making process in the final stages of life. (shrink)

Despite the prominent role that technology plays in twenty‐first‐century societies, the intersections between spirituality and technology have been poorly analyzed. This article develops a cross‐reflection between these two key anthropological aspects, using a philosophical approach that structures the analysis along three classical categories: transcendence, immanence, and relationality. Drawing from ideas of philosophers, such as Heidegger and Merleau‐Ponty, the article sheds light on problematic aspects of technology that spirituality helps identify and for which it suggests solutions. Symmetrically, the analysis shows commonly (...) inadvertent aspects of spirituality that technology brings to the fore. All in all, spirituality appears as an essential dimension to cultivate in technological societies, while technology might reveal spirituality as richer and deeper than has been apparent in traditional settings. (shrink)

Information on the risks and benefits related to surgical procedures is essential for patients in order to obtain their informed consent. Some disciplines, such as sociolinguistics, offer insights that are helpful for patient—professional communication in both written and oral consent. Communication difficulties become more acute when patients make decisions through an informed consent document because they may sign this with a lack of understanding and information, and consequently feel deprived of their freedom to make their choice about different treatments or (...) surgery. This article discusses findings from documentary analysis using the sociolinguistic SPEAKING model, which was applied to the general and specific informed consent documents required for laparoscopic surgery of the bile duct at Torrecárdenas Hospital, Almería, Spain. The objective of this procedure was to identify flaws when information was provided, together with its readability, its voluntary basis, and patients’ consent. The results suggest potential linguistic communication difficulties, different languages being used, cultural clashes, asymmetry of communication between professionals and patients, assignment of rights on the part of patients, and overprotection of professionals and institutions. (shrink)

The literature on social interactions has shown that participants coordinate not only at the behavioral but also at the physiological and neural levels, and that this coordination gives a temporal structure to the individual and social dynamics. However, it has not been fully explored whether such temporal patterns emerge during interpersonal coordination beyond dyads, whether this phenomenon arises from complex cognitive mechanisms or from relatively simple rules of behavior, or which are the sociocultural processes that underlie this phenomenon. We review (...) the evidence for the existence of group-level rhythmic patterns that result from social interactions and argue that the complexity of group dynamics can lead to temporal regularities that cannot be predicted from the individual periodicities: an emergent collective rhythm. Moreover, we use this interpretation of the literature to discuss how taking into account the sociocultural niche in which individuals develop can help explain the seemingly divergent results that have been reported on the social influences and consequences of interpersonal coordination. We make recommendations on further research to test these arguments and their relationship to the feeling of belonging and assimilation experienced during group dynamics. (shrink)

Health professionals are especially exposed to stress, with consequences on professionals’ health and wellbeing. However, palliative care professionals’ wellbeing has been the subject of very little research. The aim of this work is to study the Personal Wellbeing Index in a sample of Spanish palliative care professionals, as well as to study their levels of wellbeing and the relationships of wellbeing with variables such as gender, age, marital status, profession, and professional quality of life. A cross-sectional survey of Spanish palliative (...) care professionals was conducted. The Spanish version of the PWI and the Short version of the Professional Quality of Life Scale were used. Here, 296 palliative care professionals attending patients at the end of life participated in the study. They showed medium to high levels of wellbeing. The PWI showed an adequate internal structure [χ2 = 116.130 ]; Comparative Fit Index = 0.970; standardized root mean square residual = 0.041; root mean square error of approximation = 0.140 ] and excellent estimates of reliability [α = 0.879 and Composite Reliability Index = 0.923]. Wellbeing was higher for married compared to single and showed no relation with age, gender, and profession. Additionally, a structural equation model was estimated, in which a positive relation was found between wellbeing and compassion satisfaction and a negative one with burnout. The PWI is adequate to measure personal wellbeing in Spanish palliative care professionals. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a theoretical and formal framework to understand how the proprioceptive and kinesthetic system learns about body position and possibilities for movement in ongoing action and interaction. Whereas most weak embodiment accounts of proprioception focus on positionalist descriptions or on its role as a source of parameters for internal motor control, we argue that these aspects are insufficient to understand how proprioception is integrated into an active organized system in continuous and dynamic interaction (...) with the environment. Our strong embodiment thesis is that one of the main theoretical principles to understand proprioception, as a perceptual experience within concrete situations, is the coupling with kinesthesia and its relational constitution—self, ecological, and social. In our view, these aspects are underdeveloped in current accounts, and an enactive sensorimotor theory enriched with phenomenological descriptions may provide an alternative path toward explaining this skilled experience. Following O'Regan and Noë sensorimotor contingencies conceptualization, we introduce three distinct notions of proprioceptive kinesthetic-sensorimotor contingencies, which we describe conceptually and formally considering three varieties of perceptual experience in action: PK-SMCs-self, PK-SMCs-self-environment, and PK-SMC-self-other. As a proof of concept of our proposal, we developed a minimal PK model to discuss these elements in detail and show their explanatory value as important guides to understand the proprioceptive/kinesthetic system. Finally, we also highlight that there is an opportunity to develop enactive sensorimotor theory in new directions, creating a bridge between the varieties of experiences of oneself and learning skills. (shrink)

The first encounters of Marcel with Sartre show the “Christian origins” they shared. Likewise, these encounters and their disagreements throughout life and the different paths they followed reveal a broader scope of thought than what is commonly known about Sartre.

Nos acercamos a la figura de Gabriel Riesco Fernández del Campo por ser una de las más prolíficas de la planificación urbana de España y El Salvador del siglo XX, como autor de más de 180 planes. Tras el estudio de su biografía y de algunas de sus obras podemos situarlo en la más alta Administración pública de ambos países, donde su trabajo fue determinante para su ordenación territorial, en los años 50 y tras el terremoto de 1986 en (...) Centroamérica, y en España durante el desarrollismo y la constitución de las Comunidades Autónomas. Asimismo fue asesor de Naciones Unidas para la ordenación territorial en El Salvador. Su obra arquitectónica es aún más desconocida. (shrink)

Many individual sentient wild animals are vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change. In this article, I suggest that animal ethicists who take sentient animals’ moral status seriously are likely to agree that, other things being equal, we have moral responsibilities to assist wild animals made vulnerable to climate change. However, I also argue that these ethicists are likely to diverge in terms of the strategies they believe would actually fulfil such moral responsibilities, depending on whether their primary concern is rectificatory justice (...) or duties of beneficence. To support this argument, I consider three plausible strategies for helping wild animals vulnerable to climate change: rescue and rehabilitation, habitat restoration, and assisted migration. I argue that different theoretical approaches to animal ethics are likely to diverge on aspects of all these strategies. These differences mean that the process of creating wide agreement among animal ethicists on climate adaptation strategies to assist vulnerable wild animals faces significant hurdles. (shrink)

In European philosophies of history, the linear paradigm that has prevailed for centuries as a derivative of Christian salvation history (Heilsgeschichte), ultimately lost its monopoly with the arrival of the “post-age.” The result of this has been that ideas that have survived on the margins, even the cyclical interpretation of time attached to religious traditions, now seem capable of outliving the short-lived belief in continuous progress. According to the cyclical view of history, those who came last will leave first, with (...) those who came first leaving as the last adherents of the driving force of Western rationalization. Thus, within a century, beginning with World War 2, a major turning point has been crossed: Socialism was the first to disappear, and it looks like Secular Liberalism will be the next; then Protestantism, followed by Islam, and so forth. As seductive as these images may appear, they only mirror an auto-destructive thread at the very center of Europe’s troubled Geist. But can anything be done to save the most important European values, and specifically, the ethical drive to say “no” to power, which is perhaps the most important legacy of monotheism? Either as a self-limitation from within powerful institutions or as a mode of resistance on the margins of powerful developments—there is a strong adherence to the good (often named God) that helps people and communities survive their diasporic state. I will present this kernel of ethical monotheism by two relatively unknown twentieth-century examples of “diasporic knowledge”: Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), in which she recorded her observations of the devastating effects of empires on Yugoslavia, and two poems by Rosario Castellanos, who decades before the debate on postcolonialism voiced the concerns of displaced indigenous cultures in her Mexican homeland. I suggest that, paradoxically, attention to diasporic voices is one way of realizing the spirit of European self-limitation that is so much needed today to prevent further damage to our societies and environment wrought by the excessive drive for progress fostered by an unethical monorationalism. (shrink)

In his paper The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken problem (Nanoethics 2:305–316, 2008) Paul Thompson argues that the possibility of disenhancing animals in order to improve animal welfare poses a philosophical conundrum. Although many people intuitively think such disenhancement would be morally impermissible, it’s difficult to find good arguments to support such intuitions. In this brief response to Thompson, I accept that there’s a conundrum here. But I argue that if we seriously consider whether creating beings (...) can harm or benefit them, and introduce the non-identity problem to discussions of animal disehancement, the conundrum is even deeper than Thompson suggests. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that because animals feel pain we should not make them suffer gratuitously. Some ethical theories go even further: because of the capacities that they possess, animals have the right not to be harmed or killed. These views concern what not to do to animals, but we also face questions about when we should, and should not, assist animals that are hungry or distressed. Should we feed a starving stray kitten? And if so, does this commit us, (...) if we are to be consistent, to feeding wild animals during a hard winter? In this controversial book, Clare Palmer advances a theory that claims, with respect to assisting animals, that what is owed to one is not necessarily owed to all, even if animals share similar psychological capacities. Context, history, and relation can be critical ethical factors. If animals live independently in the wild, their fate is not any of our moral business. Yet if humans create dependent animals, or destroy their habitats, we may have a responsibility to assist them. Such arguments are familiar in human cases-we think that parents have special obligations to their children, for example, or that some groups owe reparations to others. Palmer develops such relational concerns in the context of wild animals, domesticated animals, and urban scavengers, arguing that different contexts can create different moral relationships. (shrink)

Social robotics attempts to build robots able to interact with humans and other robots. Philosophical and scientific research in social cognition can provide social robotics research with models of social cognition to implement those models in mechanic agents. The aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, I present and defend a framework in social cognition known as mindshaping. According to it, human beings are biologically predisposed to learn and teach cultural and rational norms and complex cultural patterns of behavior that (...) enhance social cognition. Secondly, I will highlight how this framework can open new research perspectives in the area of social robotics. (shrink)

Multiple studies show that periodic reanalysis of genomic test results held by clinical laboratories delivers significant increases in overall diagnostic yield. However, while there is a widespread consensus that implementing routine reanalysis procedures is highly desirable, there is an equally widespread understanding that routine reanalysis of individual patient results is not presently feasible to perform for all patients. Instead, researchers, geneticists and ethicists are beginning to turn their attention to one part of reanalysis—reinterpretation of previously classified variants—as a means of (...) achieving similar ends to large-scale individual reanalysis but in a more sustainable manner. This has led some to ask whether the responsible implementation of genomics in healthcare requires that diagnostic laboratories routinely reinterpret their genomic variant classifications and reissue patient reports in the case of materially relevant changes. In this paper, we set out the nature and scope of any such obligation, and analyse some of the main ethical considerations pertaining to a putative duty to reinterpret. We discern and assess three potential outcomes of reinterpretation—upgrades, downgrades and regrades—in light of ongoing duties of care, systemic error risks and diagnostic equity. We argue against the existence of any general duty to reinterpret genomic variant classifications, yet we contend that a suitably restricted duty to reinterpret ought to be recognised, and that the responsible implementation of genomics into healthcare must take this into account. (shrink)

The use of genomic testing in pregnancy is increasing, giving rise to questions over how the information that is generated should be offered and returned in clinical practice. While these tests provide important information for prenatal decision-making, they can also generate information of uncertain significance. This paper critically examines three models for approaching the disclosure of variants of uncertain significance (VUS), which can arise from forms of genomic testing such as prenatal chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA). Contrary to prevailing arguments, we (...) argue that respect for reproductive autonomy does not justify adopting a model on which an offer to disclose VUS is a routine part of genetic counselling. Instead, we contend that a commitment both to solidarity between healthcare providers and pregnant women and to the acceptance of a novel principle of caution under normative uncertainty means that we should instead adopt a model of VUS disclosure that imposes a strong presumption against offering to disclose VUS. The upshot of this is that it should be standard practice to only offer to disclose VUS when this is requested by the woman undergoing CMA. We defend our position against claims that arise from an alleged right to such information and that a presumption against an offer will lead to inequity. (shrink)