New discoveries in neuroscience challenge our understanding of human responsibility and justice. Recent studies suggest that psychopaths not only exhibit specific behavioral patterns but may also have a distinct neuroanatomical blueprint. Scientists have shown that a significant number of individuals who have demonstrated psychopathic behaviors have reduced volume and other anatomical changes in various regions of the cerebral cortex as well as decreased functional connectivity between different brain areas (i.e., smaller dysfunctional amygdalae). These findings raise ethical questions about how our (...) criminal system deals with these individuals. Should dysfunctional anatomical or diseased features exonerate affected individuals from any responsibility for their criminal activity or the suffering they have caused to their victims? It is estimated that individuals with the signs and symptoms of antisocial personality disorder make up 25% of inmates. Should individuals classified with this disorder be incarcerated with other criminals? In this paper, we summarize the results of the latest brain imaging studies performed on individuals with antisocial personality traits, referred to as psychopaths or sociopaths, and we explore some of the ethical issues concerning psychopathy and the law. (shrink)

Recent arguments over whether certain public health interventions should be mandatory raise questions about what counts as a "mandate." A mandate is not the same as a mere recommendation or the standard of practice. At minimum, a mandate should require an active opt-out and there should be some penalty for refusing to abide by it. Over-loose use of the term "mandate" and the easing of opt-out provisions could eventually pose a risk to the gains that truly (...) mandatory public health interventions, such as childhood vaccines, have provided over the last 50 years. Already, confusion about what counts as a mandate, and about what criteria should be used to determine when a public health intervention should be implemented as a mandate, has led to some inappropriate public policy decisions. For instance, by any reasonable criteria, the yearly influenza vaccine should be mandatory for health care workers. To enforce this mandate, those who refuse vaccination should be required to sign a waiver, and patients - especially those at high risk from flu - should be informed when they receive care from unvaccinated practitioners. (shrink)

In Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale, philosopher Debra Satz takes a penetrating look at those commodity exchanges that strike most of us as problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates about such markets? What is it about a market involving prostitution or the sale of kidneys that makes it morally objectionable? How is a market in weapons or pollution different than a market in soybeans or automobiles? Are laws and social policies banning (...) the more noxious markets necessarily the best responses to them? Satz contends that categories previously used by philosophers and economists are of limited utility in addressing such questions because they have assumed markets to be homogenous. Accordingly, she offers a broader and more nuanced view of markets--one that goes beyond the usual discussions of efficiency and distributional equality--to show how markets shape our culture, foster or thwart human development, and create and support structures of power. (shrink)

The U.S. federal regulations require investigators conducting nonbeneficial research to obtain the assent of children who are capable of providing it. Unfortunately, there has been no analysis of which children are capable of assent or even what abilities ground the capacity to give assent. Why should investigators be required to obtain the positive agreement of some children, but not others, before enrolling them in research that does not offer a compensating potential for direct benefit? We argue that the (...) scope of children's research decision making should be based on the principles of respect for autonomy and nonmaleficence. These principles imply that the threshold for assent should be fixed at 14 years of age, and a dissent requirement should be adopted for all children in the context of nonbeneficial research. (shrink)

The article seeks to answer the question: Why should I be ethical? For an answer, it examines Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic. It seeks to explore the complex ethical issues posed by Mahabharata, how they are relevant to us as individuals and to us as managers and teachers of management in business schools and enables us to understand how possibly we could use the insights to better our lives and of those around us. Mahabharata’s central message, concludes the (...) article, is that ethics is not for convincing anyone; it is about convincing oneself. Mahabharata tells us that ethics is what makes life meaningful, at the individual level, group level and at the level of society, and cannot be justified in a consequentialist framework. (shrink)

For centuries scientists have claimed that women are intellectually inferior to men and blacks are inferior to whites. Although these claims have been contested and corrected for centuries, they still continue to be made. Meanwhile, scientists have documented the harm done to women and blacks by the publication of such claims. Can anything be done to improve this situation? Freedom of research is universally recognized to be of first-rate importance. Yet, constraints on that freedom are also universally recognized. I (...) consider three of these constraints and argue for tighter restrictions on race- and gender-related cognitive differences research on their basis. (shrink)

Many debates about consciousness appear to be endless, in part because of conceptual confusions preventing clarity as to what the issues are and what does or does not count as evidence. This makes it hard to decide what should go into a machine if it is to be described as 'conscious'. Thus, triumphant demonstrations by some AI developers may be regarded by others as proving nothing of interest because the system does not satisfy *their* definitions or requirements specifications.

The function of local research ethics committees is to consider the ethics of research proposals using human participants. After approval has been given, there is no comprehensive system in place to monitor research and ensure that recommendations are carried out. Some suggest that research ethics committees are ideally placed to fulfil this function by carrying out random monitoring of research they have reviewed. The health service guideline creating local research ethics committees is under review.1 This paper suggests that (...) increasing the monitoring role of ethics committees in the present climate would be inappropriate. This is due to the large workload of the committees, their voluntary nature and the change a monitoring role might cause to the relationship between researcher and ethics committee, which might herald an increasing recourse to judicial review. A radical overhaul of the system would be necessary in order for ethics committees adequately to fulfil a monitoring function. (shrink)

My aim is to suggest that there is a case for using a randomised consent design in some neonatal trials. As an example I use the trials of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in neonates suffering pulmonary hypertension. In some trials the process of obtaining consent has the potential to harm the subject, for example, by disappointing those who end in the control group and by creating additional anxiety at times of acute illness. An example of such were the (...) trials of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in neonates suffering pulmonary hypertension. Pre-randomised consent could avoid or lessen these harms. However, a number of ethical objections are made to these research designs. They involve denial of information, using people, denial of choice, and "overselling" of allocated treatment. Furthermore, they are the wrong response; better communication might be the answer, for example. I argue that these objections are not completely persuasive. However, they are enough to suggest caution in the use of such designs. (shrink)

Tango, of all popular dances, would seem to be the most extreme embodiment of traditional notions of gender difference. It not only draws on hierarchical differences between the sexes, but also generates a ‘politics of passion’ which transforms Argentineans into the exotic ‘Other’ for consumption by Europeans and North Americans in search of the passion they are missing at home. In this article, I offer a modest provocation in the direction of scholarship that places politics before experience by questioning (...) whether passion can be explained solely through the discourses of feminism or postcolonialism. Instead I will show why we, as critical feminist scholars, need to pay more attention to the experience of passion, whether we are analysing a passion for tango or any other bodily activity that is intensely pleasurable, addictively desired, but also unsettling, disruptive, and – last but not least – politically incorrect. (shrink)

The orthodox view on higher education financing is that students should bear some of the costs of attending and, where necessary, meet that cost through debt financing. New economic realties, including protracted economic slowdown and increasing austerity of the state with respect to the public funding of goods and services has meant that the same generation who have to borrow the most in order to attend face significantly fewer employment prospects upon graduation. In this context, is the current (...) approach of shifting the costs of post-secondary education from the general public to individual students justified? Most debate on the issue has focused on the demands of distributive justice within the modern higher education system and on the whole accepts the idea that students ought to pay. I argue that distributive arguments alone are insufficient because they tacitly endorse the provision of higher education as being much like a consumer's choice. As an alternative, I explore the place and importance of higher education in supporting personal autonomy as a central liberal democratic value. I then argue that debt financing of higher education places unreasonable constraints on student's choices with respect to the kind of democratic citizens that they would otherwise aspire to be. This constraint has negative implications for the wellbeing of individual students and the larger society. (shrink)

Since some care providers give colleagues’ interests priority over patients’ and families’, they are at risk of imposing their bias on patients without knowing this. In this piece I discuss how the risk increases when care providers have greater discretion and how they can best avoid this risk. I discuss identifying these situations, assessing them, and then, based on what they have concluded, intervening and use their having inadequate resources, their seeing what patients want as futile, (...) and their making decisions regarding surrogate decision makers as paradigmatic examples. As “remedies,” I suggest that care providers share with patients their rationales, validate adaptive aspects of difficult behaviors, self-disclose, and sometimes even go beyond their usual clinical practices. (shrink)

Some philosophers, such as Roger Crisp and Alastair Norcross, have recently argued that the traditional moral categories of wrongness, permissibility and obligation should be avoided when doing ethical theory. I argue that even if morality does not itself provide reasons for action, the moral categories nevertheless have a central role to play in ethical theory: they allow us to make crucial judgements about how to feel about, and react to, agents who behave in anti‐social ways, and (...) class='Hi'>they help motivate us to act altruistically. (shrink)

Why should we become posthuman? There is only one morally compelling answer to this question: because posthumanity will be a more beneficial state, better than present humanity. This is the Posthuman Beneficence Argument, the centerpiece of the liberal transhumanist defense of “directed evolution.” In this article, I examine PBA and find it deficient on a number of lethal counts. My argument focuses on the writings of transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom, who has developed the most articulate defense of PBA and (...) disclosed its metaethical framework. I begin by locating PBA in the context of wider transhumanist claims for the desirability of posthumanity. I identify two crucial components: a model of deliberative rationality, requiring reasons to endorse claims; and the reasons themselves. I examine these two conditions, in turn, specifying the claims that they ask us to accept. Following Bostrom, I argue that there is a need for a foundationalist approach that assures us of some universality in the process of valuation. This is required to appropriately ground the moral continuity and appeal to universality that PBA demands. I examine the reasons why this approach ultimately fails, leaving posthumanity as an unintelligible concept with no moral force. I conclude by identifying a more mature approach to the debate on human enhancement, one that forfeits the grandiose but baseless claims too often found in transhumanist defenses of directed evolution. In short, posthumanity may be a good science fiction trope, but it has no normative force in the moral philosophy of human enhancement. (shrink)

Some philosophers believe that we can, in theory, justifiably prepunish people—that is, punish them for a crime before they have committed that crime. In particular, it has been claimed that retributivists ought to accept prepunishment. The question of whether prepunishment can be justified has sparked an interesting and growing philosophical debate. In this paper I look at a slightly different question: whether retributivists who accept that prepunishment can be justified should prefer postpunishment or prepunishment, or see them (...) as on a par. The answer is complex: asking this question brings to light unrecognized distinctions within both retributivism and prepunishment, giving us four different answers to the question, depending on what kind of retributivism and what kind of prepunishment are combined. Surprisingly, given that it is usually presented as a second best, to be pursued only when postpunishment is unavailable, some combinations will find prepunishment preferable. (shrink)

The long-term health of business ethics is suspect. In particular, there are some troubling trends within the discipline’s methodology that should be closely monitored and, in some cases, countered. Furthermore, business ethicists and management theorists should take some steps to make business ethics more robust and more relevant to actual business practice. Part 1 of this article argues that, while the dominance of the social science approach should be curtailed, relations between normative and empirical (...) scholars need not be hostile; on the contrary, there are some modest ways in which the two approaches could complement each other more than they have to date. Part 2 examines why business ethics needs more systems thinking. Part 3 explores why business ethicists in general should follow the lead of some of our colleagues who are engaging in powerful and influential research with direct and immediate practical applications. The article closes with a few modest suggestions for enhancing business ethics theorizing and provides some concrete ways for scholars to become more involved with business practitioners and business practice and to learn from the latter in ways that can productively feed research streams. (shrink)

Some progress has been made in recent decades to articulate corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, more recently, to associate CSR with international enforcement of human rights. This progress continues to be hampered, however, by the ability of a multinational corporation (MNC) that violates human rights not only to shift liability from itself to a nation-state but even to win compensation from that nation-state for loss of profits due to restrictions on its business activities. In the process, the nation-state’s sovereignty (...) is diminishing; and, in effect, though still attributed to nation-states, it is being transferred to the MNC. The main aim of this article is (1) to draw on normative considerations to claim that this MNC proto-sovereignty should be modified and (2) to contend that this can eventually be accomplished by adding to corporate adoption of CSR guidelines a regimen of global human rights enforcement. I base this contention on expectations about the internationalization of corporate criminal law and the globalization of civil society in general and of NGOs in particular. I consider various jurisdictions but I focus on US jurisprudence. (shrink)

Simple mass nouns are words like ‘water’, ‘furniture’ and ‘gold’. We can form complex mass noun phrases such as ‘dirty water’, ‘leaded gold’ and ‘green grass’. I do not propose to discuss the problems in giving a characterization of the words that are mass versus those that are not. For the purposes of this paper I shall make the following decrees: (a) nothing that is not a noun or noun phrase can be mass, (b) no abstract noun phrases are considered (...) mass, (c) words like ‘thing’, ‘entity’ and ‘object’ are not mass, (d) I shall not consider such words as ‘stuff’, ‘substance or ‘matter’, (e) measures on mass nouns (like ‘gallon of gasoline’, ‘blade of grass’, etc.) are not considered, (f) plurals of count terms are not considered mass. Within these limitations, we can say generally that mass noun phrases are those phrases that ‘much’ can be prefexed to, by ‘many’ cannot be prefexed to, without an0maly.l Semantically, such phrases usually have the property of collectiveness- they are true of any sum of things of which they are true ; and of divisiveness - they are true of any part (down to a certain limit) of things of which they are true. All of this, however, is only ‘generally speaking’ - I shall mostly use only the simple examples given above and ignore the problems in giving a complete characterization of mass nouns. In the paper I want to discuss some problems involved in casting English sentences containing mass nouns into some artificial language; but in order to do this we should have some anchoring framework on which to justify or reject a given proposal. The problem of finding an adequate language can be viewed as a case of translation (from English to the artificial language), where the translation relation must meet certain requirements. I shall suggest five such requirements; others could be added. (shrink)

Educationalists introduce students to literature search strategies that, with rare exceptions, focus chiefly on the location of primary research reports and systematic reviews of those reports. These sources are, however, unlikely to adequately address the normative and/or metaphysical questions that nurses frequently and legitimately interest themselves in. To meet these interests, non‐research texts exploring normative and/or metaphysical topics might and perhaps should, in some situations, be deemed suitable search targets. This seems plausible and, moreover, students are encouraged to (...) ‘read widely’. Yet accepting this proposition creates significant difficulties. Specifically, if non‐research scholarly sources and artistic or literary (humanities) products dealing with normative/metaphysical issues were included in what are, at present, scientifically orientated searches, it is difficult to draw boundaries around what – if anything – is to be excluded. Engaging with this issue highlights problems with qualitative scholarship's designation as ‘evidence’. Thus, absurdly, if qualitative scholarship's findings are labelled evidence because they generate practice‐relevant understanding/insight, then any literary or artistic artefact (e.g. a throwaway lifestyle magazine) that generates kindred understandings/insights is presumably also evidence? This conclusion is rejected and it is instead proposed that while artistic, literary, and qualitative inquiries can provide practitioners with powerful and stimulating non‐evidential understanding, these sources are not evidence as commonly conceived. (shrink)

Whether God exists is a metaphysical question. But there is also a neglected evaluative question about God’s existence: Should we want God to exist? Very many, including many atheists and agnostics, appear to think we should. Theists claim that if God didn’t exist things would be far worse, and many atheists agree; they regret God’s inexistence. Some remarks by Thomas Nagel suggest an opposing view: that we should want God not to exist. I call this (...) view anti-theism. I explain how such view can be coherent, and why it might be correct. Anti-theism must be distinguished from the argument from evil or the denial of God’s goodness; it is a claim about the goodness of God’s existence. Anti-theists must claim that it’s a logical consequence of God’s existence that things are worse in certain respects. The problem is that God’s existence would also make things better in many ways. Given that God’s existence is likely to be impersonally better overall, anti-theists face a challenge similar to that facing nonconsequentialists. I explore two ways of meeting this challenge. (shrink)

Advance directives have been hailed for two decades as the best way to safeguard patients’ autonomy when they are totally or partially incompetent. In many national contexts they are written into law and they are mostly associated with end-of-life decisions. Although advocates and critics of ADs exchange relevant empirical and theoretical arguments, the debate is inconclusive. We argue that this is so for good reasons: the ADs’ project is fraught with tensions, and this is the reason why (...) they are both important and deeply problematic. We outline six such tensions, and conclude with some positive suggestions about how to better promote patients’ autonomy in end-of-life decision. We argue that ADs should continue to be an option but they cannot be the panacea that they are expected to be. (shrink)

Who is God? If we want to love God, to serve God, and to make God the center of our lives, we would do well to settle this question at least in some small way. Yes, we can never know everything about God, and yes, the Christian life is about coming to know God more and more. However, this book serves as a starting point for understanding what Christians mean when they say "God," and to whom they (...) are referring when they use this name. Part of the What Every Catholic Should Know series, God: What Every Catholic Should Know is born out of the recognition that God is central to the Faith, but we encounter misconceptions about God all the time. In an effort to clear up these misconceptions, this book addresses three major concepts-the nature of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation-so that we may strengthen our faith and our ability to communicate it to other people. Some of us might protest that we are not smart enough to do theology and that less is more when it comes to contemplating the divine. We might even think that too much theology detracts from simple faith. But if God is perfect, wonderful, all goodness, love itself-as the Bible tells us in 1 John 4:8-it would be strange indeed if we did not want to give our whole selves to God, including our minds. After all, the Lord himself tells us: "you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30). Book jacket. (shrink)

The U.S. federal regulations require investigators conducting nonbeneficial research to obtain the assent of children who are capable of providing it. Unfortunately, there has been no analysis of which children are capable of assent or even what abilities ground the capacity to give assent. Why should investigators be required to obtain the positive agreement of some children, but not others, before enrolling them in research that does not offer a compensating potential for direct benefit? We argue that the (...) scope of children's research decision making should be based on the principles of respect for autonomy and nonmaleficence. These principles imply that the threshold for assent should be fixed at 14 years of age, and a dissent requirement should be adopted for all children in the context of nonbeneficial research. (shrink)

Current uses of robots in classrooms are reviewed and used to characterise four scenarios: Robot as Classroom Teacher; Robot as Companion and Peer; Robot as Care-eliciting Companion; and Telepresence Robot Teacher. The main ethical concerns associated with robot teachers are identified as: privacy; attachment, deception, and loss of human contact; and control and accountability. These are discussed in terms of the four identified scenarios. It is argued that classroom robots are likely to impact children’s’ privacy, especially when they masquerade (...) as their friends and companions, when sensors are used to measure children’s responses, and when records are kept. Social robots designed to appear as if they understand and care for humans necessarily involve some deception, and could increase the risk of reduced human contact. Children could form attachments to robot companions, or robot teachers and this could have a deleterious effect on their social development. There are also concerns about the ability, and use of robots to control or make decisions about children’s behaviour in the classroom. It is concluded that there are good reasons not to welcome fully fledged robot teachers, and that robot companions should be given a cautious welcome at best. The limited circumstances in which robots could be used in the classroom to improve the human condition by offering otherwise unavailable educational experiences are discussed. (shrink)

As a gynecologic surgeon with a focus on infertility, I frequently hold complex discussions with patients, exploring with them the risks and benefits of surgical options. In the past, we physicians may have expected our patients to simply defer to our expertise and choose from the options we presented. In our contemporary era, however, patients frequently request options not favored by their physicians and even some they've found themselves online. In reproductive endocrinology and infertility, the range of options (...) that may be offered or that patients may themselves seek out is continuously widening. Physicians certainly seek to find the option that will result in the best outcome for their patients, but the information to guide us in achieving the best outcome can be vague or conflicting. Add to this the financial and emotional pressures bearing on patients seeking assisted reproduction. In this essay, I explore the extent to which clinicians in reproductive medicine should follow patient requests with which they disagree or instead try to persuade the patient to do something else or simply refuse outright to meet the request. And if persuasion is to be used, what would be legitimate methods? Clearly, coercion is unacceptable, but the line between persuasion and coercion can be elusive. At what point can or should clinicians resist such requests—and to what degree? (shrink)

In this paper I am interested in the question of whether and why states should prioritize child refugees over adult refugees in cases where they are not able to grant refuge to all those who are entitled to it. In particular I discuss three grounds on which such a prioritization could be based: (a) vulnerability, (b) efficiency and (c) life phase and life span. As can be shown, these grounds also apply, to some extent, to particular groups (...) of adults such as women, the elderly, or people with special needs. Based on this I conclude that states should invest significant resources into filtering out those who are the most needy and vulnerable although there are several limitations to doing that. Only if such a selection process were impossible, or so costly and time-consuming that it would result in significantly fewer refugees being admitted, would states have good moral reasons to prioritize children without further screening. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to conduct research on popular views on ethical questions. In this paper, we discuss when and to what extent popular views should be included in a reflective equilibrium process, thereby influencing normative theory. We argue that popular views are suitable for inclusion in a reflective equilibrium if they approximate considered judgments and examine some factors that plausibly contribute to the consideredness of popular views. We conclude that deliberation and familiarity contribute to the (...) consideredness of popular views, whereas prevalence does not. Furthermore, we raise the “fair trial” objection: that expert deliberation on popular views might fail to respect the consideredness of these views. Eliciting views approximating considered judgments directly from participants is therefore preferable to refining popular views or treating them as “bare” intuitions in the reflective process. These conclusions have important implications for which research methods will likely elicit popular views suitable for a reflective equilibrium process. Research focusing on the prevalence of views is unlikely to yield popular views suitable for a reflective equilibrium, whereas deliberative and in-depth work is more promising. (shrink)

It is notoriously difficult to find an intuitively satisfactory rule for evaluating populations based on the welfare of the people in them. Standard examples, like total utilitarianism, either entail the Repugnant Conclusion or in some other way contradict common intuitions about the relative value of populations. Several philosophers have presented formal arguments that seem to show that this happens of necessity: our core intuitions stand in contradiction. This paper assesses the state of play, focusing on the most powerful of (...) these ‘impossibility theorems’, as developed by Gustaf Arrhenius. I highlight two ways in which these theorems fall short of their goal: some appeal to a supposedly egalitarian condition which, however, does not properly reflect egalitarian intuitions; the others rely on a background assumption about the structure of welfare which cannot be taken for granted. Nonetheless, the theorems remain important: they give insight into the difficulty, if not perhaps the impossibility, of constructing a satisfactory population axiology. We should aim for reflective equilibrium between intuitions and more theoretical considerations. I conclude by highlighting one possible ingredient in this equilibrium, which, I argue, leaves open a still wider range of acceptable theories: the possibility of vague or otherwise indeterminate value relations. (shrink)

As part of a continuous process to explore the factors that might weaken or corrupt traditional peer review, in this paper, we query the ethics, fairness and validity of the request, by editors, of authors to suggest peer reviewers during the submission process. One of the reasons for the current crisis in science pertains to a loss in trust as a result of a flawed peer review which is by nature biased unless it is open peer review. As we indicate, (...) the fact that some editors and journals rely on authors’ suggestions in terms of who should peer review their paper already instills a potential way to abuse the trust of the submission and publishing system. An author-suggested peer reviewer choice might also tempt authors to seek reviewers who might be more receptive or sympathetic to the authors’ message or results, and thus favor the outcome of that paper. Authors should thus not be placed in such a potentially ethically compromising situation, especially as a mandatory condition for submission. However, the fact that they do not have an opt-out choice during the submission process—especially when using an online submission system that makes such a suggestion compulsory—may constitute a violation of authors’ rights. (shrink)

Should there be a female age limit on public funding for assisted reproductive technology (ART)? The question bears significant economic and sociopolitical implications and has been contentious in many countries. We conceptualise the question as one of justice in resource allocation, using three much-debated substantive principles of justice—the capacity to benefit, personal responsibility, and need—to structure and then explore a complex of arguments. Capacity-to-benefit arguments are not decisive: There are no clear cost-effectiveness grounds to restrict funding to those older (...) women who still bear some capacity to benefit from ART. Personal responsibility arguments are challenged by structural determinants of delayed motherhood. Nor are need arguments decisive: They can speak either for or against a female age limit, depending on the conception of need used. We demonstrate how these principles can differ not only in content but also in the relative importance they are accorded by governments. Wide variation in ART public funding policy might be better understood in this light. We conclude with some inter-country comparison. New Zealand and Swedish policies are uncommonly transparent and thus demonstrate particularly well how the arguments we explore have been put into practice. (shrink)

An important issue for visual argumentation is its relationship to propositions, since it has been argued that, in order to be arguments, images should be propositional. The first part of the paper will approach this debate from a theoretical perspective. After quickly surveying the field on the issue, I will address the relationship between images and propositions. Three specific questions will be examined: can propositions accurately account for the way images express arguments?; are verbal propositions necessary to reconstruct arguments (...) that images alone cannot convey, due to their lacking linguistic tools?; are images essentially non-propositional because they don’t have truth-value? The second part of the paper will include a detailed analysis of two posters. From these analyses, I will ultimately conclude that some images can display a visual argument without necessarily being propositional. (shrink)

Some species face extinction if they are unable to keep pace with climate change. Yet proposals to assist threatened species’ poleward or uphill migration (‘assisted migration’) have caused significant controversy among conservationists, not least because assisted migration seems to threaten some values, even as it protects others. To date, however, analysis of ethical and value questions about assisted migration has largely remained abstract, removed from the ultimately pragmatic decision about whether or not to move a particular species. (...) This paper uses the case study of the whitebark pine, a keystone species of sub-alpine habitats in western North America, to consider how particular cases of assisted migration may be ethically approached. After taking into account the value of species, wildness, place, ecosystems, culture and sentient animals, we conclude that, on balance, there appear to be good reasons to move the whitebark pine. (shrink)

Some theorists argue that moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory. I take this argument one step further, arguing that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt. This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement. My argument for this is that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration is (...) a matter of public health, and for this reason should be governed by public health ethics. I argue that the covert administration of a compulsory moral bioenhancement program better conforms to public health ethics than does an overt compulsory program. In particular, a covert compulsory program promotes values such as liberty, utility, equality, and autonomy better than an overt program does. Thus, a covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is morally preferable to an overt moral bioenhancement program. (shrink)

According to many philosophers, the world should embrace open borders – that is, let people move around the globe and settle as they wish, with exceptions made only in very specific cases such as fugitives or terrorists. Defenders of open borders have adopted two major argumentative strategies. The first is to claim that immigration restrictions involve coercion, and then show that such coercion cannot be morally justified. The second is to argue that adopting worldwide open borders policies would (...) make the world a much better place, particularly by improving average well-being. This essay contends that both of these argumentative strategies fail. Some immigration restrictions are not only morally justified, but morally required. (shrink)

In his appraisal of the English translation of the Beiträge by Emad and Maly, Kisiel has not addressed some key issues concerning the translation of this seminal work of being-historical thinking. Emad and Maly have in their “Translators’ Foreword” highlighted a number of hermeneutic issues and challenges which had to be addressed while translating this work. If Kisiel were to be really reviewing the quality of this translation, he would have had to address first the question whether those issues (...) highlighted by the translators are real issues that are to be considered by any translator. If they are real issues and if Kisiel is unhappy with the way the translators have dealt with them, he should have proposed better alternatives, instead of summarily and contemptuously dismissing the “Translator’s Foreword” itself. Literary criticism is surely an invitation to present another point of view, but never a means for expressing contempt. (shrink)

Most economists and some philosophers distinguish individual utilities from interpersonal social values. Even if challenges to that conceptual distinction can be met, further philosophically interesting questions arise. I pursue three in this paper, using, as context for the discussion, health economics and its attempt to discern empirically a social welfare function to help guide rationing decisions. (1) To discern these utilities and values in a manner that is morally appropriate if they are to influence rationing decisions, who (...) class='Hi'>should be queried? To discern individual health state utilities, persons in precisely those states should be asked (generically, patients), but for social values, representatives of the general public should be. (2) To discern social values, what should representatives of the public be asked? They should be asked person trade-off (PTO) questions that encompass their own self-interest, not PTO questions that focus only on others. (3) What must public representatives understand before they respond to such questions? Despite the philosophically complex problem of patient adaptation, they should understand (among other things) the health state utilities elicited from actual patients with the conditions at issue. (shrink)

Most economists and some philosophers distinguish individual utilities from interpersonal social values. Even if challenges to that conceptual distinction can be met, further philosophically interesting questions arise. I pursue three in this paper, using, as context for the discussion, health economics and its attempt to discern empirically a social welfare function to help guide rationing decisions. (1) To discern these utilities and values in a manner that is morally appropriate if they are to influence rationing decisions, who (...) class='Hi'>should be queried? To discern individual health state utilities, persons in precisely those states should be asked (generically, "patients"), but for social values, representatives of the general public should be. (2) To discern social values, what should representatives of the public be asked? They should be asked "person trade-off" (PTO) questions that encompass their own self-interest, not PTO questions that focus only on others. (3) What must public representatives understand before they respond to such questions? Despite the philosophically complex problem of patient adaptation, they should understand (among other things) the health state utilities elicited from actual patients with the conditions at issue. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider whether we should offer assistance to both wild and domesticated animals when they are suffering. I argue that we may have different obligations to assist wild and domesticated animals because they have different morally-relevant relationships with us. I explain how different approaches to animal ethics, which, for simplicity, I call capacity-oriented and context-oriented, address questions about animal assistance differently. I then defend a broadly context-oriented approach, on which we have special obligations to (...) assist animals that we have made vulnerable to or dependent on us. This means that we should normally help suffering domesticated animals, but that we lack general obligations to assist wild animals, since we are not responsible for their vulnerability. However, we may have special obligations to help wild animals where we have made them vulnerable to or dependent on us. I consider some obvious difficulties with this context-oriented approach, and I conclude by looking more closely at the question whether we should intervene, if we could do so successfully, to reduce wild animal suffering by reducing predation. (shrink)

A part of the scientific literature consists of intermediate results within a longer project. Scientists often publish a first result in the course of their work, while aware that they should soon achieve a more advanced result from this preliminary result. Should they follow the proverb “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, and publish any intermediate result they get? This is the normative question addressed in this paper. My aim is (...) to clarify, to refine, and to assess informal arguments about the choice whether to publish intermediate results. To this end, I adopt a rational decision framework, supposing some utility or preferences, and I propose a formal model. The best publishing strategy turns out to depend on the research situation. In some simple circumstances, even selfish and short-minded scientists should publish their intermediate results, and should thus behave like their altruistic peers, i. e. like society would like them to behave. In other research situations, with inhomogeneous reward or difficulty profiles, the best strategy is opposite. These results suggest qualified philosophical morals. (shrink)

Currently, research ethics committees in the UK meet behind closed doors—their workings and most of the content of their decisions are unavailable to the general public. There is a significant tension between this current practice and a broader societal presumption of openness. As a form of public institution, the REC system exists to oversee research from the perspective of society generally.An important part of this tension turns on the kind of justification that might be offered for the REC system. In (...) this paper I adapt Daniels and Sabin’s accountability for reasonableness model for just resource allocation to the research ethics context to provide some structural legitimacy and to enable progress on the question of openness. After considering the consequences of adopting this model for open REC meetings, I then examine some reasons that might be offered against open meetings. These arguments do not overwhelm the core intuitions behind the presumption of openness but they do, I suggest, give us reason to retreat from fully public meetings. I conclude that there should be important adjustments to the system towards public accountability and that there are grounds for stopping short of fully public meetings. (shrink)

This paper critiques many of the leading popular and philosophical arguments purporting to show employers have a duty to pay a living wage. Some of these arguments fail on their own terms. Some are not really about a living wage. The best of them fail to show employers per se owe a living wage; at best, they should that governments should supplement market incomes though a negative income tax or some other redistributive device.

Consider this hypothetical scenario involving a choice not to vaccinate a child. Ms. S has a niece who is autistic. The girl's parents are suspicious that there is some relationship between her autism and her Measles Mumps and Rubella vaccination. They have shared their concerns with Ms. S. She then declines to have her own daughter, Jinny S., vaccinated with the MMR vaccine. To bypass the state's mandatory vaccination requirement, Ms. S claims a state-legislated philosophical exemption, whereby she (...) simply attests to the fact that she is opposed to vaccinating her daughter due to a conscientiously held belief. At the age of four, Jinny goes on a trip by airplane to Germany with her mother. After returning to the United States, she attends daycare despite having some mild cold symptoms. Subsequently, she develops a classic measles rash, at which point her mother brings her to a pediatrician and keeps her home from daycare. (shrink)

Several Dutch politicians have recently argued that medical voluntary euthanasia laws should be extended to include healthy elderly citizens who suffer from non-medical ‘existential suffering’. In response, some seek to show that cases of medical euthanasia are morally permissible in ways that completed life euthanasia cases are not. I provide a different, societal perspective. I argue against assessing the permissibility of individual euthanasia cases in separation of their societal context and history. An appropriate justification of euthanasia needs to (...) be embedded in a wider solidaristic response to the causes of suffering. By classifying some suffering as ‘medical’ and some as ‘non-medical’, most societies currently respond to medical conditions in importantly different ways than they do to non-medical suffering. In medical cases, countries like the Netherlands have a health care, health research and public health system to systematically assign responsibilities to address causes of medical suffering. We lack such a system for non-medical suffering among elderly citizens, which makes completed life euthanasia importantly different from euthanasia in medical cases. Because of this moral ‘responsibility gap’, focusing on the permissibility of completed life euthanasia in separation of wider societal duties to attend to possible causes is societally inappropriate. To spell out this objection in more philosophical terms, I introduce the concept of acts that are morally permissible but contextually problematic. (shrink)

In this paper, I address a question in social epistemology about the unity of a scientic community to- wards its inner groups (teams, labs...). I investigate the reasons why these groups might want to \go it alone", working among themselves and hiding their discoveries from other groups. I concentrate on the intermediate results of a longer project, where the first steps can help to achieve a more advanced result. I study to what extent the isolation of research groups might be (...) damaging to the epistemic progress of the whole community. In order to get an idea of the reason why scientists might not share their intermediate results with others, consider for example Schawlow and Townes in the summer of 1958 (the historical material is drawn from Broberg, 1991, chap. 3): together they had just designed the principle of functioning of what would be known as the laser, with the intention of constructing the rst laser, relying on their theoretical ideas. Should they have published their theoretical discovery, or rather taken advantage of their advance on possible oppo- nents and start the experimental work? They chose to publish their theoretical ideas in a scientic journal, and they also led a patent application. On the one hand, it was a valuable choice: the patent was granted and their paper was published, making them soon famous. Further- more, another scientist called Gould was to le a simi- lar patent application a few months later, in March 1959; it was refused, because of the priority of Schawlow and Townes. If the latter had not submitted their idea in 1958, the patent would certainly have been acknowl- edged to Gould. In this sense, publishing their intermediate result was a worthy strategy. On the other hand, history showed that their publication had also some drawbacks for them. Schawlow and Townes' publication triggered a race among many American laboratories for the rst experimental construction of the laser. In addition to bringing them competitors, their publication helped these competitors in crucial ways; so much so that it was another scientist, Maiman, and not Schawlow and Townes, who was able to build the rst working laser, in May 1960, and to publish the result. If Schawlow and Townes had not published their theoretical idea, there are chances that they would have been the first ones to build a laser. Their publication of the first theoretical result certainly prevented them from getting the second experimental one. In short, the best publishing strategy about an intermediate result is no easy question for a scientist. Consider now the whole community, concerned with the results available to all and with the pace of the epistemic progress. Schawlow and Townes' publication enabled the rst laser to be built quicker, as other teams could rely on their theoretical work. More generally, being able to reuse other's works seems to be a rm basis of scientic progress. Thus, for the whole community, it seems that there are only benets if intermediate results are published. As this is not necessarily the best strategy for those who reach these intermediate results, there might be a conflict between the interests of individuals and those of the whole community. The question Schawlow and Townes faced was whether they should make their discovery publicly known, or keep it for themselves to progress alone. This alternative can also arise for an entire lab, when competing with other labs on some long-run project: should it make its discoveries known to its opponents, or only share them internally among its members? At a higher level still, this question arises for what can be called scientic schools, which are groups of labs sharing some particular approach|methodological, experimental or interpre- tational, for example. At each level within the scientic community, there are competitive groups of scientists which may decide to go it alone and to prevent their results from being accessible to others. If they had good reasons for doing so, there would be dramatic consequences for the whole community: other groups would not be able to reuse their results, labour force would be wasted in achieving them again, and the progress of the eld would be slowered. 9 The aim of this paper is to investigate this risk of division: to assess the conditions under which it may oc- cur, its damage for the community, and to draw the limit of an acceptable pluralism. The reasoning with benets and drawbacks which has been sketched for Schawlow and Townes seems to be implicitly an informal economic argument. In order to clarify and to rene such an argument, I will investigate it in a rational decision framework, supposing some utility or preferences for the groups of scientists, and I will propose a formal model, in game theory. In social epistemology of science, formal models have been proposed for various questions (for example, Kitcher 1990, 1993, Goldman 2009, Strevens 2003, 2006, Weisberg and Muldoon, forthcoming, Zollman 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010), but not for the question of the division of the scientic community. I will concentrate on the normative aspect of the question, ignoring the descriptive and historical question of whether groups do go it alone or not. The model I propose is sequential: two groups are competing on a research program, which consists of several results which have to be obtained in order. The groups always carry out some research for the next result, which they reach with some probability per unit of time. When a group, say A, reaches a result, it can either make it public for the other group, or continue its research. After a result is made public, the competitor B can start from it so as to continue its own research. Thus, when A publishes it loses its lead, and its competitor will be able to compete with it in the near future. But it is also recognized as the rst to reach this step. I consider two dierent cases, one in which the number of steps is limited, another where the limit concerns the number of temporal intervals. In both cases, assuming that all steps are equally dicult and equally rewarding, it turns out that the best strategy for a group concerned with its own reward is to make public every step it takes. Thus, there is no risk that groups might separate: a scientist, whatever its group, will publish for all. Finally, I turn to more complex situations, where results have varying size or diculty: there, groups can indeed be better o going it alone. (shrink)

As the phenomenon of implicit bias has become increasingly widely known and accepted, a variety of criticisms have similarly gained in prominence. This paper focuses on one particular set of criticisms, generally made from the political left, of what Sally Haslanger calls “implicit bias stories”—a broad term encompassing a wide range of discourses from media discussions to academic papers to implicit bias training. According to this line of thought, implicit bias stories are counterproductive because they serve to distract from (...) the structural and institutional factors that underlie oppression of social groups. This paper argues on the contrary that implicit bias stories, properly told, can help direct attention and concern to structural and institutional factors, and indeed may be especially helpful in motiving action. The key, however, is to tell these stories properly. When implicit bias sto- ries are told in the wrong way, they are indeed counterproductive. This paper looks in detail at several examples of good and bad implicit bias stories, examining what makes some of them counterproductive and others highly effective in motivating action to combat social injustice. (shrink)

In a crisis, societal needs take precedence over a patient’s best interests. Triage guidelines, however, differ on whether limited resources should focus on maximizing lives or life-years. Choosing between these two approaches has implications for neonatology. Neonatal units have ventilators, some adaptable for adults. This raises the question of whether, in crisis conditions, guidelines for treating extremely premature babies should be altered to free-up ventilators. Some adults who need ventilators will have a survival rate higher than (...) some extremely premature babies. But surviving babies will likely live longer, maximizing life-years. Empiric evidence demonstrates that these babies can derive significant survival benefits from ventilation when compared to adults. When “triaging” or choosing between patients, justice demands fair guidelines. Premature babies do not deserve special consideration; they deserve equal consideration. Solidarity is crucial but must consider needs specific to patient populations and avoid biases against people with disabilities and extremely premature babies. (shrink)

This paper argues that extant signalling-based analyses cannot explain a range of cases of biological (and psychological) deception, such as those in which the deceiver does not send a signal at all, but that Artiga and Paternotte’s (Philos Stud 175:579–600, 2018) functional and my (Krstić in The analysis of self-deception: rehabilitating the traditionalist account. PhD Dissertation, University of Auckland, 2018: §3; Krstić and Saville in Australas J Philos 97:830–835, 2019) manipulativist analyses can. Therefore, the latter views should be given (...) preference. And because we still do not have a satisfactory definition of manipulation, the functional analysis, according to which a state is deceptive iff its function is to mislead and it misleads, is currently our best theory of deception. This is not to argue that the signalling-based analyses have no value but only that they should not be used in general analyses of biological deception. We need to move on to some other interesting issues. (shrink)

In Zhong (Philos Phenomenol Res 83:129–147, 2011; Analysis 72:75–85, 2012), I argued that, contrary to what many people might expect, the counterfactual theory of causation will generate (rather than solve) the exclusion problem. Recently some philosophers raise an incisive objection to this argument. They contend that my argument fails as it equivocates between different notions of a physical realizer (see Christensen and Kallestrup in Analysis 72:513–517, 2012). However, I find that their criticism doesn’t threaten the central idea of (...) my view. In this paper, I make two separate responses that appeal to two unequivocal notions of physical realizers, respectively. I aim to show that a modified argument that uses either notion would work. (shrink)