Contents
30 found
Order:
  1. Unintended Intrauterine Death and Preterm Delivery: What Does Philosophy Have to Offer?Nicholas Colgrove - 2023 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 48 (3):195-208.
    This special issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy focuses on unintended intrauterine death (UID) and preterm delivery (both phenomena that are commonly—and unhelpfully—referred to as “miscarriage,” “spontaneous abortion,” and “early pregnancy loss”). In this essay, I do two things. First, I outline contributors’ arguments. Most contributors directly respond to “inconsistency arguments,” which purport to show that abortion opponents are unjustified in their comparative treatment of abortion and UID. Contributors to this issue show that such arguments often rely on (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2. Error Theories and Bare-Difference Methodology: A Reply to Kopeikin.Scott Hill - 2023 - Journal of Value Inquiry 57 (4):641-650.
    Kopeikin (forthcoming a, forthcoming b) and Rachels’ (1975) bare-difference cases elicit the intuition that killing is no different than letting die. Hill’s (2018) bare-difference cases elicit the intuition that killing is worse than letting die. At least one of the intuitions must be mistaken. This calls for an error theory. Hill has an error theory for the intuition elicited by the Kopeikin/Rachels’ cases. Kopeikin and Rachels have an error theory for the intuition elicited by Hill’s cases. A natural thought is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. Rescue and Necessity: A Reply to Quong.Joel Joseph & Theron Pummer - 2023 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 25 (2):413-19.
    Suppose A is wrongfully attempting to kill you, thereby forfeiting his right not to be harmed proportionately in self-defense. Even if it were proportionate to blow off A's arms and legs to stop his attack, this would be impermissible if you could stop his attack by blowing off just one of his arms. Blowing off his arms and legs violates the necessity condition on imposing harm. Jonathan Quong argues that violating the necessity condition consists in violating a right to be (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Contrastive Consent and Secondary Permissibility.Theron Pummer - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (3):677-691.
    Consider three cases: -/- Turn: A trolley is about to kill five innocent strangers. You can turn the trolley onto me, saving the five and killing me. -/- Hurl: A trolley is about to kill five innocent strangers. You can hurl me at the trolley, saving the five and paralyzing me. -/- TurnHurl: A trolley is about to kill five innocent strangers. You can turn the trolley onto me, saving the five and killing me. You can instead hurl me at (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Omissive Overdetermination: Why the Act-Omission Distinction Makes a Difference for Causal Analysis.Yuval Abrams - 2022 - University of Western Australia Law Review 1 (49):57-86.
    Analyses of factual causation face perennial problems, including preemption, overdetermination, and omissions. Arguably, the thorniest, are cases of omissive overdetermination, involving two independent omissions, each sufficient for the harm, and neither, independently, making a difference. A famous example is Saunders, where pedestrian was hit by a driver of a rental car who never pressed on the (unbeknownst to the driver) defective (and, negligently, never inspected) brakes. Causal intuitions in such cases are messy, reflected in disagreement about which omission mattered. What (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  6. Responsibility for Acts and Omissions.Randolph Clarke - 2022 - In Dana Kay Nelkin & Derk Pereboom (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 91-110.
    Accounts of moral responsibility commonly focus on responsibility for actions and their consequences. But we can be responsible as well for omitting to act or refraining from acting, and for consequences of these. And since omitting and refraining are not in every case performing an action, an account of responsibility for actions will not apply straightforwardly to these cases. This paper advances proposals concerning responsibility for omitting, refraining, and their consequences. Providing such an account is complicated by the fact that (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  7. Lesser-Evil Justifications: A Reply to Frowe.Kerah Gordon-Solmon & Theron Pummer - 2022 - Law and Philosophy 41:639–646.
    Sometimes one can prevent harm only by contravening rights. If the harm one can prevent is great enough, compared to the stringency of the opposing rights, then one has a lesser-evil justification to contravene the rights. Non-consequentialist orthodoxy holds that, most of the time, lesser-evil justifications add to agents’ permissible options without taking any away. Helen Frowe rejects this view. She claims that, almost always, agents must act on their lesser-evil justifications. Our primary task is to refute Frowe’s flagship argument. (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  8. Rational framing effects and morally valid reasons.Tomasz Żuradzki - 2022 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 247 (45):e247.
    I argue that the scope of rational framing effects may be broader than Bermúdez assumes. Even in many “canonical experiments,” the explanation of the judgment reversals or shifts may refer to reasons, including moral ones. Referring to the Asian disease paradigm (ADP), I describe how non-consequentialist reasons related to fairness and the distinction between doing and allowing may help explain and justify the typical pattern of choices in the cases like ADP.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Murderer at the Switch: Thomson, Kant, and the Trolley Problem.James Edwin Mahon - 2021 - In Charles Tandy (ed.), Death and Anti-Death, Volume 19: One Year After Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-2020). Ann Arbor, MI, USA: pp. 153-187.
    In this book chapter I argue that contrary to what is said by Paul Guyer in Kant (Routledge, 2006) Kant's moral philosophy prohibits the bystander from throwing the switch to divert the runaway trolley to a side track with an innocent person on it in order to save more people who are in the path of the trolley in the "Trolley Problem" case made famous by Judith Jarvis Thomson (1976; 1985). Furthermore, Thomson herself (2008) came to agree that it would (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Trolleyology: ¿De quién es el dilema del tranvía?Fabio Morandín-Ahuerma - 2020 - Vox Juris 38 (1):203-210.
    El autor recobra las fuentes originales del llamado Dilema del Tranvía pues considera que existe confusión sobre quién es el autor original. Sostiene que no es Phillipa Foot como suele citarse comúnmente, ni siquiera Judith Thomson, sino que sus raíces son más lejanas y se encuentran en dos juristas alemanes: Hans Welzel y, aún antes, Karl Engisch. Propone que la solución al dilema está dada desde el Derecho positivo y no en especulaciones consecuencialistas. ABSTRACT The author recovers the original sources (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Barry and Øverland on doing, allowing, and enabling harm.Fiona Woollard - 2019 - Ethics and Global Politics 12 (1):43-51.
    In Responding to Global Poverty: Harm, Responsibility, and Agency, Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland address the two types of argument that have dominated discussion of the responsibilities of the affluent to respond to global poverty. The second type of argument appeals to ‘contribution-based responsibilities’: the affluent have a duty to do something about the plight of the global poor because they have contributed to that plight. Barry and Øverland rightly recognize that to assess contribution-based responsibility for global poverty, we need (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  12. Autonomy and the Moral Symmetry Principle: Reply to Frowe and Tooley.Jacob Blair - 2018 - Res Publica 24 (4):531-541.
    Helen Frowe has recently objected to Michael Tooley’s famous Moral Symmetry Principle, which is meant to show that in themselves killing and letting die are morally equivalent. I argue that her objection is not compelling but a more compelling objection is available. Specifically, Tooley’s rebuttal of a proposed counter-example to his Moral Symmetry Principle has two problematic implications. First, it undercuts the very principle itself. If we reject the proposed counter-example, then any instance of the Moral Symmetry Principle will actually (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  13. Two Ways to Kill a Patient.Ben Bronner - 2018 - Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 43 (1):44-63.
    According to the Standard View, a doctor who withdraws life-sustaining treatment does not kill the patient but rather allows the patient to die—an important distinction, according to some. I argue that killing can be understood in either of two ways, and given the relevant understanding, the Standard View is insulated from typical criticisms. I conclude by noting several problems for the Standard View that remain to be fully addressed.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  14. Murdering an Accident Victim: A New Objection to the Bare-Difference Argument.Scott Hill - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (4):767-778.
    Many philosophers, psychologists, and medical practitioners believe that killing is no worse than letting die on the basis of James Rachels's Bare-Difference Argument. I show that his argument is unsound. In particular, a premise of the argument is that his examples are as similar as is consistent with one being a case of killing and the other being a case of letting die. However, the subject who lets die has both the ability to kill and the ability to let die (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  15. The Evil of Refraining to Save: Liu on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing.Jacob Blair - 2017 - Diametros 52:127-137.
    In a recent article, Xiaofei Liu seeks to defend, from the standpoint of consequentialism, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: DDA. While there are various conceptions of DDA, Liu understands it as the view that it is more difficult to justify doing harm than allowing harm. Liu argues that a typical harm doing involves the production of one more evil and one less good than a typical harm allowing. Thus, prima facie, it takes a greater amount of good to justify (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Civic Trust.Ryan Preston-Roedder - 2017 - Philosophers' Imprint 17.
    It is a commonplace that there are limits to the ways we can permissibly treat people, even in the service of good ends. For example, we may not steal someone’s wallet, even if we plan to donate the contents to famine relief, or break a promise to help a colleague move, even if we encounter someone else on the way whose need is somewhat more urgent. In other words, we should observe certain constraints against mistreating people, where a constraint is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  17. Double effect, doing and allowing, and the relaxed nonconsequentialist.Fiona Woollard - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (sup2):142-158.
    Many philosophers display relaxed scepticism about the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and the Doctrine of Double Effect, suspecting, without great alarm, that one or both of these Doctrines is indefensible. This relaxed scepticism is misplaced. Anyone who aims to endorse a theory of right action with Nonconsequentialist implications should accept both the DDA and the DDE. First, even to state a Nonconsequentialist theory requires drawing a distinction between respecting and promoting values. This cannot be done without accepting some deontological (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  18. Responding to Global Poverty: Harm, Responsibility, and Agency.Christian Barry & Gerhard Øverland - 2016 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book explores the nature of moral responsibilities of affluent individuals in the developed world, addressing global poverty and arguments that philosophers have offered for having these responsibilities. The first type of argument grounds responsibilities in the ability to avert serious suffering by taking on some cost. The second argument seeks to ground responsibilities in the fact that the affluent are contributing to such poverty. The authors criticise many of the claims advanced by those who seek to ground stringent responsibilities (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  19. Fiona Woollard, Doing and Allowing Harm: Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN: 978-0-19-968364-2, $70, HC. [REVIEW]Jacob Blair - 2016 - Journal of Value Inquiry 50 (3):673-681.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. The Total Artificial Heart and the Dilemma of Deactivation.Ben Bronner - 2016 - Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 26 (4):347-367.
    It is widely believed to be permissible for a physician to discontinue any treatment upon the request of a competent patient. Many also believe it is never permissible for a physician to intentionally kill a patient. I argue that the prospect of deactivating a patient’s artificial heart presents us with a dilemma: either the first belief just mentioned is false or the second one is. Whichever horn of the dilemma we choose has significant implications for contemporary medical ethics.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  21. Unifying morality’s influence on non-moral judgments: The relevance of alternative possibilities.Jonathan Phillips, Jamie B. Luguri & Joshua Knobe - 2015 - Cognition 145 (C):30-42.
    Past work has demonstrated that people’s moral judgments can influence their judgments in a number of domains that might seem to involve straightforward matters of fact, including judgments about freedom, causation, the doing/allowing distinction, and intentional action. The present studies explore whether the effect of morality in these four domains can be explained by changes in the relevance of alternative possibilities. More precisely, we propose that moral judgment influences the degree to which people regard certain alternative possibilities as relevant, which (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  22. Persson, Ingmar. From Morality to the End of Reason: An Essay on Rights, Reasons, and Responsibility.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 336. $55.00. [REVIEW]Fiona Woollard - 2014 - Ethics 125 (1):272-276.
    From Morality to the End of Reason is an ambitious book. Ingmar Persson tackles key issues from across the spectrum of ethical theory and beyond: the nature of rights, self-ownership, killing and letting die, the doctrine of double effect, collective action, freedom and moral responsibility, the nature and ground of practical and epistemic reasons. His conclusions on these wide-ranging issues are woven into an overarching view of morality and rationality.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  23. If This Is My Body … : A Defence of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing.Fiona Woollard - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (3):315-341.
    I defend the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: the claim that doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. A thing does not genuinely belong to a person unless he has special authority over it. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing protects us against harmful imposition – against the actions or needs of another intruding on what is ours. This protection is necessary for something to genuinely belong to a person. The opponent of the Doctrine must claim that (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  24. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing II: The Moral Relevance of the Doing/Allowing Distinction.Fiona Woollard - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (7):459-469.
    According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the second of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the moral status of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I look at objections to the doctrine such as James’ Rachels’ Wicked Uncle Case and Jonathan (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  25. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing I: Analysis of the Doing/Allowing Distinction.Fiona Woollard - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (7):448-458.
    According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the first of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the analysis of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I explore some of the most prominent attempts to analyse this distinction:. Philippa Foot’s sequence account, Warren (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  26. Most Ways I Could Move: Bennett's Act/Omission Distinction and the Behaviour Space.Fiona Woollard - 2011 - Mind 120 (477):155-182.
    The distinction between action and omission is of interest in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We use this distinction daily in our descriptions of behaviour and appeal to it in moral judgements. However, the very nature of the act/omission distinction is as yet unclear. Jonathan Bennett’s account of the distinction in terms of positive and negative facts is one of the most promising attempts to give an analysis of the ontological distinction between action and omission. According to Bennett’s account, an (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  27. Killing, Letting Die, and the Case for Mildly Punishing Bad Samaritanism.Ken Levy - 2010 - Georgia Law Review 44:607-695.
    For over a century now, American scholars (among others) have been debating the merits of “bad Samaritan” laws — laws punishing people for failing to attempt easy and safe rescues. Unfortunately, the opponents of bad Samaritan laws have mostly prevailed. In the United States, the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule dominates. Only four states have passed bad Samaritan laws, and these laws impose only the most minimal punishment — either sub-$500 fines or short-term imprisonment. -/- This Article argues that every state should criminalize (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Doing/allowing and the deliberative requirement.Fiona Woollard - 2010 - Ratio 23 (2):199-216.
    Attempts to defend the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing harm directly have left many unconvinced. I give an indirect defence of the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, focusing on the agent's duty to reason in a way that is responsive to possible harmful effects of their behaviour. Due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot be expected to take all harmful consequences of our behaviour into account. We are required to be responsive to (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  29. Risk, Everyday Intuitions, and the Institutional Value of Tort Law.Govind C. Persad - 2009 - Stan. L. Rev 62:1445.
    This Note offers a normative critique of cost-benefit analysis, one informed by deontological moral theory, in the context of the debate over whether tort litigation or a non-tort approach is the appropriate response to mass harm. The first Part argues that the difference between lay and expert intuitions about risk and harm often reflects a difference in normative judgments about the existing facts, rather than a difference in belief about what facts exist, which makes the lay intuitions more defensible. The (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Why It Is Sometimes Fair to Blame Agents for Unavoidable Actions and Omissions.Ken Levy - 2005 - American Philosophical Quarterly 42 (2):93 - 104.
    It is generally thought that ought implies can. If this maxim is correct, then my inability to do otherwise entails that I cannot be blamed for failing to do otherwise. In this article, however, I use Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument against the "Principle of Alternative Possibilities" (PAP) to show that the maxim is actually false, that I can be blamed for failing to do otherwise even in situations where I could not have done otherwise. In these situations, I do not (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark