A spate of legislations prohibiting cigarette smoking in enclosed public spaces, mainly on grounds of public health protection, recently swept across cities around the world. This is in tandem with a raft of increasingly restrictive national laws that emerged on the back of the ratification of the WHO Framework for Tobacco Control by more than one 168 countries in 2005. The central debate on the increasingly restrictive tobacco laws revolves on the extent to which public health interests justification should ground (...) political intervention in a private right as basic as tobacco smoking, which interestingly is often lumped in the food and beverage category. The pertinent legal and ethical questions therefore are the following: Is or should there be a general unrestricted right to tobacco smoking? If there were such a right, should public health or ethical considerations trump private right to smoke in enclosed public spaces? And if public health interests were so paramount, should they go farther and ground tobacco smoking proscription in all private and public spheres? Using ethical principles and rights-based arguments, the paper critically examines the legal and ethical ramifications of public health justification for tobacco smoking proscription in enclosed public spaces. (shrink)

It is axiomatic that tobacco smoking is hazardous to health. The statistics are well documented and often very grim. For example, the 2008 World Health Organization Report on the global tobacco epidemic presented the following statistics: a hundred million people died of tobacco-related diseases globally in the 20th century; there are approximately over five million tobacco-related deaths every year; and an estimated one billion could die of tobacco-related diseases in this 21st century.Significantly, no other risky, self-indulgent addictive behaviors such as (...) cocaine abuse directly endanger bystanders as much as cigarette smoking or tobacco use endangers nonsmokers through secondhand tobacco smoke or inhaled environmental tobacco smoke. Environmental tobacco smoke comprises sidestream smoke and mainstream smoke. About 85 percent of environmental tobacco smoke is sidestream smoke, while the remainder is mainstream smoke. (shrink)

If it is true, as suggested by Sir Michael Marmot and other researchers, that status impacts health and therefore accounts for some of the social gradient in health, then it seems to be the case that it would be possible to bring about more equality in health by equalizing status. The purpose of this article is to analyze this suggestion. First, we suggest a working definition of what status precisely is. Second, following a luck egalitarian approach to distributive justice, we (...) consider whether and to which extent individuals are responsible themselves for their position in a status hierarchy. Third, we consider the contours of a difficult question, namely which political measures are feasible in order to reduce health-affective inequalities in status and fourth, whether or to what extent such measures are legitimate. We argue that on the basis of these considerations, we have at least some prima facie reasons to counter (at least some) status inequalities in order to equalize health. (shrink)

Recent observations associate naturally occurring trace levels of Lithium in ground water with significantly lower suicide rates. It has been suggested that adding trace Lithium to drinking water could be a safe and effective way to reduce suicide. This article discusses the many ethical implications of such population-wide Lithium medication. It compares this policy to more targeted solutions that introduce trace amounts of Lithium to groups at higher risk of suicide or lower risk of adverse effects. The question of mass (...) treatment with Lithium recalls other choices in public health between population-wide and more targeted interventions. The framework we propose could be relevant to some of these other dilemmas. (shrink)

Many seem to think that AI-induced responsibility gaps are morally bad and therefore ought to be avoided. We argue, by contrast, that there is at least a pro tanto reason to welcome responsibility gaps. The central reason is that it can be bad for people to be responsible for wrongdoing. This, we argue, gives us one reason to prefer automated decision-making over human decision-making, especially in contexts where the risks of wrongdoing are high. While we are not the first to (...) suggest that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed, our argument is novel. Others have argued that responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed because they can reduce or eliminate the psychological burdens caused by tragic moral choice-situations. By contrast, our argument explains why responsibility gaps should sometimes be welcomed even in the absence of tragic moral choice-situations, and even in the absence of psychological burdens. (shrink)

Most studies on the ethics of privacy focus on what others ought to do to accommodate our interest in privacy. I focus on a related but distinct question that has attracted less attention in the literature: When, if ever, does morality require us to safeguard our own privacy? While we often have prudential reasons for safeguarding our privacy, we are also, at least sometimes, morally required to do so. I argue that we, sometimes, ought to safeguard our privacy for the (...) sake of the possible wrongdoer, in order to prevent the possible wrongdoer from committing a morally defiling act that renders them worse off. I illustrate the variety of cases in which this duty binds us and contrast my view to some other claims in the literature which also purport to show that we sometimes have a duty to safeguard our own privacy. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of paternalism in child-rearing. Since the parent–child relationship seems to be the linguistic source of the concept, one may be tempted to assume that raising a child represents a particularly appropriate sphere for paternalism. The parent–child relationship is generally understood as a relationship that is supposed to promote the development and autonomy-formation of the child, so that the apparent source of the concept is a form of autonomy-oriented paternalism. Far from taking paternalism to be overtly (...) unproblematic in such paradigmatic, pedagogical settings, this article analyzes how an effort should be made to understand a child’s capacities and which standards parents should be held to when deciding whether interference truly serves the child’s interests. (shrink)

In contemporary scholarship on Chinese ideological debates, both pro-system Chinese intellectuals and Western-based academics present China’s future as a binary choice between a “China Model” of authoritarian statism and a “Western” vision of democratic liberalism. This article deconstructs this dichotomy by proposing a new heuristic for conceptualizing ideological cleavage. Informed by interviews with twenty-eight leading Chinese intellectuals, the case is made for a two-dimensional spectrum allowing for ideological co-variation, on one axis, between two contending socioeconomic roads of national revival, capitalism (...) and socialism, and on the other axis between paternalism and fraternalism as conflicting ideals for the political system. This model not only resonates with Chinese intellectual history, but also allows us to uncover two crucial ideological tendencies that disappear with the China Model/western Path dichotomy: (i) the emerging hybrid of Confucian politics and free market economics, and (ii) the tabooed fraternalist-socialist legacy of the 1989 movement. (shrink)

Order ethicists favour incentives as a means for making moral progress but largely ignore an alternative method, namely, nudging, which has come to prominence through the work of behavioural scientists in recent years. In this paper, we suggest that this is a mistake. Order ethicists have no reason to ignore nudging as an alternative method. Arguments they might press against it include worries about paternalism, manipulation, autonomy, and unintended bad consequences. These are, we argue, largely unfounded insofar as they involve (...) misconceptions or affect incentives as well. In particular, we contend that only some, but not all, nudges are paternalistic, manipulative, and autonomy-reducing. The same is true of incentives. Also, both nudges and incentives can have unintended bad consequences. Therefore, order ethicists cannot endorse arguments against nudges without undermining their favourable view of incentives. In addition, there might be positive reasons to prefer nudges to incentives, for instance, when they are more freedom-preserving, more effective, cheaper, easier to implement, or less inequality-inducing than the latter. (shrink)

The will theory of rights has so far been considered incapable of capturing individual rights under criminal law. Adherents of the will theory, therefore, have defended the claim that criminal law does not assign rights to individuals. In this article I argue first, that criminal law does assign individual rights and second, that the will theory of rights may enhance our understanding of these rights. The two major implications of the account are: a volenti non fit iniuria principle for criminal (...) law, and a theoretical framework for an idea of punishment as restitution. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

ABSTRACTThe article uses the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the same-sex marriage caseObergefell v. Hodgesas the springboard for a general enquiry into the nature and existence of a constitutional right to liberty under the American Constitution. The discussion is divided into two main parts. The first examines the meaning and the justifiability of there being a moral right to liberty as a matter of political philosophy. Two such rights are distinguished and defended: first, a right not to be coerced (...) by the state when the state is motivated by improper reasons ; and second, a right not to be coerced by the state when there are insufficient justifying reasons for the state to do so, irrespective of how such state coercion may be motivated. Neither right is regarded as “absolute,” and so it is morally permissible for the state to override such rights in certain circumstances. The second part of the article examines the distinct and additional considerations that must be taken into account when these two moral rights to liberty are fashioned into corresponding legal rights under American constitutional law. Both such rights survive the transformation, but each becomes altered somewhat in its content. This legal transformation includes recognition of the nonabsolute nature of moral rights, such recognition taking the form of some doctrine of “compelling state interests.” The discussion in these two main parts of the article is prefaced with a defense of the article's use of political philosophy to inform constitutional law, a defense motivated by Chief Justice Robert's denunciation of such an approach to constitutional law in his opinion inObergefell. (shrink)

So-called activation policies aiming at bringing jobless people into work have been a central component of welfare reforms across OECD countries during the last decades. Such policies combine restrictive and enabling programs, but their characteristic feature is that enabling programs are also mandatory, and non-compliers are sanctioned. There are four main arguments that can be used to defend mandatory activation of benefit recipients. We label them efficiency, sustainability, paternalism, and justice. Each argument is analysed in turn. First we clarify which (...) standards it invokes, thereafter we evaluate each argument according to its own standards and introduce competing normative concerns that have to be taken into account. (shrink)

In recent years, tech evangelists have made headlines predicting that in the future manual driving will be outlawed. This essay will investigate the question whether a ban of human driven cars can be defended on moral grounds in a future scenario in which autonomous cars are going to be significantly safer than manually driven cars. This article will argue that in such a future scenario manually driven cars, for moral reasons, indeed should be banned from participating in regular traffic. Since (...) the moral argument for outlawing manually driven cars will likely be met by resistance by car-aficionados, in the final part of the paper, we are devising a proposal for reconciling the strong moral case for a ban of manually driven cars with the widespread fondness of manual driving. (shrink)

Libertarian paternalism is a weak form of paternalism that recommends nudges rather than bans, restrictions, or other strong interventions. Nudges influence people’s choice by modifying contextual factors (the “choice architecture”). This paper explores the possibility of an epistemic analogue of libertarian paternalism. What I call “epistemic libertarian paternalism” is a weak form of epistemic paternalism that recommends “epistemic nudges” rather than stronger paternalistic interventions. Epistemic nudges influence people’s beliefs and judgments by modifying contextual factors (the “epistemic choice architecture”). The main (...) aim of this paper is to defend epistemic libertarian paternalism from the “irrationality problem”, which I take to be the most urgent problem for epistemic libertarian paternalism; given how epistemic nudges work (i.e. they typically co-opt psychological biases), nudged beliefs are irrational. In response to the irrationality problem, I admit that nudged beliefs are often (not always, though) irrational, but insist that there are conditions in which epistemic nudging can be justifiable nonetheless. I will propose two conditions that are jointly sufficient for justifiable epistemic nudging: “Veridicality Condition” (which says that nudged beliefs are more likely to be true than non-nudged beliefs) and “Not-More-Irrationality Condition” (which says that nudged beliefs are not more likely to be irrational than non-nudged beliefs). (shrink)

‘Ulysses contracts’ are an instrument through which a psychiatric patient may prearrange involuntary commitments to be put into effect if the patient satisfies certain diagnostic criteria in the future. Proposals for Ulysses contracts typically impose numerous safeguards. This paper argues against the intuitively plausible safeguard which permits only presently remitted patients to contract. Instead of requiring a patient's remission, it is argued that the appropriate safeguard is the patient's ability, whether remitted or not, to offer good reasons for wishing to (...) contract. In short, what matters is not an executive's character, but an executive's reasons, and a bad executive may have good reasons. Attempts to deny the accessibility of good reasons in unremitted patients are rejected on the ground that psychiatric diagnosis requires psychiatrists to be able to distinguish between good and bad reasons in both remitted and unremitted patients. If psychiatrists cannot do that, psychiatric diagnosis is impossible. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses the possibility of moral enhancement with ambient intelligence technologies and artificial intelligence presented in Savulescu and Maslen (2015). The main problem with their proposal is that it is not robust enough to play a normative role in users’ behavior. A more promising approach, and the one presented in the paper, relies on an artifi-cial moral reasoning engine, which is designed to present its users with moral arguments grounded in first-order normative theories, such as Kantianism or utilitarianism, (...) that reason-responsive people can be persuaded by. This proposal can play a normative role and it is also a more promising avenue towards moral enhancement. It is more promising because such a system can be designed to take advantage of the sometimes undue trust that people put in automated technologies. We could therefore expect a well-designed moral reasoner system to be able to persuade people that may not be persuaded by similar arguments from other people. So, all things considered, there is hope in artificial intelli-gence for moral enhancement, but not in artificial intelligence that relies solely on ambient intelligence technologies. (shrink)

A dominant trend in the philosophical literature on abortion has been concerned with the question of whether the fetus has moral status and how such a status might or might not conflict with women's liberties. However, a new and powerful trend against abortion requires philosophical examination. We refer to this trend as the paternalistic argument. In a nutshell, this argument holds that, insofar as motherhood is a constitutive end of women's well-being, abortion harms women; thus, abortion is wrong and should (...) be prohibited, restricted, or avoided when possible regardless of the moral status of the fetus. In this article we undertake three tasks. First, we analyze four variations of this reasoning: what we call the Kantian PA, the Aristotelian PA, the Catholic Church PA, and the Psychological PA. Second, we show how some public policies that regulate or prohibit abortion around the world are now in fact following paternalistic justifications and imposing distinctive paternalistic restrictions ; we refer to these policies as “the new abortion laws.” Finally, we argue that both the four paternalistic arguments presented and the new abortion laws are at times ill-intentioned, comprehensive in nature and thus unsuited for guiding public policy, empirically flawed, or else unjustified. (shrink)

Who should decide how a machine will decide what to do when it is driving a car, performing a medical procedure, or, more generally, when it is facing any kind of morally laden decision? More and more, machines are making complex decisions with a considerable level of autonomy. We should be much more preoccupied by this problem than we currently are. After a series of preliminary remarks, this paper will go over four possible answers to the question raised above. First, (...) we may claim that it is the maker of a machine that gets to decide how it will behave in morally laden scenarios. Second, we may claim that the users of a machine should decide. Third, that decision may have to be made collectively or, fourth, by other machines built for this special purpose. The paper argues that each of these approaches suffers from its own shortcomings, and it concludes by showing, among other things, which approaches should be emphasized for different types of machines, situations, and/or morally laden decisions. (shrink)

This article takes a critical look at the classic couplet of theories on the justification of rights, namely, the choice theory and the interest or benefit theory, where the two are understood to be in conflict. The argument is made that this couplet is best replaced with a new one, namely, a sophisticated rendering of the benefit theory coupled with the autonomy theory, such that any conflict is resolved. The latter two theories take different cases in justifying the attribution of (...) rights: The autonomy theory is concerned with justifying the attribution of rights to adult, rational, and competent subjects, arguing that this attribution requires a sufficiently autonomous claim by such subjects, while the benefit theory seeks to justify the attribution of rights to subjects who lack any of these three properties, meaning that they cannot be considered adult, rational, or competent. (shrink)

Proponents of permitting living kidney sales often argue as follows. Many jobs involve significant risks; people are and should be free to take these risks in exchange for money; the risks involved in giving up a kidney are no greater than the risks involved in acceptable hazardous jobs; so people should be free to give up a kidney for money, too. This paper examines this frequently invoked but rarely analysed analogy. Two objections are raised. First, it is far from clear (...) that kidney sales and dangerous jobs involve comparable risks on an appropriately broad comparison. Second, and more importantly, even if they do involve comparable risks it does not follow that kidney sales must be permitted because dangerous jobs are. The analogy assumes that kidney sales are banned for paternalistic reasons. But there may be other, non-paternalistic reasons for the ban. And paternalists, too, can consistently defend the ban even if kidney sales are no riskier than occupations that they find acceptable. Soft paternalists may want to protect would-be vendors from harms that they have not voluntarily chosen. Egalitarian hard paternalists may want to protect already badly off vendors from further worsening their situation. For neither species of paternalist is the size of the risk prevented decisive. I conclude that the analogy with dangerous jobs, while rhetorically powerful, pulls little real argumentative weight. Future debates on living kidney sales should therefore proceed without it. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The impediment of individuals affected by mental illness at risk of suicide is well justified. But the impediment to rational suicide is complicated by the conflict between defending life and defending autonomy, as illustrated by the various philosophical approaches to the ethical dimension of suicide. In this article we argue that, insofar as punctual in nature and limited in scope, paternalistic intervention of the autonomous individual is also justified. To do so, we will use the distinction between shallow and deep (...) autonomy, as well as complicating factors from recent medical literature: the question of ambivalence and the cry for help model. We will also pay special attention to the ethical implications of new strategies for risk detection that use artificial intelligence applied to social network databases like Facebook. Although preliminary evidence suggests these are effective tools, their lack of transparency, regulation and consent puts civil liberties and rights at risk. (shrink)

Nylig igangsatte FN Post-2015, sin nye utviklingsagenda. Sentralt er en global kamp for bedret helse, hvor det å leve et menneskeverdig liv står i sentrum. Imidlertid er forståelsen av selve helsebegrepet omstridt. Noen mener at det bør knyttes an til jus og menneskerettigheter, mens andre foreslår etikk og menneskeverd. Dette hviler i sin tur på motstridende menneskesyn i den globale helseetiske diskursen, nemlig mennesket som enten autonomt eller avhengig. I artikkelen analyserer jeg denne debatten ut fra det jeg hevder er (...) Martha Nussbaums globale helseetikk, som baseres på hennes kapabilitetstilnærming så vel som begrep om ‘helse som livskvalitet’. Min konklusjon er at Nussbaums normative begrunnelse for Post-2015 ut fra et kroppslig forankret menneskeverd er det mest overbevisende av de to konkurrerende svarene.Nøkkelord: global helseetikk, Martha Nussbaum, menneskeverd, menneskerettigheter, post-2015English summary: Living a dignified life - Martha Nussbaum's global health ethicsThe UN recently launched Post-2015, which is its new development agenda. Central here is the global struggle for improved health, in which what it takes to live a dignified life is stressed. However, the understanding of the notion of health is disputed. Some believe that it should be linked to law and the human rights, while others suggest ethics and human dignity. Which in turn rests on conflicting stands in the global health ethical discourse regards to the view of humanity, namely either as autonomous or dependent. In the paper I analyse this discourse, in which my point of departure is Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach as well as her concept of health as life quality. This I read exactly as a global health ethics. Thus, I conclude that between the two competing answers, Nussbaum’s normative justification for Post-2015 on the basis of bodily grounded human dignity is the most convincing.Keywords: global health ethics, Martha Nussbaum, human dignity, human rights, Post-2015. (shrink)

Political participation lies at the heart of normative democratic theory. To foster participatory interactions between citizens, some advocates and designers are resorting to gamification as the use of psycho-motivational involvement strategies from games in non-game contexts. The hope is that through gamification mechanisms, citizens will be drawn more easily towards participation platforms, apps, and digital services, as well as remain there longer, thereby effectively enhancing participation numbers and time. In this article, I will explore the potential problems of these involvement (...) strategies, namely the worry that they may be able to undermine citizen’s individual and political autonomy by manipulating them into participating. Depending on the severity of the psycho-motivational effect as well as the covertness of the mechanism, gamification may constitute inadmissible forms of paternalism. (shrink)

While recent studies suggest that augmented learning employing smart glasses increases overall learning performance, in this paper we are more interested in the question which repercussions ALSG will have on the type of knowledge that is acquired. Drawing from the theoretical discussion within epistemology about the differences between Knowledge-How and Knowledge-That, we will argue that ALSG furthers understanding as a series of epistemic and non-epistemic Knowing-Hows. Focusing on academic knowledge acquisition, especially with respect to early curriculum experiments in various STEM (...) disciplines as investigated by the BmBF “Be-Greifen” project, we take the Be-Greifen holo.lab setup as an example for showing that ALSG shifts the learning focus from propositional knowledge to epistemic competencies, which can be differentiated as “grasping”, “wielding”, and “transferring”. (shrink)

The article analyzes and criticizes the political use of hive psychology proposed by Jonathan Haidt who appeals to the “nudges” of libertarian paternalism. The article introduces paternalism and discusses the nudge theory, and on the basis of that discussion examines the political use of hive psychology and holds that (i) nudges do not respect people as autonomous beings, and that (ii) hive politics are dangerous. Instead, a cosmopolitan perspective would be well worth pursuing.

This paper argues that we have wrongly and not for the patient’s benefit made a form of stark autonomy our highest value which allows physicians to slip out from under their basic duty which has always been to pursue a particular patient’s good. In general – I shall argue – it is the patient’s right to select his or her own goals and the physician’s duty to inform the patient of the feasibility of that goal and of the means needed (...) to attain it. If the goal is not one that is possible, the patient, with the physician and family, must select a feasible goal and then discuss the costs/benefits of various approaches. The physician should take a leading role in helping the patient select the goal. I argue that to simply present a laundry list of means and insist that patients choose for themselves is not only abandoning patients to their autonomy but is, in fact, a crass form of violating the patient’s autonomy. Freely choosing not to choose is a choice a patient with decisional capacity is entitled to make and one that needs to be respected. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

_ Source: _Page Count 18 There are two ways to transfer a bodily right. One might transfer a bodily right in a detaching way – that is, without transferring jurisdiction over one’s future bodily choices. Alternately, one might transfer a bodily right in an attaching way – that is, in a way that transfers such jurisdiction. For instance, A might sell his kidney to B for money paid at the time of the transplant. Alternately, A might accept money now, agreeing (...) to give up his kidney some time down the road. In the latter case and not the former, B acquires normative jurisdiction over A’s future bodily choices. In this paper I will argue that the distinction between attaching and detaching transfers of bodily rights has implications regarding whether certain contracts and agreements should be legally enforced – and whether problems arise when the moral and legal transferability of these rights comes apart. (shrink)

Current bans on sports and drugs rest on inadequate grounds. Prohibitions on drugs in sports should rely more on what it is permissible to ban, not on what "must" be banned. Further permissible prohibitions should enjoy democratic support at levels.

Can Artificial Intelligence be more effective than human instruction for the moral enhancement of people? The author argues that it only would be if the use of this technology were aimed at increasing the individual's capacity to reflectively decide for themselves, rather than at directly influencing behaviour. To support this, it is shown how a disregard for personal autonomy, in particular, invalidates the main proposals for applying new technologies, both biomedical and AI-based, to moral enhancement. As an alternative to these (...) proposals, this article proposes a virtual assistant that, through dialogue, neutrality and virtual reality technologies, can teach users to make better moral decisions on their own. The author concludes that, as long as certain precautions are taken in its design, such an assistant could do this better than a human instructor adopting the same educational methodology. (shrink)

Health care systems can positively influence our personal decision-making and health-related behavior only if we trust them. I propose a conceptual analysis of the trust relation between the public and a healthcare system, drawing from healthcare studies and philosophical proposals. In my account, the trust relation is based on an epistemic component, epistemic authority, and on a value component, the benevolence of the healthcare system. I argue that it is also modified by the vulnerability of the public on healthcare matters, (...) and by the system’s credibility. I apply my proposed analysis of public trust in health care systems to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, a tendency to question vaccine policies, and to seek alternative vaccine schedules or to refuse vaccination. Understanding the role of trust and its components can be key to understanding the phenomenon. (shrink)

Women wishing hospital admission for childbirth are asked to sign very general pre-admission consent forms. The use of such forms suggests that women in labor are considered incompetent to give informed consent. This paper explores some of the problems with advance directives and general consent, and argues that since women in labor are not generally incompetent, it is not appropriate to require this kind of consent of them.

High-quality doctor-patient communication in end-of-life care results in better quality of life for patients. In linguistically and culturally diverse societies, language discordant consultations become daily practice, leading to difficulties in eliciting patient preferences toward end-of-life care. Although family members invariably act as informal interpreters, this may cause some ethical dilemmas. We present a case of a palliative patient whose son acted as an interpreter. This case generated a triple- layered ethical dilemma: how to safeguard patient autonomy against paternalistic interventions by (...) family members, how to respect the relational context in which patient autonomy can be realized, and how to respect the ethno-cultural values of the patient and his family. These issues are being discussed and reflected upon within the framework shared decision making involving informal- and professional interpreters. The complementary use of professional interpreters next to family members acting as informal interpreters is recommended. (shrink)

Supporters of paternalistic policies argue that interference with risky or dangerous choices for citizens’ own good is permissible, as long as those choices are caused by cognitive irrationality or ignorance. Yet, some liberal thinkers argue that despite human irrationality, paternalistic policies are still wrong because they fail to respect citizens as moral equals. I argue that actually both views are mistaken about what respect for citizens requires, because they conceptualize the citizens’ interests from the wrong standpoint. In order for citizens (...) to be respected as equals, I argue that citizens’ interests must be defined from a joint (second-person) standpoint which is constructed through a dialogical process between policymakers and citizens oriented towards mutual understanding. Furthermore, I argue that engaging citizens in such a dialogue is a distinctive paternalistic intervention in its own right, which unlike other kinds of paternalistic intervention, is compatible with respect for citizens as equals. (shrink)

Supporters of paternalistic policies argue that interference with risky or dangerous choices for citizens’ own good is permissible, as long as those choices are caused by cognitive irrationality or ignorance. Yet, some liberal thinkers argue that despite human irrationality, paternalistic policies are still wrong because they fail to respect citizens as moral equals. I argue that actually both views are mistaken about what respect for citizens requires, because they conceptualize the citizens’ interests from the wrong standpoint. In order for citizens (...) to be respected as equals, I argue that citizens’ interests must be defined from a joint (second-person) standpoint which is constructed through a dialogical process between policymakers and citizens oriented towards mutual understanding. Furthermore, I argue that engaging citizens in such a dialogue is a distinctive paternalistic intervention in its own right, which unlike other kinds of paternalistic intervention, is compatible with respect for citizens as equals. (shrink)

Supporters of paternalistic policies argue that interference with risky or dangerous choices for citizens’ own good is permissible, as long as those choices are caused by cognitive irrationality or ignorance. Yet, some liberal thinkers argue that despite human irrationality, paternalistic policies are still wrong because they fail to respect citizens as moral equals. I argue that actually both views are mistaken about what respect for citizens requires, because they conceptualize the citizens’ interests from the wrong standpoint. In order for citizens (...) to be respected as equals, I argue that citizens’ interests must be defined from a joint (second-person) standpoint which is constructed through a dialogical process between policymakers and citizens oriented towards mutual understanding. Furthermore, I argue that engaging citizens in such a dialogue is a distinctive paternalistic intervention in its own right, which unlike other kinds of paternalistic intervention, is compatible with respect for citizens as equals. (shrink)

Supporters of paternalistic policies argue that interference with risky or dangerous choices for citizens’ own good is permissible, as long as those choices are caused by cognitive irrationality or ignorance. Yet, some liberal thinkers argue that despite human irrationality, paternalistic policies are still wrong because they fail to respect citizens as moral equals. I argue that actually both views are mistaken about what respect for citizens requires, because they conceptualize the citizens’ interests from the wrong standpoint. In order for citizens (...) to be respected as equals, I argue that citizens’ interests must be defined from a joint (second-person) standpoint which is constructed through a dialogical process between policymakers and citizens oriented towards mutual understanding. Furthermore, I argue that engaging citizens in such a dialogue is a distinctive paternalistic intervention in its own right, which unlike other kinds of paternalistic intervention, is compatible with respect for citizens as equals. (shrink)

When new drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the default assumption is that they will be available by prescription only, safe for use exclusively under clinical supervision. The paternalism underlying this default must be interrogated in order to ensure appropriate respect for patient autonomy. Upon closer inspection, prescription requirements are justified when nonprescription status would risk harm to third parties and when a large segment of the population would struggle to exercise their autonomy in using a drug (...) safely and effectively on their own. Although these justifications can support prescription status for many drugs, we propose that reversing the FDA's current default to instead begin with a presumption in favor of over‐the‐counter status is the best way to avoid interference with valid claims of patient autonomy. Under this approach, a range of drug products could be considered for an OTC switch, including oral contraceptives, statins, and HIV‐prevention drugs. (shrink)

Paternalism is the restriction of a person's autonomy for the good of that person. It embodies a familiar conflict of intuitions: while we cherish individual freedom, we also want to protect/promote what we know to be good. So, every paternalist must meet two challenges: paternalism must be justifiable as a restriction of autonomy as well as effective in terms of well-being. In this essay, I argue that the ‘autonomy’ restricted by paternalism is a Razian brand of free self-authorship and that (...) the ‘good’ protected is captured by Martha Nussbaum's account of personal well-being. I then defend a mild welfare paternalism based on a dichotomy implicit in any defensible description of well-being. I argue that some aspects of the good life do not require endorsement and, therefore, can be justifiably and effectively promoted by autonomy-restricting means. Finally, I discuss why paternalism need not be hostile to ethical independence. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the ethics of clinical research against the charge of paternalism. We do so not by denying that the ethics of clinical research is paternalistic, but rather by defending the legitimacy of paternalism in this context. Our aim is not to defend any particular set of paternalistic restrictions, but rather to make a general case for the permissibility of paternalistic restrictions in this context. Specifically, we argue that there is no basic liberty-right to participate in clinical (...) research and that considerations of distributive fairness justify some paternalistic protections of research subjects. (shrink)

I discuss five lines of argument for the claim that prostitution is wrong: (1) the condemnation of prostitution by positive morality; (2) paternalist objections to it; (3) the claim that some things just aren't for sale and that sex is one of them, which is based either on the view of sex as essentially tied to procreation and marriage, or on the conception of sex as bound up with love; (4) the radical feminist critique of prostitution as a practice that (...) degrades women, and (5) is implicated in the oppression of women. I try to show that none of these objections is valid, and that we still lack a good argument to support the widespread condemnation of prostitution. (shrink)

H. L. A. Hart in his Law, Liberty, and Morality (1963) defended the view that legal paternalism and legal moralism can be clearly distinguished from each other. Hart also stated that while legal moralism is always unacceptable, paternalistic laws are often justifiable. In this paper it is argued that Hart held the right view for the wrong reasons. Hart defended legal paternalism by claiming, against J. S. Mill, that for various psychological reasons individuals do not know their own interests best. (...) It will be shown in the paper that if this view is taken, it is impossible to reject legal moralism. The fact that paternalism is sometimes justifiable while moralism is not can be more firmly founded on a distinction made by C. L. Ten (1971). Ten's point is that in matters which concern only the individuals themselves, their actions cannot be legitimately restricted by appeals to the consequences of their action alone. Paternalistic control can be justified only if the decision-making abilities of the controlled individual are temporarily diminished. (shrink)

Plato’s Laws include what H.L.A. Hart called the ‘classical thesis’ about the nature and role of law: the law exists to see that one leads a morally good life. This paper develops Hart’s brief remarks by providing a panorama of the classical thesis in Laws. This is done by considering two themes: (1) the extent to which Laws is paternalistic, and (2) the extent to which Laws is naturalistic. These themes are significant for a number of reasons, including because they (...) show how Laws might be viewed as a sophisticated forerunner of natural law theory. The upshot is that Plato's metaphysical commitments about legal ontology allow him to base the truth of legal propositions on the way they relate to the truth of corresponding moral propositions. (shrink)