Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to synthesize the two most influential contemporary ethical approaches that appeal to moral intuitions, viz., Rawlsian reflective equilibrium and Audi’s moderate intuitionism. This paper has two parts. First, building upon the work of Audi and Gaut, I provide a more detailed and nuanced account of how these two approaches are compatible. Second, I show how this novel synthesis can both (1) fully address the main objections to reflective equilibrium, viz., that it provides neither necessary nor (...) sufficient conditions for the justification of our moral beliefs and (2) help ethical intuitionism to deal with the fundamental problem of peer disagreement over our basic moral intuitions. In doing so, I sketch out a novel and attractive diachronic way of thinking about peer disagreement more generally. (shrink)

Social innovations are usually understood as new ideas, initiatives, or solutions that make it possible to meet the challenges of societies in fields such as social security, education, employment, culture, health, environment, housing, and economic development. On the one hand, many citizen science activities serve to achieve scientific as well as social and educational goals. Thus, these actions are opening an arena for introducing social innovations. On the other hand, some social innovations are further developed, adapted, or altered after the (...) involvement of scientist-supervised citizens in research and with the use of the citizen science tools and methods such as action research, crowdsourcing, and community-based participatory research. Such approaches are increasingly recognized as crucial for gathering data, addressing community needs, and creating engagement and cooperation between citizens and professional scientists. However, there are also various barriers to both citizen science and social innovation. For example, management, quality and protection of data, funding difficulties, non-recognition of citizens’ contributions, and limited inclusion of innovative research approaches in public policies. In this volume, we open theoretical as well as empirically-based discussion, including examples, practices, and case studies of at least three types of relations between citizen science and social innovation: domination of the citizen science features over social innovation aspects; domination of the social innovation features over the citizen science aspects; and the ways to achieve balance and integration between the social innovation and citizen science features. Each of these relationships highlights factors that influence the development of the main scales of sustainability of innovations in the practice. These innovations are contributing to a new paradigm of learning and sharing knowledge as well as interactions and socio-psychological development of participants. Also, there are factors that influence the development of platforms, ecosystems, and sustainability of innovations such as broad use of the information and communications technologies including robotics and automation; emerging healthcare and health promotion models; advancements in the development and governance of smart, green, inclusive and age-friendly cities and communities; new online learning centers; agri-food, cohousing or mobility platforms; and engagement of citizens into co-creation or co-production of services delivered by public, private, non-governmental organizations as well as non-formal entities. (shrink)

This article explores, comparatively and critically, Sidgwick’s and Rawls’s reasons for rejecting desert as a principle of distributive justice. Their ethical methods, though not identical, each re...

In this paper, we argue that solutions to normative challenges associated with autonomous driving, such as real-world trolley cases or distributions of risk in mundane driving situations, face the problem of reasonable pluralism: Reasonable pluralism refers to the fact that there exists a plurality of reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive moral doctrines within liberal democracies. The corresponding problem is that a politically acceptable solution cannot refer to only one of these comprehensive doctrines. Yet a politically adequate solution to the normative challenges (...) of autonomous driving need not come at the expense of an ethical solution, if it is based on moral beliefs that are (1) shared in an overlapping consensus and (2) systematized through public reason. Therefore, we argue that a Rawlsian justificatory framework is able to adequately address the normative challenges of autonomous driving and elaborate on how such a framework might be employed for this purpose. (shrink)

Although collegial relationships are among the most prevalent types of interpersonal relationships in our lives, they have not been the subject of much philosophical study. In this paper, we take the first step in the process of developing an ethics of collegiality by establishing what qualifies two people as colleagues and then by determining what it is that gives value to collegial relationships. We argue that A and B are colleagues if both exhibit sameness regarding at least two of the (...) following three features: the same work content or domain of activity; the same institutional affiliation or common purpose; and/or the same status or level of responsibility. Moreover, we describe how the potential value of collegial relationships is grounded in the relationship goods that two colleagues have reason to generate qua colleagues, namely, collegial solidarity and collegial recognition. Two interesting conclusions that can be drawn from our analysis are that one has to be proficient at one’s work if one is to be considered a good colleague and that we are also more likely to be better colleagues if we regard the work we do as valuable. Finally, we draw special attention to the working conditions that are conducive to the generation of good collegial relationships and suggest some policies to promote them. (shrink)

This article describes and rejects three standard views of reason in secular clinical ethics. The first, instrumental reason view, affirms that reason may be used to draw conceptual distinctions, map moral geography, and identify invalid forms of argumentation, but prohibits recommendations because reason cannot justify any content-full moral or metaphysical commitments. The second, public reason view, affirms instrumental reason, and claims ethicists may make recommendations grounded in the moral and metaphysical commitments of bioethical consensus. The third, comprehensive reason view, also (...) affirms instrumental reason, but encourages ethicists to make recommendations grounded in the moral and metaphysical commitments of their private worldviews. A compatibilist view of public reason is then defended, which holds that each standard view captures an important role for reason in different aspects of secular clinical ethics. The article ends by identifying three implications for enduring theoretical debates in clinical ethics. (shrink)

Este trabajo pretende ser una reconstrucción de uno del equilibrio reflexivo. Proporcionaré un concepto, enunciaré sus elementos y describiré cada uno de sus pasos. Afirmaré que puede suscribirse al uso del equilibrio reflexivo no solo desde esquemas coherentistas sino también –contrariamente a lo tradicionalmente sostenido- fundacionalistas. Afirmaré también que ambos esquemas pueden ser sensibles a la experiencia moral humana y que, por tanto, ninguno de los dos representa, necesariamente, un modo viciado de hacer filosofía moral. Finalmente, dado que muchas investigaciones (...) morales se edifican sobre la construcción de diferentes experimentos mentales, intentaré describir ciertas ventajas y desventajas de cada uno de ellos. (shrink)

The thesis explores the question of how should a rational moral agent reason and make choices when he finds himself accepting inconsistent moral judgments. It is argued that it is both conceptually and psychologically justified to describe such an agent as suffering from uncertainty. Such uncertainty, however, is not uncertainty regarding the truth of some descriptive claim, but rather uncertainty regarding the truth of a normative claim. Specifically it is uncertainty regarding the truth of a moral judgement. In the literature (...) this is sometimes called “moral uncertainty”. Two different lines of philosophical literatures that explore the idea of moral uncertainty are discussed. The first line – the one that originated from David Lewis‟ argument against the “Desire as Belief Thesis” – explores the mere possibility of moral uncertainty, while the second line explores the question how ought a rational moral agent choose in face of moral uncertainty. The discussion of these two lines of research leads to the conclusion that a consistent account of moral decision making under conditions of moral uncertainty that will be applicable to the kind of cases that the thesis explores, must make use of degrees of beliefs in comparative moral judgements and of them alone. Specifically, no references to degrees of moral value should be made. An attempt to present such an account in the framework of an extension of Leonard Savage‟s model for decision making is carried out. This attempt leads to a problematic result. Several implications of the result to ethic and meta-ethics are discussed as well as possible ways to avoid it. The conclusion is partly positive and partly negative: While a plausible account of moral decision making under conditions of moral uncertainty is presented, an account of moral reasoning that aims at finding a complete moral theory is shown to be a very difficult – if not impossible - aim to achieve. (shrink)

This book develops a novel approach to distributive justice by building a theory based on a concept of desert. As a work of applied political theory, it presents a simple but powerful theoretical argument and a detailed proposal to eliminate unmerited inequality, poverty, and economic immobility, speaking to the underlying moral principles of both progressives who already support egalitarian measures and also conservatives who have previously rejected egalitarianism on the grounds of individual freedom, personal responsibility, hard work, or economic efficiency. (...) By using an agnostic, flexible, data-driven approach to isolate luck and ultimately measure desert, this proposal makes equal opportunity initiatives both more accurate and effective as it adapts to a changing economy. It grants to each individual the freedom to genuinely choose their place in the distribution. It provides two policy variations that are perfectly economically efficient, and two others that are conditionally so. It straightforwardly aligns outcomes with widely shared, fundamental moral intuitions. Lastly, it demonstrates much of the above by modeling four policy variations using 40 years of survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. (shrink)

John Rawls is famous for two things: his attempt to ground morality in rationality and his conception of justice as fairness. He has developed and polished both in conjunction over the course of half a century. Yet the moral principles he advocates have always been more doctrinaire than the corresponding justification model should have ever allowed with design details explicitly promising objectivity. This article goes to the beginning, or to a reasonable proxy for it, in the “Outline of a Decision (...) Procedure for Ethics,” with the aim of exposing and examining the discrepancy where it originates. The goal is not to prey on the earliest version of an initiative later undergoing revision but to identify and investigate the inception of a systematic bias that is retained rather than revised in subsequent iterations. (shrink)

John Rawls’ “reflective equilibrium” ranges amongst the most popular conceptions in contemporary ethics when it comes to the basic methodological question of how to justify and trade off different normative positions and attitudes. Even where Rawls’ specific contractualist account is not adhered to, “reflective equilibrium” is readily adopted as the guiding idea of coherentist approaches, seeking moral justification not in a purely deductive or inductive manner, but in some balancing procedure that will eventually procure a stable adjustment of relevant doctrines (...) and standpoints. However, it appears that the widespread use of this idea has led to some considerable deviations from its meaning within Rawls’ original framework and to a critical loss of conceptual cogency as an ethico-hermeneutical tool. This contribution identifies three kinds of “balancing” constellations that are frequently, but inadequately brought forth under the heading of Rawlsian “reflective equilibrium”: (a) balancing theoretical accounts against intuitive convictions; (b) balancing general principles against particular judgements; (c) balancing opposite ethical conceptions or divergent moral statements, respectively. It is argued that each of these applications departs from Rawls’ original construction of “reflective equilibrium” and also deprives the idea of its reliability in clarifying and weighing moral stances. (shrink)

In science and philosophy, a relatively demanding notion of understanding is of central interest: an epistemic subject understands a subject matter by means of a theory. This notion can be explicated in a way which resembles JTB analyses of knowledge. The explication requires that the theory answers to the facts, that the subject grasps the theory, that she is committed to the theory and that the theory is justified for her. In this paper, we focus on the justification condition and (...) argue that it can be analyzed with reference to the idea of a reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Many agents have failed to comply with their responsibilities to take the action needed to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change. This pervasive noncompliance raises two questions of nonideal political theory. First, it raises the question of what agents should do when others do not discharge their climate responsibilities. (the Responsibility Question) In this paper I put forward four principles that we need to employ to answer the Responsibility Question (Sections II-V). I then illustrate my account, by outlining four kinds of (...) action that should be undertaken (Section VI). Pervasive noncompliance also raises a second question: Given the lack of progress in combating climate change, should existing governance structures be maintained or changed (and if they should be changed, in what ways)? (the Governance Question). The paper briefly outlines a methodology for addressing this question and outlines what a nonideal response to the existing institutional structures would be (Section VII). It does so with reference to the Paris Agreement, and in particular the creation of a "global stocktake" (Article 14, Paris Agreement) and the "facilitative dialogue" (paragraph 20 of the ‘Adoption of the Paris Agreement’). The aim, then, is to set out an account of a nonideal theory of climate justice. (shrink)

The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement was originally meant to harmonise and enforce intellectual property rights provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries. This was commendable in itself, so ACTA’s failure was all the more disappointing. In this article, I wish to contribute to the post-ACTA debate by proposing a specific analysis of the ethical reasons why ACTA failed, and what we can learn from them. I argue that five kinds of objections—namely, secret negotiations, lack of consultation, vagueness (...) of formulation, negotiations outside any international body, and the creation of a new governing body outside already existing forums—had only indirect ethical implications. This takes nothing away from their seriousness but it does make them less compelling, because agreements should be evaluated, ethically, for what they are, rather than for the alleged reasons why they are being proposed. I then argue that ACTA would have caused three ethical problems: an excessive and misplaced kind of responsibility, a radical decrease in freedom of expression, and a severe reduction in information privacy. I conclude by indicating three lessons that can help us in shaping a potential ACTA 2.0. First, we should acknowledge the increasingly vital importance of the framework of implicit expectations, attitudes, and practices that can facilitate and promote morally good decisions and actions. ACTA failed to perceive that it would have undermined the very framework that it was supposed to foster, namely one promoting some of the best and most successful aspects of our information society. Second, we should realise that, in advanced information societies, any regulation affecting how people deal with information is now bound to influence the whole ‘onlife’ habitat within which they live. So enforcing IPR becomes an environmental problem. Third, since legal documents, such as ACTA, emerge from within the infosphere that they affect, we should apply to the process itself, which one day may lead to a post-ACTA treaty, the very framework and ethical values that we would like to see promoted by it. (shrink)

In contemporary debates about justice, political philosophers take themselves to be engaged with a subject that’s narrower than the whole of morality. Many contemporary liberals, notably John Rawls, understand this narrowness in terms of context specificity. On their view, justice is the part of morality that applies to the context of a society’s institutions, but only has indirect application to the context of citizens’ personal lives. In contrast, many value pluralists, notably G.A. Cohen, understand justice’s narrowness in terms of singularity (...) against a plural background. On their view, justice is one fundamental value amongst a plurality of fundamental values. The purpose of my thesis is to establish that the pluralist conception of justice’s narrowness is theoretically significant and true. To establish its theoretical significance, I argue that proper attention to the ways in which different understandings of narrowness inform the work of contemporary egalitarians explains a considerable amount of disagreement between them concerning the content and scope of distributive justice. On the one hand, I’ll argue that if we understand justice’s narrowness in the manner Cohen and other pluralists do, i.e., understand a conception of justice to be a conception of a particular fundamental value, then both luck-egalitarianism and the claim that justice extends to the personal context are compelling. On the other hand, I’ll argue that if we understand justice’s narrowness in a contextual manner, i.e., understand justice to comprise one or more all-things-considered principles adopted for the institutional context, then both luck-egalitarianism and the claim that justice extends to the personal context prove implausible. To establish the truth of the pluralist conception of narrowness, I argue first, that the contextual understanding is only plausible if fairness should be understood procedurally instead of substantively; and second, that substantive fairness cannot be eliminated, as specifying the content of procedural fairness requires a substantive criterion. The upshot is that justice’s narrowness is best understood in terms of singularity against a plural background, rather than in terms of context specificity. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson puts forward a new version of consequentialism that he dubs ‘multidimensional consequentialism’. The defining thesis of the new theory is that there are irreducible moral aspects that jointly determine the deontic status of an act. In defending his particular version of multidimensional consequentialism, Peterson advocates the thesis—he calls it DEGREE—that if two or more moral aspects clash, the act under consideration is right to some non-extreme degree. This goes against the (...) orthodoxy according to which—Peterson calls this RESOLUTION—each act is always either entirely right or entirely wrong. The argument against RESOLUTION appeals to the existence of so-called deontic leaps: the idea is that endorsing RESOLUTION would not give each relevant moral aspect its due in the final analysis. Our paper argues that, contrary to Peterson, all moral aspects remain visible in what can properly be called the final analysis of a moral theory that involves RESOLUTION, moral aspects do not have to remain visible in judgements of all-things-considered rightness or wrongness, respectively, introduction of what Peterson calls verdictive reasons does not change the overall picture in favour of DEGREE. We conclude that multi-dimensional consequentialists should accept RESOLUTION rather than DEGREE. (shrink)

Imagine that an anthropologist returns from her study of a group of people and reports the following:They refuse to kill one person even to avert the death of all involved—including that one person;They won’t directly push someone to his death to save the lives of five others, but they will push a lever to kill him to save five others;They punish transgressors because it feels right, even when they expect the punishment to cause far more harm than good—and even when (...) the harm done by the punishment exceeds the harm done by the transgression being punished.The anthropologist’s report might lead us to conclude that these people are at least confused, and perhaps even dangerous.Here’s some bad news. Those people are us. Or so suggests recent research in experimental psychology and the neurosciences. This research indicates that our moral intuitions have a vaguely deontological character and they prompt us to make any number of judgments that appear arbitrary or otherwise unjustified, such ... -/- I contend that Greene partly misunderstands the practical implications of his own principles. If our ordinary moral judgments are to do the strategic work Greene wants them to do, he needs to endorse fullfledged Sidgwickian self-effacement for at least some areas of micro-level decision making. By the lights of some of Greene’s own arguments, people must accept the correctness—and not simply the usefulness—of the relevant intuitions in their personal conduct to satisfy utilitarian standards. I argue that removing utilitarian reasoning from micro-level decision making is consistent with Greene’s preferred strategy of using utilitarianism as a Bcommon currency^ for resolving moral conflict at the institutional level. To clarify upfront: the aim of this paper is to offer an internal criticism rather than to defend (e.g.,) the relevant empirical research, utilitarianism, self-effacement, and so on. I’m making an argument about where Greene’s own psychological and philosophical commitments should take him. (shrink)

Theories of happiness usually consider happiness as something that matters to us from a first-person perspective. In this paper, I defend a conception of public happiness that is distinct from private or first-person happiness. Public happiness is presented as a feature of the system of right that defines the political relationship between citizens, as opposed to their personal mental states, desires or well-being. I begin by outlining the main features of public happiness as an Enlightenment ideal. Next, I relate the (...) distinction between the political and the personal to the distinction between having normative reasons for a particular political arrangement and merely having a ‘pro-attitude’ towards a state of affairs that accords with one's preferred definition of happiness. Following this, I demonstrate why well-being, understood as a normative rather than a purely descriptive conception of personal happiness, nevertheless cannot serve as a normative reason in the political domain. In the final section, I show why normative reason-giving matters for the relationship between citizens, and how such reason-giving relates to public happiness. (shrink)

Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

Soft regulatory measures are often promoted as an alternative for existing regulatory regimes for nanotechnologies. The call for new regulatory approaches stems from several challenges that traditional approaches have difficulties dealing with. These challenges relate to general problems of governability, tensions between public interests, but also (and maybe particularly) to almost complete lack of certainty about the implications of nanotechnologies. At the same time, the field of nanotechnology can be characterized by a high level of diversity. In this paper, we (...) discuss and compare two models for framing public policy in relation to technology regulation: the first is a deliberative model based on foresight knowledge and the second the wide reflective equilibrium model, developed by political philosopher John Rawls. In both models, the aim is to find consensus on (a framework for) policy measures and regulation. On the basis of a critical discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of both models, some tentative conclusions are drawn for effective policy making and implementation based on soft law. (shrink)

The phenomenon of distributed knowledge is well-known in epistemic logic. In this paper, a similar phenomenon in ethics, somewhat neglected so far, is investigated, namely distributed morality. The article explains the nature of distributed morality, as a feature of moral agency, and explores the implications of its occurrence in advanced information societies. In the course of the analysis, the concept of infraethics is introduced, in order to refer to the ensemble of moral enablers, which, although morally neutral per se, can (...) significantly facilitate or hinder both positive and negative moral behaviours. (shrink)

Rule consequentialism (RC) holds that the rightness and wrongness of actions is determined by an ideal moral code, i.e., the set of rules whose internalization would have the best consequences. But just how many moral codes are there supposed to be? Absolute RC holds that there is a single morally ideal code for everyone, while Relative RC holds that there are different codes for different groups or individuals. I argue that Relative RC better meets the test of reflective equilibrium than (...) Absolute RC. In particular, I contend that Relative RC is superior because it accommodates our convictions about costless benefits. Some have charged that Relative RC threatens our convictions about the generality of moral codes and that it leads inevitably to what Brad Hooker calls “runaway relativism.” I argue that Relative RC has principled reasons for stopping this imagined slide down the slippery slope. (shrink)

Arriving at a moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which ethical theories are simply applied to cases. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible "solutions", and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this article, we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex (...) nature of moral problems and ethical judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured and disciplined method of addressing moral problems, which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems. We will illustrate the usefulness of this cycle with an example. Further, we will discuss two general issues in applied ethics in relation to the proposed ethical cycle: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation. (shrink)

Suppose that one is at least a minimal realist about a given domain, in that one thinks that that domain contains truths that are not in any interesting sense of our own making. Given such an understanding, what can be said for and against the method of reflective equilibrium as a procedure for investigating the domain? One fact that lends this question some interest is that many philosophers do combine commitments to minimal realism and a reflective equilibrium methodology. Here, for (...) example, is David Lewis on philosophy: Our “intuitions” are simply opinions: our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular; some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium. Our common task it to find out what equilibria there are that can withstand examination, but it remains for each of us to come to rest at one or another of them… Once the menu of well-worked out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us, at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is (1983: x-xi). In addition to philosophy in general, the method of reflective equilibrium has also been endorsed as the appropriate procedure for investigating various other subject.. (shrink)

Starting from the sensuous perception of what is seen, an attempt is made at re-casting a Husserlian theory of constitution of the object of intuition, as one leaves the natural attitude through a transcendental method, by positing several theses so as to avoid the aporias of philosophical binary oppositions such as rationalism and empiri-cism, realism and idealism, logicism and psychologism, subjectivism and objectivism, transcendentalism and ontologism, metaphysics and positivism. Throughout fifty-five theses on constitution, the Husserlian proposal of continuously reforming philosophizing (...) by transcendental reduction is revisited, leaving the latter incomplete as new conversions are required by noetic-noematic correlations between world and consciousness. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal foundation for morality, untouched by the (...) dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to review the recent popularity of casuistry as a model of moral inquiry. I argue that proponents of casuistry do not endorse the particularist epistemology that seems to be implied by their position, and that this is why casuistry does not seem to present something really new in comparison to 'top-down' generalist approaches. I contend that casuistry should develop itself as a (moderately) particularist position and that the challenge for the defender of casuistry is (...) to come up with ideas that strengthen the ('intuitionist') model of rationality that underlies most forms of particularism. (shrink)

A key concern of global ethics is the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens amongst persons belonging to different populations. Until recently, the philosophical literature on global distribution was dominated by the question of how benefits and burdens should be divided amongst contemporaries. Recent years, however, have seen an increase in research on the scope and content of our duties to future generations. This has led to a number of innovative attempts to extend principles of distribution across time while retaining (...) a focus on the entitlements of the existing poor. In this article, I examine a key aspect of intergenerational justice, namely, the appropriate 'pattern' of well-being that should be obtained across generations. With the aid of research into the impacts of global climate change, I evaluate a number of rival accounts of the pattern of justice and go on to explore the merits of a 'global sufficientarian' ethic, which holds that as many persons as possible should enjoy a satisfactory level of well-being regardless of when or where they live. (shrink)

What should maximin egalitarians think about seniority privileges? We contrast a good-specific and an all-things-considered perspective. As to the former, inertia and erasing effects of a seniority-based allocation of benefits from employment are identified, allowing us to spot the categories of workers and job-seekers made involuntarily worse off by such a practice. What matters however is to find out whether abolishing seniority privileges will bring about a society in which the all-things-considered worst off people are better off than in the (...) seniority rule's presence. An assessment of the latter's cost-reduction potential is thus needed, enabling us to bridge a practice taking place within a firm with its impact on who the least well off members of society are likely to be. Three accounts of the profitability of seniority privileges are discussed: the “(firm specific) human capital”, the “deferred compensation” and the “knowledge transfer” ones. The respective relevance of “good-specific” and “all-things-considered” analysis is discussed. It turns out that under certain circumstances, a maximin egalitarian case for seniority privileges could be made. Senior: Do you know that they are planning layoffs? Of course, it is only fair that they lay-off the newcomers first! After all, I have been loyal to the company for many years. Junior: Did I choose to be a newcomer? Footnotes1 Many thanks to two anonymous referees, to P.-M. Boulanger, B. Cockx, C. Fabre, L. Jacquet, E. Lazear, I. Robeyns, G. Vallée, Y. Vanderborght, Ph. Van Parijs, V. Vansteenberghe and J. de Wispelaere for their help and critical comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented in Louvain-la-Neuve, Ghent, Montevideo and London. I am very grateful to these audiences. Special thanks to G. Brennan for his extensive and extremely valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that functional role semantics can be saved from criticisms, such as those raised by Putnam and Fodor and Lepore, by indicating which beliefs and inferences are more constitutive in determining mental content. The Scylla is not to use vague expressions; the Charybdis is not to endorse the analytic/synthetic distinction. The core idea is to use reflective equilibrium as a strategy to pinpoint which are the beliefs and the inferences that constitute the content of a (...) mental state. The beliefs and the inferences that are constitutive are those that are in reflective equilibrium in the process of attributing mental states to others. (shrink)

In his 1987 paper “Truth or Consequences,” Dan Brock describes a deep conflict between the goals and virtues of philosophical scholarship and public policymaking: whereas the former is concerned with the search for truth, the latter must primarily be concerned with promoting good consequences. When philosophers are engaged in policymaking, he argues, they must shift their primary goal from truth to consequences—but this has both moral and methodological costs. Brock’s argument exemplifies a pessimistic, but not uncommon, view of the possible (...) shape and nature of applied philosophy. The present paper paints a richer and more optimistic picture. It argues that the difference between theoretical philosophy and applied philosophy is not best understood as a choice between truth and consequences. On the contrary, applied philosophers engage in forms of truth‐seeking that are properly concerned with consequences—including the consequences of philosophical practice itself. (shrink)

The national standards for clinical ethics consultation set forth by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities endorse an “ethics facilitation” approach, which characterizes the role of the ethicist as one skilled at facilitating consensus within the range of ethically acceptable options. To determine the range of ethically acceptable options, ASBH recommends the standard model of decision-making, which is grounded in the values of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. has sharply criticized the standard model for presuming (...) contentful moral claims in circumscribing the range of ethically acceptable options, which, he argues, cannot be rationally justified in a pluralistic context. Engelhardt’s solution is a secular clinical ethics based on a contentless principle of permission. The first part of this article lays out Engelhardt’s negative claim, that reason cannot establish contentful moral claims, and his positive claim, that secular clinical ethics ought to be based on a contentless principle of permission. The second part critiques these negative and positive claims. The purpose of this paper is to defend secular clinical ethics expertise—defined as the ability of ethicists to offer justified moral recommendations grounded in consensus positions endorsed by the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities—from the radical critiques of Engelhardt, who argues that no moral or metaphysical claims, and hence no bioethical consensus, can be rationally justified. Engelhardt’s critiques have caused some to worry that secular clinical ethics is in a state of theoretical crisis; this article concludes that Engelhardt’s view is an unstable basis for that worry. (shrink)

Human dignity is one of the key concepts of our ethical evaluations, in politics, in biomedicine, as well as in everyday life. In moral philosophy, however, human dignity is a source of intractable trouble. It has a number of characteristic features which apparently do not fit into one coherent ethical concept. Hence, philosophers tend to ignore or circumvent the concept. There is hope for a philosophically attractive conception of human dignity, however, given that one takes three crucial turns. The negative (...) turn: to start the inquiry with violations of human dignity. The inductive turn: to consider the whole range of applications of the concept of human dignity in different areas of ethics. And finally, the historical turn: to take into account the historical bonds between human dignity and traditional conceptions of dignity. Taken together they point in the direction of an understanding of human dignity as universal nobility. (shrink)

In the past, several researchers in the field of physiotherapy have asserted that physiotherapy clinicians rarely use ethical knowledge to solve ethical issues raised by their practice. Does this assertion still hold true? Do the theoretical frameworks used by researchers and clinicians allow them to analyze thoroughly the ethical issues they encounter in their everyday practice? In our quest for answers, we conducted a literature review and analyzed the ethical theoretical frameworks used by physiotherapy researchers and clinicians to discuss the (...) ethical issues raised by private physiotherapy practice. Our final analysis corpus consisted of thirty-nine texts. Our main finding is that researchers and clinicians in physiotherapy rarely use ethical knowledge to analyze the ethical issues raised in their practice and that gaps exist in the theoretical frameworks currently used to analyze these issues. Consequently, we developed, for ethical analysis, a four-part prism which we have called the Quadripartite Ethical Tool (QET). This tool can be incorporated into existing theoretical frameworks to enable professionals to integrate ethical knowledge into their ethical analyses. The innovative particularity of the QET is that it encompasses three ethical theories (utilitarism, deontologism, and virtue ethics) and axiological ontology (professional values) and also draws on both deductive and inductive approaches. It is our hope that this new tool will help researchers and clinicians integrate ethical knowledge into their analysis of ethical issues and contribute to fostering ethical analyses that are grounded in relevant philosophical and axiological foundations. (shrink)

I explore the usefulness of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach in regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD aims at empowering people with disabilities by granting them a number of civil and political, but also economic, social and cultural rights. Implementing the CRPD will clearly be politically challenging and also very expensive for states. Thus, questions might arise as to whether the requirements set in the CRPD can be justified from an ethical perspective. (...) I will first investigate if Nussbaum's capabilities approach provides support for the rights claimed in the CRPD. Second, I will investigate to what extent Nussbaum's capabilities approach is a useful tool to set priorities among rights in the course of the implementation of the convention. This is an urgent question because seen realistically, it will not be possible to realize all rights at once and thus some rights need to receive greater priority than others. I will argue that the capabilities approach can be regarded as supporting the rights specified in the CRPD, but that it proves unable to guide the implementation process due to an insufficient grounding of the capabilities. Employing the capabilities approach thus leads to only limited results. (shrink)

Public health ethics is a relatively new academic field. Crucially, it is distinguished from traditional medical ethics by its focus on populations rather than individuals. Still, the ethics of public health cannot be perceived completely detached from the ethics of individuals, as populations are made up of individuals. One issue that clearly falls within the intersection of a population- and an individual based perspective on ethics is resource allocation. Resource allocation takes place at various stages within the organisation of healthcare, (...) i.e. at the micro-, meso- and macro level [3]. Resources are almost always limited, with the consequence that some healthcare is prioritised while other care is rationed. In this manner, resource allocation creates winners and losers; those who get the best care available, those who do not receive the best care and those who do not receive care at all. It seems prudent to assume that any adequate public health ethics involved in population-based decision-making will have to address all ethical aspects of resource allocation, all the way from the macrolevel policy-making process to the micro-level implementation where it affects specific and identifiable individuals. More specifically, such an ethics must be able to deal with the ethical tensions arising between population-based concerns framing the policy design process, and individual concerns in the realisation of the resource allocations. In the following, I will identify an inherent ethical tension involved in ‘legitimate resource allocation’, which is related to the challenge of meeting the ethical requirements from a population- and an individual based perspective at the same time. (shrink)

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for doing (...) moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

In order to secure ethical relevance for phenomenology, Peter Dabrock proposes a synthesis with a Kantian rational ethic. The theological question thus arises concerning the tenability of such a synthesis and the acceptability of the corresponding translation of Protestant anthropology into the language of philosophy. Dabrock argues that man's character as an image of god, understood in the context of a theology of justification, can be translated into the philosophical concept of incarnate reason. Even if the concept of incarnate reason (...) sounds plausible in view of foundational theology and anthropology, its contribution to a foundation for material ethics is very limited because the body itself however has no normative impact when it comes to deciding about the ethical acceptability of concrete medical interventions. Thus, the constitutive significance of our being embodied becomes ethically relevant only insofar as that significance is integrated into a moral philosophical or theological ethical framework theory. (shrink)

The last twenty-five years of published literature and curriculum development in bioethics suggest that the field enjoys a successful and stable marriage to philosophical ethical theory. However, the next twenty-five years could be very different. I believe the marriage is troubled. Divorce is conceivable and perhaps likely. The most philosophical parts of bioethics may retreat to philosophy departments, while bioethics continues on its current course toward a more interdisciplinary and practical field.I make no presumption that bioethics is integrally linked to (...) philosophical ethical theory. Indeed, I assume that the connection is contingent and fragile. Many individuals in law, theological ethics, political theory, the social and behavioral sciences, and the health professions carefully address mainstream issues of bioethics without finding ethical theory essential or breathtakingly attractive. This is not surprising. Moral philosophers have traditionally formulated theories of the right, the good, and the virtuous in the most general terms. (shrink)

Ethicists differ considerably in their reasons for using empirical data. This paper presents a brief overview of four traditional approaches to the use of empirical data: “the prescriptive applied ethicists,” “the theorists,” “the critical applied ethicists,” and “the particularists.” The main aim of this paper is to introduce a fifth approach of more recent date (i.e. “integrated empirical ethics”) and to offer some methodological directives for research in integrated empirical ethics. All five approaches are presented in a table for heuristic (...) purposes. The table consists of eight columns: “view on distinction descriptive-prescriptive sciences,” “location of moral authority,” “central goal(s),” “types of normativity,” “use of empirical data,” “method,” “interaction empirical data and moral theory,” and “cooperation with descriptive sciences.” Ethicists can use the table in order to identify their own approach. Reflection on these issues prior to starting research in empirical ethics should lead to harmonization of the different scientific disciplines and effective planning of the final research design. Integrated empirical ethics (IEE) refers to studies in which ethicists and descriptive scientists cooperate together continuously and intensively. Both disciplines try to integrate moral theory and empirical data in order to reach a normative conclusion with respect to a specific social practice. IEE is not wholly prescriptive or wholly descriptive since IEE assumes an interdepence between facts and values and between the empirical and the normative. The paper ends with three suggestions for consideration on some of the future challenges of integrated empirical ethics. (shrink)

There has been much discussion about how to obtain legitimacy at macro-level priority setting in health care by use of fair procedures, but how should we consider priority setting by individual clinicians or health workers at the micro-level? Despite the fact that just health care totally hinges upon their decisions, surprisingly little attention seems being paid to the legitimacy of these decisions. This paper addresses the following question: what are the conditions that have to be met in order to ensure (...) that individual claims on health care are well aligned with an overall concept of just health care? Drawing upon a distinction between individual and aggregated needs, I argue that even though we assume the legitimacy of macro-level guidelines, this legitimacy is not directly transferable to decisions at micro-level simply by adherence to the guidelines’ recommendation. Further, I argue that individual claims are subject to the formal principle of equality and the demands of vertical and horizontal equity in a way that gives context- and patient-related equity concerns precedence over equity concerns captured at the macro-level. I conclude that if we aim to achieve just health care, we need to develop a complementary framework for legitimising individual judgment of patients’ claims on health care resources. Moreover, I suggest the basic structure of such a framework. (shrink)

Services of ethics consultants are nowadays commonly used in such various spheres of life as engineering, public administration, business, law, health care, journalism, and scientific research. It has however been maintained that use of ethics consultants is incompatible with personal autonomy; in moral matters individuals should be allowed to make their own decisions. The problem this criticism refers to can be conceived of as a conflict between the professional autonomy of ethics experts and the autonomy of the persons they serve. (...) This paper addresses this conflict and maintains that when the nature of both ethics consultation and individual autonomy is properly understood, the professional autonomy of ethics experts is compatible with the autonomy of the persons they assist. (shrink)

Arriving at a moral judgment is not a straightforward or linear process in which ethical theories are simply applied to cases. Instead it is a process in which the formulation of the moral problem, the formulation of possible “solutions”, and the ethical judging of these solutions go hand in hand. This messy character of moral problems, however, does not rule out a systematic approach. In this article, we describe a systematic approach to problem solving that does justice to the complex (...) nature of moral problems and ethical judgment: the ethical cycle. Our goal is to provide a structured and disciplined method of addressing moral problems, which helps to guide a sound analysis of these problems. We will illustrate the usefulness of this cycle with an example. Further, we will discuss two general issues in applied ethics in relation to the proposed ethical cycle: the role of ethical theories and the place of individual judgment versus collective deliberation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Does genetic relatedness define who is a mother or father and who incurs obligations towards or entitlements over children? While once the answer to this question may have been obvious, advances in reproductive technologies have complicated our understanding of what makes a parent. In a recent publication Bayne and Kolers argue for a pluralistic account of parenthood on the basis that genetic derivation, gestation, extended custody and sometimes intention to parent are sufficient (but not necessary) grounds for parenthood.1 Bayne (...) and Kolers further suggest that definitions of parenthood are underpinned by the assumption that ‘being causally implicated in the creation of a child is the key basis for being its parent’.2 This paper examines the claim that genetic relatedness is sufficient grounds for parenthood based on a causal connection between genetic parents and their offspring. I argue that parental obligations are about moral responsibility and not causal responsibility because we are not morally accountable for every consequence to which we causally contribute. My account includes the conditions generally held to apply to moral responsibility, i.e. freedom and foreseeability. I argue that parental responsibilities are generated whenever the birth of a child is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of voluntary actions. I consider the implications of this account for third parties involved in reproductive technologies. I argue that under some conditions the obligations generated by freely and foreseeably causing a child to exist can be justifiably transferred to others. (shrink)

Liberal societies are characterized by respect for a fundamental value pluralism; i.e., respect for individuals’ rights to live by their own conception of the good. Still, the state must make decisions that privilege some values at the cost of others. When public ethics committees give substantial ethical advice on policy related issues, it is therefore important that this advice is well justified. The use of explicit tools for ethical assessment can contribute to justifying advice. In this article, I will discuss (...) one approach to ethical assessment, the ethical matrix method. This method is a variant of intuitionist balancing. Intuitionism is characterized by stressing the existence of several (at least two) fundamental prima facie moral principles, between which there is no given rank order. For some intuitionist approaches, coherentism has been proposed as a model of justification. This article will discuss justification of ethical advice and evaluate the appropriateness of coherentism as a justificatory approach to intuitionist tools. (shrink)

Some philosophers, such as Kai Nielsen, view Rawls's rejection of metaphysical claims, encapsulated in his method of avoidance, as being compatible with the "anti-philosophical" stance, the view that metaphysical debates are sterile and should be abandoned to be replaced by practically viable forms of thinking. This paper shows that this reading of the method of avoidance is incorrect and argues that the method of avoidance is in fact comparable to Carnap's higher-order standpoint of neutrality with regards to different frameworks. This (...) sheds new light on Rawlsian theory and situates it within the empiricist tradition. (shrink)