This article combines the neo-Hegelian theory of recognition with an analysis of social pathologies to show how the populist formulations of political goals in struggles for recognition are – despite their potential positive motivating force – socially pathological. The concept of recognition, combined with the idea of social pathologies, can thus be used to introduce normative considerations into the populism analysis. In this article it is argued that, although populism is useful in the sense that it aims to ameliorate real (...) experienced lack of recognition through fostering political movements, it is also harmful. The simplified populist representations of collective identities are often guilty of essentializing and reifying identities. Furthermore, populist identities are also harmful for the populists themselves as the simplified view is applied also to oneself. This article claims that these dynamics can be understood as an obstruction of discursive identity-formation. From the perspective developed, populism leads to the lack of genuine mutual recognition between those who struggle to get their identities affirmed. (shrink)

This article discusses four ways of understanding the concept of humor: 1) in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, as 2) a cluster concept, 3) an interpretive concept, and 4) a dual character concept. We peruse both historical and contemporary research on humor, but instead of asking “What is humor?,” we draw conclusions regarding what humor research tells us of the ways to conceptualize humor. The main merits and shortcomings of different approaches are explicated. We suggest that the increased awareness (...) of conceptual options will help the field of humor research to construct ever better theories on the elusive subject matter. (shrink)

Table of Contents: -/- Panu Raatikainen: Varieties of Ideal Language Philosophy. Jani Sinokki: Descartes on Language: How Signification Leads to Direct Reference. Matti Eklund: Carnapian Frameworks Revisited. Joseph Almog & Andrea Bianchi: The Semantics of Common Nouns and the Nature of Semantics. Gabriel Sandu: The Fallacies of the New Theory of Reference: Some Afterthoughts. Genoveva Martí: Experimental Results on Kind Terms: A Critical Reflection. Michael Devitt: Type Specimens and Reference. Jussi Haukioja: Conceptual Engineering for Externalists. Panu Raatikainen: Fictional Names Revisited. (...) Teemu Tauriainen: Indeterminism about Discourse Domains. Anandi Hattiagandi: Is Logic Normative? Jaakko Reinikainen: Constitutive Rules and Internal Criticism of Assertion. Aleksi Honkasalo: What Could and What Should Be Said? On Semantic Correctness and Semantic Prescriptions. Pasi Valtonen: Rearticulated Psychological View of Generics and Worldly Truthmakers. Joonas Pennanen: The Dual Character of Essentially Contested Concepts. Teemu Toppinen & Vilma Venesmaa: Unified Metasemantics for Expressivists. (shrink)

At the dawn of the modern era, philosophers reinterpreted their subject as the study of consciousness, pushing the body to the margins of philosophy. With the arrival of Husserlian thought in the late nineteenth century, the body was once again understood to be part of the transcendental field. And yet, despite the enormous influence of Husserl’s phenomenology, the role of "embodiment" in the broader philosophical landscape remains largely unresolved. In his ambitious debut book, _Phenomenology and Embodiment,_ Joona Taipale tackles the (...) Husserlian concept—also engaging the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Henry—with a comprehensive and systematic phenomenological investigation into the role of embodiment in the constitution of self-awareness, intersubjectivity, and objective reality. In doing so, he contributes a detailed clarification of the fundamental constitutive role of embodiment in the basic relations of subjectivity. (shrink)

Calum Miller recently argued that a commitment to a very modest form of egalitarianism—equality between non-disabled human adults—implies fetal personhood. Miller claims that the most plausible basis for human equality is in being human—an attribute which fetuses have—therefore, abortion is likely to be morally wrong. In this paper, I offer a plausible defence for the view that equality between non-disabled human adults does not imply fetal personhood. I also offer a challenge for Miller’s view.

Fetal reduction is the practice of reducing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, such as quadruplets, to a twin or singleton pregnancy. Use of assisted reproductive technologies increases the likelihood of multiple pregnancies, and many fetal reductions are done after in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer, either because of social or health-related reasons. In this paper, I apply Joe Horton’s all or nothing problem to the ethics of fetal reduction in the case of a twin pregnancy. I argue (...) that in the case of a twin pregnancy, there are two intuitively plausible claims: abortion is morally permissible, and it is morally wrong to abort just one of the fetuses. But since we should choose morally permissible acts rather than impermissible ones, the two claims lead to another highly implausible claim: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. Yet, this does not seem right. A plausible moral theory cannot advocate such a pro-death view. Or can it? I suggest ways to solve this problem and draw implications for each solution. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Ethical vegans and vegetarians believe that it is seriously immoral to bring into existence animals whose lives would be miserable. In this paper, I will discuss whether such a belief also leads to the conclusion that it is seriously immoral to bring human beings into existence. I will argue that vegans should abstain from having children since they believe that unnecessary suffering should be avoided. After all, humans will suffer in life, and having children is not necessary for a good (...) life. Thus vegans, and probably vegetarians as well, should not have children. I will consider several objections against this controversial claim, show why the objections fail and conclude that it would be best for ethical vegans to abstain from procreation. (shrink)

In my paper recently published in a collection of controversial arguments in this journal, I argued that the same principles that are behind ethical veganism also warrant antinatalist conclusions. I thus suggested that to be consistent in their ethical reasoning, moral vegans should not have children. William Bülow has kindly responded to my claims and offered a plausible reply, which, according to him, concludes that at least some moral vegans may resist antinatalism. In this short paper, I reply to Bülow.

Many people believe that the abortion debate will end when at some point in the future it will be possible for fetuses to develop outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, would make possible to reconcile pro-life and pro-choice positions. That is because it is commonly believed that there is no right to the death of the fetus if it can be detached alive and gestated in an artificial womb. Recently Eric Mathison and Jeremy Davis defended this position, (...) by arguing against three common arguments for a right to the death of the fetus. I claim that their arguments are mistaken. I argue that there is a right to the death of the fetus because gestating a fetus in an artificial womb when genetic parents refuse it violates their rights not to become a biological parent, their rights to genetic privacy and their property rights. The right to the death of the fetus, however, is not a woman's right but genetic parents’ collective right which only can be used together. (shrink)

Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva's controversial article ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ has received a lot of criticism since its publishing. Part of the recent criticism has been made by pro-life philosopher Christopher Kaczor, who argues against infanticide in his updated book ‘Ethics of Abortion’. Kaczor makes four arguments to show where Giubilini and Minerva's argument for permitting infanticide goes wrong. In this article I argue that Kaczor's arguments, and some similar arguments presented by other philosophers, are mistaken (...) and cannot show Giubilini and Minerva's view to be flawed. I claim that if one wants to reject the permissibility of infanticide, one must find better arguments for doing so. (shrink)

This article draws on Husserl’s manuscripts from the 1920s and 1930s (especially on the as-yet unpublished D-manuscripts), arguing that each concrete experience is governed by an irreducible tension between two intersecting normative dimensions: primordial and intersubjective. Husserl’s ideas of normality and normativity have gained a lot of attention in recent years, but the normative aspects of primordial constitution have not been properly taken into account. By arguing for the “normative tension” between the primordial and the intersubjective, this article contributes to (...) filling in this lack. By doing so, it sheds new light on the debate concerning the relationship between genetic and generative phenomenology, challenging interpretations that exclusively render either the genetic-primordial or the generative-intersubjective as the constitutive absolute. (shrink)

Ellie Anderson had always known that she wanted to have children. Her mother, Louise, was aware of this wish. Ellie was designated male at birth, but according to news sources, identified as a girl from the age of three. She was hoping to undergo gender reassignment surgery at 18, but died unexpectedly at only 16, leaving Louise grappling not only with the grief of losing her daughter, but with a complex legal problem. Ellie had had her sperm frozen before starting (...) hormone treatment, specifically so that she would retain the chance of becoming a parent after her gender reassignment. Ellie had considered what might happen to the sperm if she died and was adamant that her children should be brought into the world. She made her mother promise to ensure that this would happen. But according to UK law, Ellie’s mother has no legal right to retain her sperm, or to use it to fulfil Ellie’s wishes. In this paper, we raise several key ethical questions on this case, namely: does a refusal to bring Ellie’s children into the world wrong her posthumously? Is Ellie’s mother morally entitled to use her daughter’s sperm as Ellie wished? Should the fact that Ellie was a minor at the time of her death or the fact that she was transgendered undermine her wish to have children? Can Ellie become a parent posthumously? We consider how these complex ethical questions could be approached. (shrink)

García-Barranquero et al explore the desirability of human ageing. They differentiate between chronological and biological views of ageing and contend that the positive aspects of ageing are solely linked to chronological ageing. Consequently, the authors embrace the potential for technological interventions in biological ageing. Contrary to their stance, I argue that there are sometimes desirable aspects associated with biological ageing. Therefore, proposals aiming to eliminate, mitigate or diminish biological ageing are not without problems.

The article investigates the question of the experiential location of the area of play, comparing the accounts of Eugen Fink and Donald Winnicott. It argues that while Fink builds on the phenomenological distinction between subjective phantasy and external perception, and accordingly introduces the area of play as a hybrid realm, a peculiar combination of the two, Winnicott considers the area of play as something that underlies and developmentally precedes the experiential differentiation between phantasy and external reality. While from Fink’s viewpoint (...) Winnicott’s model neglects a central phenomenological distinction, from Winnicott’s viewpoint Fink’s account, in turn, appears adultomorphic. Elaborating on these viewpoints in detail, the article ends up considering the conditions on which the seemingly contradictory accounts of playing could be reconciled. This at once opens a new way to assess the compatibility between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

A few decades from now, it might become possible to gestate fetuses in artificial wombs. Ectogestation as this is called, raises major legal and ethical issues, especially for abortion rights. In countries allowing abortion, regulation often revolves around the viability threshold—the point in fetal development after which the fetus can survive outside the womb. How should viability be understood—and abortion thus regulated—after ectogestation? Should we ban, allow or require the use of artificial wombs as an alternative to standard abortions? Drawing (...) on Cohen, I evaluate three possible positions for the post-ectogestative abortion laws: restrictive, conservative and liberal. While the restrictive position appears untenable, I argue that the liberal and conservative positions can be combined to form a legally and morally coherent basis for post-ectogestative abortion legislation, offering an improvement from the point of both prolife and prochoice positions. (shrink)

In the article, Twin pregnancy, fetal reduction and the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there is a moral problem in multifetal pregnancy reduction from a twin to a singleton pregnancy. Drawing on Horton’s original version of the ‘all or nothing problem’, I argued that there are two intuitively plausible claims in 2-to-1 MFPR: aborting both fetuses is morally permissible, aborting only one of the twin fetuses is morally wrong. Yet, with the assumption that one should select permissible choice (...) over impermissible choice, the two claims lead to a counter-intuitive conclusion: the woman ought to abort both fetuses rather than only one. It would be odd to promote such a pro-death view. Begović _et al_ discuss my article and offer insightful criticism, claiming, that there is no ‘all or nothing problem’ present in 2-to-1 MFPR. In this short reply, I respond to some of their criticism. (shrink)

The current debates dealing with empathy, social cognition, and the problem of other minds widely accept the assumption that, whereas we can directly perceive the other’s body, certain additional mental operations are needed in order to access the contents of the other’s mind. Body-perception has, in other words, been understood as something that merely mediates our experience of other minds and requires no philosophical analysis in itself. The available accounts have accordingly seen their main task as pinpointing the operations and (...) mechanisms that enable us to move beyond body-perception—and here acts such as inference, simulation, and projection have usually been the main candidates. This whole setting, however, seems to rely on a somewhat Cartesian assumption, according to which body-perception fundamentally amounts to the perception of a material thing, res extensa, starting from which we then strive to grasp the other as a res cogitans. Insofar as one begins with the question of how we can discover and understand mindedness in things that cannot be directly perceived as minded, the Cartesian setting is already taken for granted—and this is, in fact, exactly what most of the available proposals seem to be doing. From a phenomenological point of view, the Cartesian setting is untenable and seriously misleads the whole debate. The present article reassesses the role and status of body-perception in empathy. Making use of the Husserlian theory of expressivity in particular, the article engages a phenomenological framework of analysis, challenges the above-mentioned assumption concerning the nature of body-perception, and argues for the immediate nature of empathy. (shrink)

Should a person who feels his legal age does not correspond with his experienced age be allowed to change his legal age? In this paper, I argue that in some cases people should be allowed to change their legal age. Such cases would be when: 1) the person genuinely feels his age differs significantly from his chronological age and 2) the person’s biological age is recognized to be significantly different from his chronological age and 3) age change would likely prevent, (...) stop or reduce ageism, discrimination due to age, he would otherwise face. I also consider some objections against the view that people should be allowed to change their legal age and find them lacking. (shrink)

Lippert-Rasmussen and Petersen discuss my ‘Moral case for legal age change’ in their article ‘Age change, official age and fairness in health’. They argue that in important healthcare settings (such as distributing vital organs for dying patients), the state should treat people on the basis of their chronological age because chronological age is a better proxy for what matters from the point of view of justice than adjusted official age. While adjusted legal age should not be used in deciding who (...) gets scarce vital organs, I remind the readers that using chronological age as a proxy is problematic as well. Using age as a proxy could give wrong results and it is better, if possible, for states to use the vital information directly than use age as a proxy. (shrink)

On 24 July 2022, the landmark decision Roe v. Wade (1973), that secured a right to abortion for decades, was overruled by the US Supreme Court. The Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation severely restricts access to legal abortion care in the USA, since it will give the states the power to ban abortion. It has been claimed that overruling Roe will have disproportionate impacts on women of color and that restricting access to abortion contributes to or (...) amounts to structural racism. In this paper, we consider whether restricting abortion access as a consequence of overruling Roe could be understood as discrimination against women of color (and women in general). We argue that banning abortion is indirectly discriminatory against women of color and directly (but neither indirectly, nor structurally) discriminatory against women in general. (shrink)

Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) present a nuanced and convincing case for the continued presence of moral and political philosophers in bioethics. We agree with the authors that philosophers should have a role in bioethical inquiry. However, we partly disagree on what that role should be. We assess the case taking our clues from a concern the authors mention – and another one that they do not directly address.

This article discusses our experience of other people from both phenomenological and psychoanalytic perspectives. Drawing on Husserl and Freud, I will distinguish between different temporal modes of the other: while Husserl carefully examines the ways in which others are constituted as synchronous or as asynchronous, Freud underlines that others may also appear in a temporally displaced, anachronous manner, whereby one’s experience of some past other dominates in the experience of the present other. Freud discusses this third kind of relationship to (...) the other under the rubric “transference”. The main objective of this article is to argue that the Freudian concept of transference is a structural element in our experience of others, and that, in this respect, the psychoanalytic concept of transference should be seen as complementing the phenomenological account of empathy and interpersonal understanding. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow argues that genome editing is unlikely to be person-affecting for the foreseeable future and, as a result, will neither benefit nor harm edited individuals. We regard Sparrow’...

In an article of this journal, Perry Hendricks makes a novel argument for the immorality of abortion. According to his impairment argument, abortion is immoral because: (a) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the nth degree, such as causing the fetus to have fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS); (b) it is wrong to impair a fetus to the n+1 degree (to cause the fetus to be more impaired than to have FAS); (c) killing the fetus impairs the fetus to (...) the n+1 degree (causes it to be more impaired than to have FAS); (d) abortion kills the fetus; (e) therefore, abortion is immoral. The impairment argument is a promising account for the wrongness of abortion because it does not rely on the controversial metaphysical premise that a fetus is a person. This article aims to show, that despite some immediate advantages over the rival theories of the immorality of abortion there is a reason to believe that the impairment argument is untenable. That is because there are goods that can be achieved by abortion but that cannot be achieved by impairing the fetus. (shrink)

I argued in ‘Pro‐life arguments against infanticide and why they are not convincing’ that arguments presented by pro‐life philosophers are mistaken and cannot show infanticide to be immoral. Several scholars have offered responses to my arguments. In this paper, I reply to my critics: Daniel Rodger, Bruce P. Blackshaw and Clinton Wilcox. I also reply to Christopher Kaczor. I argue that pro‐life arguments still are not convincing.

In their important article, Haward et al. (2020) discuss whether guidelines for treating extremely premature babies should be altered to free up ventilators during crises such as COVID-19 pandemic. The authors’ claim is that premature babies do not deserve special consideration for ventilator treatment but merely equal consideration. In this brief commentary, I continue their discussion by considering additional factors that may help us determine whom we should save in a crisis: babies or the elderly.

Romanis has written another interesting and important paper on reproductive ethics entitled assisted gestative technologies.1 In this short commentary, I continue the discussion on the question of who should have access to AGTs. This commentary should not be understood as a critical reply but as a friendly extension of one of the paper’s themes. I am not trying to solve the question of who should have access to these technologies but I put forth some groundwork for future work. Romanis calls (...) AGTs new technologies that allow people to undertake gestation involving technological intervention—or to have another person or a device perform the reproductive and gestational labour on their behalf. People using AGTs might or might not use their own genetic material for reproduction. Romanis argues that these AGTs—such as uterus transplantation or artificial wombs—collectively raise ethical, legal and social issues that are distinct for example from assisted conception. One important question related to AGTs is who should have access to such technologies. This is crucial especially …. (shrink)

The concept of group identification has been widely discussed in the fields of social psychology and social ontology. The debate has been somewhat unbalanced, however. The structure, nature, and experiential status of groups have been assessed widely and from several perspectives. Instead, the concept of identification as received considerably less attention. This is why the ongoing debate threatens to be misled by various conceptual ambiguities. These ambiguities concern first and foremost the target, structure, and temporal nature of identification. The present (...) article offers a philosophical analysis of the concept and clarifies the conceptual ambiguities haunting the debate. (shrink)

During the last decade a new utopian horizon has emerged from the radical left: that of a future postcapitalist society in which technological progress and renewable energy finally take care of our material needs while robots do most our work for us, making paid employment a thing of the past. Instead, we can focus on fulfilling our desires and dreaming up new ones, leading lives of luxury and ease. This utopia, often called “fully automated luxury communism," could be reached through (...) opportunistically accelerating features of the existing neoliberal capitalist system. -/- However, behind this vision of a bright, sustainable future lurks a worrying political prospect. I show how the post-capitalist’s philosophical prejudice against work comes at a high political cost. By painting productive activity as mere drudgery that machines will emancipate us from, they also end up giving up on work as the root of radical democratic agency. The luxury communist proposal ends up resembling an extreme case of the neoliberal hegemony that it claims to be fighting against, a centrally ruled world completely focused on private enjoyment of luxury and devoid of any shared understanding of human flourishing on which democratic public life could thrive – a political dystopia. (shrink)

Man and earth : on the geography of Eric Dardel.

Herjeet Kaur Marway recently proposed the Principle of Procreative Justice, which says that reproducers have a strong moral obligation to avoid completing race and colour injustices through their selection choices. In this article, we analyze this principle and argue, appealing to a series of counterexamples, that some of the implications of Marway's Principle of Procreative Justice are difficult to accept. This casts doubt on whether the principle should be adopted. Also, we show that there are some more principled worries regarding (...) Marway's idea of a strong pro tanto duty not to complete injustices through one's procreative choices. Nonetheless, we believe Marway's arguments point in the right general direction regarding duties and structural injustice. Thus, in the final part, we suggest a positive proposal on how it would be possible to respond to the cases we raise. More specifically, we explore the suggestion that agents have a pro tanto duty to participate in eliminating structural injustice. Importantly, this duty can be satisfied, not only in procreation choices but in multiple ways. (shrink)

Employers sometimes use personality tests in hiring or specifically look for candidates with certain personality traits such as being social, outgoing, active, and extraverted. Therefore, they hire based on personality, specifically extraversion in part at least. The question arises whether this practice is morally permissible. We argue that, in a range of cases, it is not. The common belief is that, generally, it is not permissible to hire based on sex or race, and the wrongness of such hiring practices is (...) based on two widely accepted principles: the Relevance Principle and the Fairness Principle. The Relevance Principle states that hiring should be based on what is relevant to job performance, while the Fairness Principle states that hiring should be based on features that individuals can control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates these principles, it is wrong. However, we argue that, in a range of cases, hiring based on extraversion also violates these principles, and assuming the validity of the Relevance and the Fairness Principles, it follows that personality discrimination is morally wrong in those cases. (shrink)

Discrimination is an important real-life issue that affects many individuals and groups. It is also a fruitful field of study that intersects several disciplines and methods. This Special Section brings together papers on discrimination and prioritization in healthcare from leading scholars in bioethics and closely related fields.

This article provides a philosophical overview of different approaches to age and ageing. It is often assumed that our age is determined by the amount of time we have been alive. Here, I challenge this belief. I argue that there are at least three plausible, yet unsatisfactory, accounts to age and ageing: the chronological account, the biological account, and the experiential account. I show that all of them fall short of fully determining what it means to age. Addressing these problems, (...) I suggest the Two‐tier principle of age: whenever the three accounts of age contradict, combine the two accounts that differ the least, and reject the third. However, while this principle does solve some difficulties, it is itself vulnerable to problems; therefore I propose we should jettison it. I conclude that there are no accounts to ageing that are satisfactory; they all come with a bullet to bite. (shrink)

Andrea Bidoli argues that ectogestation could be seen as an emancipatory intervention for women. Specifically, she claims that ectogestation would create unique conditions to reevaluate one’s reproductive preference, address certain specific negative social implications of gestation and childbirth, and that it is unfair to hold ectogestation to a higher standard than other innovations such as modern contraceptives and non-medical egg freezing. In this commentary, I claim that Bidoli—like so many others—unjustly bypasses men and their reproductive desires. For a long time, (...) the discussion of the ethics of ectogenesis has focused on women and their reproductive liberation. However, since in many countries, an increasing number of men in reproductive age face difficulties in finding a partner and lack access to other forms of assisted reproduction, it is men who need ectogestation the most. (shrink)

The aim of this commentary is to critically examine Matti Häyry’s article ‘Just Better Utilitarianism’, where he argues that liberal utilitarianism can offer a basis for moral and political choices in bioethics and thus could be helpful in decision-making. This commentary, while generally sympathetic to Häyry’s perspective, argues that Häyry should expand on who belongs to our moral community because, to solve practical ethical issues, we need to determine who (and what) deserves our moral consideration. Challenging Häyry’s principle of actual (...) or prospective existence, this commentary suggests that – at least sometimes – the quality of life of those who will never come into existence matters. In a similar vein, this commentary aims to show that determining how to treat mindless humans such as fetuses might pose difficulties for liberal utilitarianism unless the issue of the boundaries of the moral community is addressed. (shrink)

In a recent JME paper, Matthew John Minehan applies John Rawls’ veil of ignorance against Judith Thomson’s famous violinist argument for the permissibility of abortion. Minehan asks readers to ‘imagine that one morning you are back to back in bed with another person. One of you is conscious and the other unconscious. You do not know which one you are’. Since from this position of ignorance, you have an equal chance of being the unconscious violinist and the conscious person attached (...) to him, it would be rational to oppose a right for detachment. Likewise, behind the veil of ignorance, it is rational to oppose abortions since you could be the fetus, Minehan claims. This paper provides a plausible reply to this argument. (shrink)

Is it wrong to create a blind child, for example by in vitro fertilization, if you could create a sighted child instead? Intuitively many people believe it is wrong, but this belief is difficult to justify. When there is a possibility to create and select either ‘blind’ or ‘sighted’ embryos choosing a set of ‘blind’ embryos seems to harm no-one since choosing ‘sighted’ embryos would create a different child altogether. So when the parents choose ‘blind’ embryos, they give some specific (...) individual a life that is the only option for her. Because her life is worth living (as blind peoples’ lives are), the parents have not wronged the child by creating her. This is the reasoning behind the famous non-identity problem. I suggest that the non-identity problem is based on a misunderstanding. I claim that when choosing a ‘blind’ embryo, prospective parents harm ‘their child’, whoever she or he will be. Put another way: parents harm their child in the de dicto sense and that is morally wrong. (shrink)

This paper defends and develops Elizabeth Harman’s Actual Future Principle with a concept called Schrödinger’s Fetus. I argue that all early fetuses are Schrödinger’s Fetuses: those early fetuses that survive and become conscious beings have full moral status already as early fetuses, but those fetuses that die as early fetuses lack moral status. With Schrödinger’s Fetus, it becomes possible to accept two widely held but contradictory intuitions to be true, and to avoid certain reductiones ad absurdum that pro-life and pro-choice (...) positions face. It also gives a simple solution to the problem of prenatal harm. (shrink)

In ‘Moral case for legal age change’, I argue that sometimes people should be allowed to change their age. I refute six immediate objections against the view that age change is permissible. I argue that the objections cannot show that legal age change should always be prohibited. In this paper, I consider some further objections against legal age change raised by Iain Brassington, Toni Saad and William Simkulet. I argue that the objections fail to show that age change should never (...) be allowed. (shrink)

We often show a greater inclination to assist and avoid harming people identified as those at high risk of great harm than to assist and avoid harming people who will suffer similar harm but are not identified (as yet). Call this the identified person bias. Some ethicists think such bias is justified; others disagree and claim that the bias is discriminatory against statistical people. While the issue is present in public policy and politics, perhaps the most notable examples can be (...) found in medical ethics such as in ICU triage decisions made during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The Rule of Rescue, as the application of the identified person bias is sometimes called, states that spending large amounts of resources rescuing identifiable individuals who are in imminent danger is justified. In this paper, I show that our distorted attitudes toward time play a role in identified person bias. I claim that ICU triage decisions are better explained by a preference to treat people sooner rather than later, which is at least partially due to near bias (positive events are to be preferred to be near rather than distant), than by a preference to treat identified lives over statistical lives. Thus, another bias, near bias, is involved in the reasoning behind the identified person bias and the Rule of Rescue. (shrink)

This article suggests that the asymmetrical structure of the self-other relationship can be traced back to the relation between empathy and transcendental intersubjectivity. Drawing on Husserl in particular, I will first recapitulate the argument that empathy is necessarily preceded by, and built upon, structural implications to potential others, and I will then argue that the empathically encountered actual other is bound to arrive as the fulfilment or concretization of this anonymous, emptily appresented “anybody”. Because of this foundedness, empathy is necessarily (...) built on expectations concerning the other’s similarity, and because of this initial and tacit “similarity thesis” it is bound to have an asymmetrical structure. Towards the end of my paper, I will underline particular ethical implications of this account. Most importantly,I will be claiming that genuine intersubjectivity, and ethical relationship with others, is essentially built on disappointments of our initial subjective expectations. (shrink)