Moral taint occurs when one’s personality has been compromised by the introduction of something that produces disfigurement of the moral psyche. While taint may be traced to vicarious liability for our voluntary associations, the thought that we might be responsible for taint and that taint is something we must confront and make amends for becomes problematic when taint is acquired by circumstantial luck. I argue that the idea of circumstantial taint—for example, the idea that people can be morally compromised by (...) their heritage—is coherent. In such cases, although taint is not due to a deficient level of care or to an unsavory quality of will, shame is the appropriate affect and atonement the appropriate response. The concept of moral taint is helpful in assisting our comprehension of more vexing cases of responsibility and blame where shame and a need for atonement exist. (shrink)

Much light can be shed on events which characterize or underlie scandals at firms such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, Worldcom, ImClone, and Tyco by appealing to the notion of ethical distance. Various inquiries have highlighted the difficulties in finding or identifying particular individuals to blame for particular events, and in the context of situations as complex as these it can sometimes be helpful to investigate the comparative ethical distance of various participants in these events. In this essay I offer a (...) characterization of ethical distance in terms of moral responsibility, and in doing so I describe and illustrate the rough inverse correlation between moral distance and degrees of moral responsibility. I urge that the concept of ethical distance is capable of shedding light upon situations in which several people are involved in bringing about a state of affairs. I then argue that moral responsibility cannot do justice to all situations involving ethical distance. When the distance between a person and a state of affairs grows sufficiently large, a different type of treatment is called for, and I introduce the notion of moral taint to describe the moral status of agents in these situations. (shrink)

This chapter examines the ethical case that can be mounted for veganism. Because there has been comparatively little discussion in ethics focused directly on veganism, the central aim of this chapter is threefold: to orient readers to (some of) the most important philosophical literature relevant to the topic, to provide a clear explanation of the current state of the ethical case for veganism, and to focus attention on the most important outstanding or underexplored questions in this domain. The chapter examines (...) the range of positions that deserve to be called ethical veganism, and some of the types of reasons that philosophers can potentially appeal to in arguing for veganism. It then spells out the core of the most promising case for veganism, which argues directly for the wrongness of making animals suffer and die. The chapter then considers three ways of arguing from this conclusion to an ethical defense of the vegan lifestyle, which appeal respectively to the ethical significance of the effects of individual use of animal products, of group efficacy, and of complicity with wrongdoing. The chapter concludes by examining several neglected complications facing the ethical case for veganism. (shrink)

Some of the greatest harms perpetrated by human beings—mass murders, for example—are directly caused by a small number of individuals, yet the full force of the transgressions would not obtain without the indirect contributions of many others. To combat such evils, Larry May argues that we ought to cultivate a sense of shared responsibility within communities. More specifically, we ought to develop a propensity to feel ashamed of ourselves when we choose to be associated with others who transgress. Grant that (...) we ought to assume greater moral responsibility for contributing to harms that we do not directly commit. My goal is to challenge May’s claim that we should move towards a shame culture, and to argue that we ought to focus on cultivating empathy-based care and guilt instead. An established research program spearheaded by June Tangney has shown that individuals who are disposed to feel shame are more likely to hide from scrutiny, blame others, get angry, and become aggressive. Cultivating shame, in short, is a recipe for increasing antisocial behavior. Policies that promote feelings of empathy-based care and guilt, however, seem better designed to achieve the desired result, namely, minimizing the harms caused by groups. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that an account of epistemic injustice sensitive to interlocking oppressions must take us beyond injustice to human knowers. Although several feminist epistemologists argue for the incorporation of all forms of oppression into their analyses, feminist epistemology remains for the most part an anthropocentric enterprise. Yet insofar as a reduction to animal irrationality has been central to the epistemic injustice of both humans and animals, I propose that in addition to axes of gender, race, class and (...) sex, feminist epistemology must register the animal-human dichotomy as a fundamental driving mechanism inherent in epistemic injustice. From the perspective of a truly liberatory epistemology, I thus argue for an expanded account of epistemic injustice that is both 1) sufficiently attentive to the way injustices to human knowers continue to rely on animal oppression and 2) that accommodates epistemic injustices against animal knowers. (shrink)