In this paper I will examine two responses to the argument from marginal cases; the argument from kinds and the similarity argument. I will argue that these arguments are insufficient to show that all humans have moral status but no animals do. This does not prove that animals have moral status but it does shift the burden of proof onto those who want to maintain that all humans are morally considerable, but no animals are.

All else being equal, can granting the objective purport of moral experience support a presumption in favor of some form of moral objectivism? Don Loeb (2007) has argued that even if we grant that moral experience appears to present us with a realm of objective moral fact—something he denies we have reason to do in the first place—the objective purport of moral experience cannot by itself provide even prima facie support for moral objectivism. In this paper, I contend against Loeb (...) that granting the objective purport of ordinary moral experience is sufficient to support a defeasible presumption in favor of moral objectivism, and this by constituting non-explanatory, comparative confirmation that incrementally raises the prima facie likelihood that moral facts exist. More specifically, I appeal to a modest confirmation principle shared by Likelihoodists and Bayesieans - namely, the Weak Law of Likelihood - in an effort to show that (i) at a minimum, moral experience establishes a middling scrutable probability for a sufficient but not necessary condition of moral objectivism being true, and that (ii) this moderate probability in turn constitutes evidence that makes it prima facie more probable than not that some form of moral objectivism is true. (shrink)

Proponents of the argument from regress maintain that the existence of Instrumental Value is sufficient to establish the existence of Intrinsic Value. It is argued that the chain of instrumentally valuable things has to end somewhere. Namely with intrinsic value. In this paper, I shall argue something a little more modest than this. I do not want to argue that the regress argument proves that there is intrinsic value but rather that it proves that the idea of intrinsic value is (...) a necessary part of our thinking about moral value. (shrink)

Deconstruction occupies an “eccentric” place in the varied field of biopolitics, as it radicalizes the indissoluble knot that binds life to power. On the basis of Foucauldian analysis, Derrida reflects on the “deviation” of biopolitics, which turns into bio-thanato-politics, that is to say, politics over life (bios) and death (thanatos). Life and death are not opposite, rather, they are inseparable, as one has inscribed the other within itself. Derrida’s bio-thanato-politics, as a deconstruction of the concept of life and its relationship (...) with the power, which is always the power of life and death, is not a different declination of biopolitics, but its radicalization. Beyond the biopolitical alternative between a power over life and a power of life, Derrida thinks a bio-thanato-politics, namely, a politics of the survival. Surviving well together, indeed, is the essential character of his democracy to-come. (shrink)

This paper attempts to demonstrate Max Scheler’s anticipation of and continued relevance to a burgeoning trend of essence-based accounts of modality, chief among them being Kit Fine’s landmark 1994 “Essence and Modality.” I argue that Scheler’s account of the material a priori not only anticipates the picture of essence-based modality suggested by Fine, but moreover offers resources with the potential to resolve key challenges for the Finean program. In particular, Fine’s account runs into problems in explaining how formal logical necessities (...) are to be grounded in essences, challenges that put pressure on the essentialist to adopt a non-propositional account of the nature of logical principles. I argue that one such account can be found in Scheler’s notion of the material a priori, according to which all necessary propositional truth is grounded in a realm of experientially given yet a priori "phenomenological facts." After showing the general rapprochement between Scheler’s and Fine’s accounts of regional modality, I then turn to address Scheler’s attempt to ground formal logical principles in essences. On Scheler’s picture, propositions expressing formal logical truths are true in virtue of the domain of essences in two senses: In terms of what Scheler calls objective necessity, they are true insofar as they coincide with the essential facts and interconnections shared by all possible regions of being; In terms of what he calls subjective necessity, they are true in virtue of these same essential facts and interconnections insofar as they have become “functionalized” into law-like patterns of cognition. (shrink)

A set of qubit channels has a classical representation when it is isomorphic to the convex closure of a group of classical channels. From Crowder and Martin (Proceedings of Quantum Physics and Logic, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2009), we know that up to isomorphism there are five such sets, each corresponding to either a subgroup of the alternating group on four letters, or a subgroup of the symmetric group on three letters. In this paper, we show that the (...) classical representation of a qubit channel also carries its information theoretic data—in particular, both the Holevo capacity and the scope of a unital qubit channel can be completely calculated from a systematically determined classical channel. (shrink)

Some philosophers (such as Kant and Rawls) think it is only wrong to be cruel to cats because it will make one behave cruelly to humans. This explanation is unsatisfactory. Why? Because being cruel to your cat is a direct wrong to your cat regardless of the effects it has on other humans. Ascribing the wrongness of cruelty to the fact it will make one callous to other humans is to assess the character of the cruel person not the act (...) they are performing. Cruelty to your cat is wrong because it wrongs your cat directly. (shrink)

Referred to as “a foundational concept” of bioethics, personhood has long figured prominently in discussions of entities’ moral status and attendant rights and duties (Farah and Heberlein 2007, 39)...

Some may doubt whether the question of equality of opportunity applies to women anymore. In most Western countries every career is now, in theory, open to women. Firstly, while this may be true in Western countries, it is not true in others; there are still many careers barred to women outside the West. However, affirmative action is not a remedy where women are barred from given careers, for in such cases the principle of equality of opportunity has been rejected. Rather, (...) affirmative action is a measure for achieving equality of opportunity. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The punishment of social misconduct is a powerful mechanism for stabilizing high levels of cooperation among unrelated individuals. It is regularly assumed that humans have a universal disposition to punish social norm violators, which is sometimes labelled “universal structure of human morality” or “pure aversion to social betrayal”. Here we present evidence that, contrary to this hypothesis, the propensity to punish a moral norm violator varies among participants with different career trajectories. In anonymous real-life conditions, future teachers punished a talented (...) but immoral young violinist: they voted against her in an important music competition when they had been informed of her previous blatant misconduct toward fellow violin students. In contrast, future police officers and high school students did not punish. This variation among socio-professional categories indicates that the punishment of norm violators is not entirely explained by an aversion to social betrayal. We suggest that context specificity plays an important role in normative behaviour; people seem inclined to enforce social norms only in situations that are familiar, relevant for their social category, and possibly strategically advantageous. (shrink)

If we are going to treat other species so very differently from our own — killing, eating and experimenting on pigs and sheep, for example, but never human beings — then it seems we need to come up with some morally relevant difference between us and them that justifies this difference in treatment. Otherwise it appears we are guilty of bigotry (in just the same way that someone who discriminates on the basis of race or sex is guilty of bigotry). (...) But what is this morally relevant difference? Julia Tanner's article examines, and rejects, some of the most popular answers to this question. -/- . (shrink)

Harrison and Tanner argue that having children is morally wrong.

BackgroundValue sensitivity – the ability to recognize value-related issues when they arise in practice – is an indispensable competence for medical practitioners to enter decision-making processes related to ethical questions. However, the psychological competence of value sensitivity is seldom an explicit subject in the training of medical professionals. In this contribution, we outline the traditional concept of moral sensitivity in medicine and its revised form conceptualized as value sensitivity and we propose an instrument that measures value sensitivity.MethodsWe developed an instrument (...) for assessing the sensitivity for three value groups in a four step procedure: 1) value identification ; 2) value representation ; 3) vignette construction and quality evaluation ; and 4) instrument validation by comparing nursing professionals with hospital managers.ResultsWe find that nursing professionals recognize and ascribe importance to principle-related issues more than professionals from hospital management. The latter are more likely to recognize and ascribe importance to strategy-related issues.ConclusionsThese hypothesis-driven results demonstrate the discriminatory power of our newly developed instrument, which makes it useful not only for health care professionals in practice but for students and people working in the clinical context as well. (shrink)

Most people take it for granted that it's morally permissible to have children. They may raise questions about the number of children it's responsible to have or whether it's permissible to reproduce when there's a strong risk of serious disability. But in general, having children is considered a good thing to do, something that's morally permissible in most cases (perhaps even obligatory).

The principles of biomedical ethics – autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice – are of paradigmatic importance for framing ethical problems in medicine and for teaching ethics to medical students and professionals. In order to underline this significance, Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress base the principles in the common morality, i.e. they claim that the principles represent basic moral values shared by all persons committed to morality and are thus grounded in human moral psychology. We empirically investigated the relationship (...) of the principles to other moral and non-moral values that provide orientations in medicine. By way of comparison, we performed a similar analysis for the business & finance domain. (shrink)

In Part I of his paper Cooper gives indisputable evidence regarding Plato's use of the man-made image as a step to the apprehension of a Form under discussion, whether that image be in fact a diagram or a model, or simply a verbal picture, such as his imaginative account of Justice within a community, which we find used to provide us with in Republic 443 c 4 ff. However, Cooper goes on to assure us that the divided-line figure offers us (...) only three types of object: ‘We have three kinds of objects which differ from one another in clearness and esteem, firstly, the Forms, secondly, the objects of ordinary sense-perception, and thirdly, images, shadows and reflections.’ Now the admitted fact that, as he notes, Republic 10 gives the same three orders of reality, does not entirely absolve Cooper from all the implications of Plato's decision to divide his line into four parts rather than three; for it is made quite clear in 509 b 6–10 that the Form of the Good, is the source of being as well as of knowledge, so the Line must also classify both. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that neo-Hobbesian contractarianism cannot yield direct moral standing for marginal humans and animals. However, it has been argued that marginal humans and animals can have a form of direct moral standing under neo-Hobbesian contractarianism: secondary moral standing. I will argue that, even if such standing is direct, this account is unsatisfactory because it is counterintuitive and fragile.

Recent work on Mary Shepherd has largely focused on her metaphysics, especially as a response to Berkeley and Hume. However, relatively little attention has thus far been paid to the epistemological aspects of Shepherd’s program. What little attention Shepherd’s epistemology has received has tended to cast her as providing an unsatisfactory response to the skeptical challenge issued by Hume. For example, Walter Ott and Jeremy Fantl have each suggested that Shepherd cannot avoid Hume’s inductive skepticism even if she is granted (...) her metaphysics. In this paper, I examine Shepherd’s epistemology and argue that her response to Hume is more successful than the current literature suggests. In particular, I argue that, if Shepherd is granted her metaphysics, she can answer Hume’s demand for a rational justification of ordinary inductive inferences via a deductively justified uniformity principle and an appeal to parsimony. (shrink)

Michael Tanner; IX*—Sentimentality, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 127–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

In Part I of his paper Cooper gives indisputable evidence regarding Plato's use of the man-made image as a step to the apprehension of a Form under discussion, whether that image be in fact a diagram or a model, or simply a verbal picture, such as his imaginative account of Justice within a community, which we find used to provide us with in Republic 443 c 4 ff. However, Cooper goes on to assure us that the divided-line figure offers us (...) only three types of object: ‘We have three kinds of objects which differ from one another in clearness and esteem, firstly, the Forms, secondly, the objects of ordinary sense-perception, and thirdly, images, shadows and reflections.’ Now the admitted fact that, as he notes, Republic 10 gives the same three orders of reality, does not entirely absolve Cooper from all the implications of Plato's decision to divide his line into four parts rather than three; for it is made quite clear in 509 b 6–10 that the Form of the Good, is the source of being as well as of knowledge, so the Line must also classify both. (shrink)

Michael Tanner; IX*—Sentimentality, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 127–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelia.

A survey of 345 undergraduate business students from a medium-sized southeastern regional university and 164 undergraduates from a medium-sized university in the United Arab Emirates found that 71 % of all respondents admitted to academic misconduct in a recent 1-year period, a percentage similar to McCabe’s (2005) finding that an average of 70 % of undergraduate students admitted to recent academic misconduct. Business students from the Middle East were significantly less likely to perceive various academic misconduct behaviors as forms of (...) serious cheating compared to business students from the US. Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism and Ajzen’s (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, 179–211, 1991) theory of planned behavior are discussed as likely explanations of reported academic misconduct differences between the two countries. (shrink)

After a sustained period of relative calm, initial teacher education and training (ITET) in Wales has seen much change in recent times since devolution and all the indications are that this change agenda is likely to escalate in both the short and long term. In order to understand what has been happening in the ITET field in Wales, our paper sets out to achieve three things: first, it has contextualised the changing ITET, political, social and economic climate within Wales. Second, (...) it has presented ITET data for Wales from the onset of devolution to the present time. Thereafter, these data have been compared and contrasted. Third, we have attempted to project our findings forward, albeit in an era which is increasingly difficult to predict given both the financial climate and ?cuts? agenda. These latter aspects may result in the longer term, at best, to ITET in Wales becoming even further fragmented or reduced in numbers to, at worst, being decimated or changed forever from the more traditional scene which was apparent in both Wales and the rest of the UK since the Robbins Report aftermath in the late 1960s. (shrink)