"In The Ethics of Migration: An Introduction Adam Hosein systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of immigration. The book addresses important questions such as: - Can states claim a right to control their borders and if so to what extent? - Is detention ever a justifiable means of border enforcement? - Which criteria may states use to determine who should be admitted into their territory and how do these criteria interact with existing hierarchies of race (...) and gender? - Who should be considered a refugee? - Which rights are migrants who are present in a territory entitled to? - Is there an acceptable way to design a temporary worker program? - When, if ever, are amnesties for unauthorized migrants appropriate? Featuring case studies throughout, this textbook provides a philosophical introduction to an incredibly topical issue studied by students within the fields of political philosophy, applied ethics, global studies, politics, law, sociology and public policy"--. (shrink)

The role of responsibility in our common-sense morality of self-defense is complex. According to common-sense morality, one can sometimes use substantial, even deadly, force against people who are only minimally responsible for posing a threat to us. The role of responsibility in self-defense is thus limited. However, responsibility is still sometimes relevant. It sometime affects how much force you can use against a threatener: less if they are less responsible and more if they are more responsible. Is there a well-motivated (...) theory that can explain both why the role of responsibility is limited and why it is sometimes relevant? It is hard to see what theory could unify these disparate elements of our common-sense morality, and if one cannot be found then we may simply have to revise some of our pre-theoretic beliefs. But it would be an important advantage of a theory if it could justify those beliefs. I will argue that there is a theory of this kind: surprisingly, the familiar rights theory of self-defense, defended by Judith Thomson, can do so if it is suitably supplemented. Along the way I will survey some alternative theories of self-defense and show why they are not up to the task. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on one very influential argument for open borders, the freedom of movement argument, which says that if we value freedom of movement we must demand open borders. I begin the paper the paper by discussing Joseph Carens’ well known version of the argument. I then consider, and reject, David Miller’s response to that argument. Finally, I develop my own reply to Carens. Both Carens and Miller, I argue, are mistaken about the proper grounds for freedom (...) of movement. Once we see this, it is clear how we can value freedom of movement without being committed to open borders. (shrink)

Many liberal democracies have large populations of “unauthorized” migrants, who entered in contravention of immigration laws. In this paper, I will offer a new argument for allowing long-resident unauthorized migrants to transfer to “legal” status, which would allow them to live and work legally in their country of residence, without fear of deportation. I argue that legalization is required to secure the autonomy of these migrants, and that only by securing their autonomy can the state exercise authority over them legitimately. (...) I also respond to popular objections to legalization and illustrate the distinctive policy implications of my approach. (shrink)

The doing/allowing distinction plays an important role in our thinking about a number of legal issues, such as the need for criminal process protections, prohibitions on torture, the permissibility of the death penalty and so on. These are areas where, at least initially, there seem to be distinctions between harms that the state inflicts and harms that it merely allows. In this paper I will argue for the importance of the doing/allowing distinction as applied to state action. Sunstein, Holmes, Vermeule (...) and others have presented influential arguments for the claim that where the state is concerned the doing/allowing distinction has no moral significance, even if it does elsewhere. I show that these arguments can be resisted. In doing so, I defend some important distinctions and principles that help us understand the state’s role in protecting people from harm. (shrink)

This paper examines the 'taking back control' over immigration arguments offered for Brexit and for reinforcing the Southern border of the United States. According to these arguments, Brexit and increased border enforcement were needed to ensure collective self-governance for the peoples of Britain and the United States. I argue that 1. In fact these policies did little to enhance collective self-governance properly understood, and 2. They actually thwarted collective self-governance due their racially exclusionary effects on people of color in Britain (...) and the United States. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel framework for evaluating racial profiling, including 'rational profiling' that does in fact decrease crime rates. It argues that while profiling some groups, such as African Americans and Muslims, is impermissible, profiling others, such as white men, may be permissible. The historical and sociological context matters significantly. Along the way, the paper develops a new theory of what expressive harms are, why they matter, and when it is the responsibility of the state to correct them.

Many liberal democracies have large populations of “unauthorized” migrants, who entered in contravention of immigration laws. In this paper, I will offer a new argument for allowing long-resident unauthorized migrants to transfer to “legal” status, which would allow them to live and work legally in their country of residence, without fear of deportation. I argue that legalization is required to secure the autonomy of these migrants, and that only by securing their autonomy can the state exercise authority over them legitimately. (...) I also respond to popular objections to legalization and illustrate the distinctive policy implications of my approach. (shrink)

Rawls developed a contractualist theory of social justice and Scanlon attempted to extend the Rawlsian framework to develop a theory of rightness, or morality more generally. I argue that there are some good reasons to adopt a contractualist theory of social justice, but that it is a mistake to adopt a contractualist theory of rightness. I begin by illustrating the major shared features of Scanlon and Rawls’ theories. I then show that the justification for these features in Rawls’ theory, the (...) centrality of cooperative fairness to social justice, cannot be used to defend their use in Scanlon’s. Finally, I argue that Scanlon has not provided an adequate alternative defense of these features, and show that they create problems when contractualists try to explain major features of our common-sense morality. (shrink)

Background:The decision-making process should be done according to a set of rules and principles so as to be fairly understood.Objectives:The aim of this study was to identify the basic principles and rules used by nurses to understand justice in nurse managers’ decision-making processes based on a procedural justice model.Research design and participants:This research was a qualitative study based on directed content analysis, which was performed on a group of 15 nurses working in different hospitals in Tehran, Iran. An in-depth semi-structured (...) interview was used as the method of data collection for this study.Ethical consideration:This research has been approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. The respondents were informed about the aim of the study, about voluntary participation, anonymity and confidentiality.Findings:The results of this study showed that in order to understand procedural justice, nurses use several rules, including: duties organization, managerial support, consistency, bias-suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness, and ethicality.Conclusion:Nursing leaders must consider the importance of justice rules as one of many strategies to ensure the nurses’ perception of fairness in decision-making processes. (shrink)

This paper provides a perspective on where contemporary Muslim responses to biomedical-ethical issues stand to date. There are several ways in which Muslim responses to biomedical ethics can and have been studied in academia. The responses are commonly divided along denominational lines or under the schools of jurisprudence. All such efforts classify the responses along the lines of communities of interpretation rather than the methods of interpretation. This research is interested in the latter. Thus, our criterion for classification is the (...) underlying methodology behind the responses. The proposed classification divides Muslim biomedical-ethical reasoning into three methodological categories: 1) textual, 2) contextual, and 3) para-textual. (shrink)

Inspired by Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology, I propose a position on practical knowledge that can be called the ‘know-how-first view’; yet whereas Williamson is one of the pioneers of the new intellectualism about know-how, I employ the know-how-first view to argue against intellectualism and instead develop a know-how-first version of anti-intellectualism. Williamson argues that propositional knowledge is a sui generis unanalyzable mental state that comes first in the epistemic realm; in parallel, I propose that know-how is a sui generis unanalyzable power (...) that comes first in the practical realm. To motivate this suggestion, I put forward two arguments: drawing on dispositionalist ideas, I argue that the practical component of know-how is unanalyzable; based on an investigation of the natures of intentionality and intelligence, I argue that know-how is prior to intentional and intelligent abilities in the order of explanation of agential action. Deploying this know-how-first anti-intellectualism, I then set out know-how-first solutions to two challenging problems for anti-intellectualism: the sufficiency problem and the necessary condition problem. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the role of freedom in the justification of prohibitions on discrimination. As a case study, I focus mainly on U.S. constitutional and employment law and, in particular, restrictions on sex-stereotyping. I present a new argument that freedom can play at least some important role in justifying these restrictions. Not just any freedom, I claim: the Millian freedom to challenge existing stereotypes and contribute to social change. This ‘social change account’, I argue, can be a useful (...) supplement to the existing theories where their explanations run out. It also draws support from familiar liberal justifications for speech and other liberties, and provides an attractive role for the courts. (shrink)

We argue that sport in general, and association football in particular, are activities that invite spectators and players alike to talk about them. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, we argued more...

This essay considers some central arguments given by Helen Frowe and Seth Lazar regarding the permissibility of killing civilians in war. It raises some objections to their views and defends some alternative bases for weighing harms to combatants against harms to civilians.

Sinnott-Armstrong has attacked the epistemology of moral intuitionism on the grounds that it is not justified to have some moral beliefs without needing them to be inferred from other beliefs. He believes that our moral judgments are inferentially justified because the “framing effects” which are mostly discussed in the empirical psychology cast doubt on any non-inferential justification. In this paper, I argue that Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument is question begging against intuitionists and his description of epistemological intuitionism is a diluted version that (...) most of intuitionists do not believe, therefore he is not attacking the epistemological intuitionism in its strongest form. I then propose my alternative modest account of epistemological intuitionism. I also reconsider the concept of “non-inferentiality”, as one of the key elements of intuitionist epistemology, and propose a modest account of non-inferentiality. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss some of the criteria that liberal states have used to choose between potential immigrants. While overtly racist policies have been widely condemned and abolished, many states have still in the recent past selected immigrants based on their ethnicity and/or language competency. I argue that even apparently more benign examples of ethnic and linguistic selection are unacceptable because they tend to express a morally problematic message that members of certain ethnic groups within the territory—the people who (...) are really from there— occupy a privileged position within the political community. And this means, I argue, that they unjustly exclude members of other ethnic groups. Finally, I address some special features of linguistic selection that are sometimes thought to make it justifiable, including the de facto inevitability of promoting some languages more than others, the fact that languages can be learned voluntarily, and the fragility of minority languages in territories where there is another language that is more universally known. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce and elucidate what seems to me the best understanding of moral intuition with reference to the intellectual seeming account. First, I will explain Bengson’s (and Bealer’s) quasi-perceptualist account of philosophical intuition in terms of intellectual seeming. I then shift from philosophical intuition to moral intuition and will delineate Audi’s doxastic account of moral intuition to argue that the intellectual seeming account of intuition is superior to the doxastic account of intuition. Next, I argue that we (...) can apply our understanding of the intellectual seeming account of philosophical intuition to the moral intuition. To the extent that we can argue for the intellectual seeming account of philosophical intuition, we can have the intellectual seeming account of moral intuition. (shrink)

This qualitative research is a philosophical review about analyzing how circumcision can (cannot) be morally justified. It is typically assumed among Muslims that circumcision is mandatory according to Islamic law (Sharia). However, in this paper, I will argue that this is not clear in Islamic texts. Because firstly there is no textual evidence in the Quran about this matter and secondly permissibility of circumcision is not an agreed topic among Muslim scholars. This entails that circumcision is not a necessary part (...) of being a Muslim. Although this idea seems idiosyncratic according to the majority of Muslims, I’m inclined to emphasize that we should not marginalize this idea, rather we have to support it for educational prosperity in Muslim communities. But perhaps more importantly this paper helps to introduce new Muslim intellectuals’ argument that moral reasoning is independent from (and even superior to) Islamic law. Since we do not have ultimate and decisive secular reason (e.g., medical reason) against male circumcision in every occasion, therefore, morally speaking, I believe it is not reasonable to say that male circumcision is always wrong. Muslims who support male circumcision still can find some secular reasons to defend this from their cultural identity. (shrink)

Geach and Thomson have argued that nothing is just plain good, because ‘good’ is, logically, an attributive adjective. The upshot, according to Geach and Thomson, is that consequentialism is unacceptable, since its very formulation requires a predicative use of ‘good’. Reactions to the argument have, for the most part, been uniform. Authors have converged on two challenging objections . First, although the logical tests that Geach and Thomson invoke clearly illustrate that ‘good’, as commonly used, is an attributive, they don’t (...) show that ‘good’ lacks an intelligible predicative interpretation. Second, even if the English word ‘good’ fails to express the property of goodness, we can just stipulate that ‘good*’ expresses goodness and thus formulate consequentialism accordingly. The second objection is one way of voicing skepticism about the method of drawing substantive philosophical conclusions from considerations about ordinary language. In this essay, we present an argument, inspired by Geach and Thomson, which isn’t susceptible to the same objections but which supports the same conclusion. The significance of our argument for ethics is obvious; it challenges the intelligibility of standard consequentialism, and even certain forms of non-consequentialism. One might be inclined to think that a more sophisticated consequentialism, which relies on ‘good {possible world/state of affairs/outcome}’ instead of just ‘good’, evades the criticism. But we explain why the criticism can’t be so easily evaded. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the epistemology of some contemporary moral intuitionists who believe that the notion of self-evidence is more important than that of intuition. Quite the contrary, I think the notion of intuition is more basic if intuitions are construed as intellectual seemings. First, I will start with elaborating Robert Audi’s account of self-evidence. Next, I criticise his account on the basis of the idea of “adequate understanding”. I shall then present my alternative account of self-evidence which (...) is based on the seeming account of intuition. Finally, I show how the seeming account of self-evidence can make the moral intuitionist epistemology more tenable. (shrink)

Abdolkarim Soroush’s theory of ‘The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religious Knowledge’ is arguably one of the most controversial theories of religion in post-revolutionary Iran. Soroush’...

Covering moral intuition, self-evidence, non-inferentiality, moral emotion and seeming states, Hossein Dabbagh defends the epistemology of moral intuitionism. His line of analysis resists the empirical challenges derived from empirical moral psychology and reveals the seeming-based account of moral intuitionism as the most tenable one. The Moral Epistemology of Intuitionism combines epistemological intuitionism with work in neuroethics to develop an account of the role that moral intuition and emotion play in moral judgment. The book culminates in a convincing argument about (...) the value of understanding moral intuitionism in terms of intellectual seeming and perceptual experience. (shrink)

Is the epistemology of moral intuitions compatible with admitting a role for emotion? I argue in this paper that moral intuitions and emotions can be partners without creating an epistemic threat. I start off by offering some empirical findings to weaken Singer’s (and Greene’s and Haidt’s) debunking argument against moral intuition, which treat emotions as a distorting factor. In the second part of the paper, I argue that the standard contrast between intuition and emotion is a mistake. Moral intuitions and (...) emotions are not contestants if we construe moral intuition as non-doxastic intellectual seeming and emotion as a non-doxastic perceptual-like state. This will show that emotions support, rather than distort, the epistemic standing of moral intuitions. (shrink)

This paper discusses the "numbers problem," the problem of explaining why you should save more people rather than fewer when forced to choose. Existing non-consequentialist approaches to the problem appeal to fairness to explain why. I argue that this is a mistake and that we can give a more satisfying answer by appealing to requirements of charity or beneficence.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Abdolkarim Soroush’s theory of ‘The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religious Knowledge’ is arguably one of the most controversial theories of religion in post-revolutionary Iran. Soroush’s theory paves the way for recognising a pluralist interpretation of religion by merging the epistemological and hermeneutical theory of religion. However, he later adds another approach to his reformist framework to explain the phenomenon of revelation. In this paper, after carefully laying out Soroush’s contraction and expansion theory, (...) I will discuss his three approaches, that is, epistemological, hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches to religion, through presenting Kantian and Quinian interpretations of contraction and expansion of religious knowledge, addressing the epistemology of contraction and expansion and the phenomenology of revelation, and pointing out some issues about error recognition within contraction and expansion of religious knowledge. I argue that the role of error recognition is crucial in understanding Soroush’s reformist project since it links his epistemology and hermeneutics of religious knowledge to the way he theorises about revelation phenomenologically. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss justice in the distribution of resources, both within states and across different states. On one influential view, it is always unjust for one person to have less than another through no fault of her own. State borders, on this account, have no importance in determining which distributions are just. I show that an alternative approach is needed. I argue that distributions of wealth are only unjust in so far as they issue from unfair treatment. It (...) follows that not all inequalities in the distribution of goods are unjust. I use these results to explain how state borders do play a role in determining which inequalities are unjust, since some of these inequalities issue from unfair treatment of citizens by the state. (shrink)

Shame’s conceptualization is one of the most challenging discussions in psychological studies. This challenge creates many ambiguities for both psychologists and theologians in Eastern cultures especially Iranian-Islamic culture. This paper discusses the dominant psychological researches about shame and tries to compare the outcome of these researches with Abdulkarim Soroush’s theological-moral view about shame. This comparison, we believe, helps us to understand their different approaches for further psychological and theological studies. We used descriptive-analytical method for the current research and our resources (...) were mostly psychological books, article and set of Soroush’s lectures. Also use the soroush books of Gods ethics for showing the soroush views in moral epistemology We conclude that although psychologists and theologians are talking about the same terminology, i.e. shame, they are coming from totally different planet in different paradigms with different philosophical-psychological assumptions. The different assumptions is showed for example about type of problem representation, innate view about shame, attention to ontological component of shame, truthful of shame, attention to virtue ethics of shame and methodology of investigation of concept and function of shame. This philosophical and psychological assumptions is discussed. (shrink)

In this short piece, I argue in favour of the practice of imagining ‘others’ in a global way and taking universal moral thinking seriously. We are in need of a sense of global identity which can then create global moral thinking. In this way, we can start to see and treat global challenges, such as the environment, social justice, poverty, racism and Covid-19, more effectively.

In this thesis I am going to explain the role of metaphor in articulation of new scientific theories, explicitly speaking, indeed, I have not a word about metaphorical thinking in theory invention, implicitly speaking. In fact, I talk about conceptual metaphor instead of linguistic metaphor. As another classification, this investigation belongs to “justification context”, rather than “discovery context”. Employing Boyd’ ideas on metaphor in science can lend a hand for acquiring this point. In Boyd’ set of beliefs; we need another (...) reference theory which has not the problems of kiripki-pautnam’s reference fixing theory, thus, Boyd proposes the “epistemic-access theory of reference”. With accepting “interacting view” of Block on metaphor, he demonstrates that in this theory of reference we are not encountering the problems such as referent shifting, lack of precise of metaphor which exist in kripki-pautnam’s reference fixing. On the other hand, by admitting “relativity”, Kuhn criticizes the Boyd’s attitude on metaphor in science. To conclude, I defend kripki-pautnam’s reference fixing theory; since, it seems to be implausible to accept Boyd’s criticism. (shrink)

Euthanasia is one of the controversial topics in current medical ethics. Among the six well-known types of euthanasia, passive voluntary euthanasia seems to be more plausible in comparison with other types, from the moral point of view.According to the Kantian framework, ethical features come from 'reason'. Maxims are formulated as categorical imperative which has three different versions. Moreover, the second version of categorical imperative which is dubbed 'principle of ends' is associated with human dignity. It follows from this that human (...) dignity has an indisputable role in the Kantian story. On the other hand, there are two main theological schools in Islamic tradition which are called: Ash'arite and Mu'tazilite. Moreover, there are two main Islamic branches: Shiite and Sunni. From the theological point of view, Shiite's theoretical framework is similar to the Mu'tazilite one.According to Shiite and Mu'tazilite perspectives, moral goodness and badness can be discovered by reason, on its own. Accordingly, bioethical judgments can be made based on the very concept of human dignity rather than merely resorting to the Holy Scripture or religious jurisprudential deliberations. As far as PVE is concerned, the majority of Shiite scholars do not recognize a person's right to die voluntarily. Similarly, on the basis of Kantian ethical themes, PVE is immoral, categorically speaking. According to Shiite framework, however, PVE could be moral in some ethical contexts. In other words, in such contexts, the way in which Shiite scholars deal with PVE is more similar to Rossian ethics rather than the Kantian one. (shrink)

Physicians in Islamic countries might be requested to participate in the Islamic legal code of qiṣāṣ, in which the victim or family has the right to an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Qiṣāṣ is only used as a punishment in the case of murder or intentional physical injury. In situations such as throwing acid, the national legal system of some Islamic countries asks for assistance from physicians, because the punishment should be identical to the crime. The perpetrator could not be punished without a (...) physician’s participation, because there is no way to guarantee that the sentence would be carried out without inflicting more injury than the initial victim had suffered. By examining two cases of acid throwing, this paper discusses issues related to physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ from the perspective of medical ethics and Islamic Shari’a law. From the standpoint of medical ethics, physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ is not appropriate. First, qiṣāṣ is in sharp contrast to the Hippocratic Oath and other codes of medical ethics. Second, by physicians’ participation in qiṣāṣ, medical practices are being used improperly to carry out government mandates. Third, physician participation in activities that cause intentional harm to people destroys the trust between patients and physicians and may adversely affect the patient–physician relationship more generally. From the standpoint of Shari’a, there is no consensus among Muslim scholars whether qiṣāṣ should be performed on every occasion. We argue that disallowing physician involvement in qiṣāṣ is necessary from the perspectives of both medical ethics and Shari’a law. (shrink)

Critics often argue that Ross’s metaphysical and epistemological accounts of all-things-considered duties suffer from the problem of explanation. For Ross did not give us any clear explanation of the combination of pro tanto duties, i.e. how principles of pro tanto duties can combine. Following from this, he did not explain how we could arrive at overall justified moral judgements. In this paper, I will argue that the problem of explanation is not compelling. First of all, it is based on the (...) classical account of pro tanto duties. Principles of pro tanto duties can be understood in another way, i.e. in terms of reason-giving account that might be of help to provide a response to the critics. Furthermore, critics fail to see some evidence in Ross about how we can arrive at moral judgements. (shrink)

This paper raises a moral issue for contemporary post-revolutionary Muslim intellectuals in Iran. According to traditional Islamic teachings, ethics enables people to transcend from this mundane world and offers guidance on ways to improve virtues. Most contemporary Iranian Muslim intellectuals have attempted to pave the way for accomplishing this goal. After clarifying the ways in which Iranian Muslim intellectuals have faith in virtue ethics as a best possible moral normative theory, we claim that virtue ethics fails to support some of (...) our modern problems in the realm of politics such as human rights and democracy. Also, we argue that virtue ethics is not a good theory for ordinary average people who have weakness of will. A preliminary conclusion of the paper will be that utilitarianism, generally, and principle of utility, specifically, is a better solution to the modern problems. This, we believe, has been overlooked from the eyes of post-revolutionary Muslim intellectuals. Yet, we suggest that among different versions of utilitarianism, rule-utilitarianism is more justified to do this job. (shrink)

Some philosophers and theologians have argued against the idea of Human Enhancement, saying that human beings should not play God. A closer look, however, might reveal that the question of who is playing Whom is far from being so clear-cut. This chapter will address the idea of human enhancement from the standpoint of theistic theology, arguing that human enhancement and theistic theology may not be so very incompatible, after all.

Nostalgia as one of the complex emotions has been challenged over the past few decades due to its psychological and physiological functions. The present experiment investigates the effect of recalling nostalgic memories on amelioration of homeostatic and health state of people with cardiovascular disease. Method: The participants were 30 patients who were hospitalized for angiography procedure. The research was based on an experimental design with randomized and post-test groups. The instruments used included a thermometer with ° C, a checkout manipulation (...) test, a blood pressure monitor, an ice container and a manual timer, a pain intensity perception scale and Batcho’s nostalgia questionnaire. Results: The results showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups in perceived temperature, the resilience in the face of pain, and the perceived pain. The experimental group perceived higher temperature and showed greater resilience in the face of pain and also lower pain intensity was reported. There was no significant difference in blood pressure between the two groups. Conclusion: The results of this study provide significant evidence for the embodiment emotions hypothesis and positive role of Nostalgia in psychological and physiological homeostatic. Further practical implications of results and suggestions for future research were considered. (shrink)

The present article analyzes and compares the idea of divine revelation to justify religious beliefs from the viewpoints of Paul Moser and Mulla Sadra. Moser suggests a kind of moral transformation experience that includes direct cognition and internal experience of self-revelation and God’s unselfish love while he considers mere theoretical reason to be inefficient and emphasizes God’s authority and His attributes and goals as well as the axis of divine revelation. Knowledge-by-presence and direct experience of God in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy (...) which is the only way to access true recognition of God is close to divine revelation. The present article shows that, considering the relationship between love and salvation, and knowledge-by-presence and the practical intellect, in Sadrian belief in God, Moser’s approach is close to Mulla Sadra’s even though the method of argumentation of these two philosophers in representing this type of cognition is not completely the same. Considering the commonalities and differences between Moser and Mulla Sadra in justifying belief in God, it seems possible to revise Moser’s approach with a Sadrian reading with a combination of innate nature arguments and self-knowledge. (shrink)