_ Source: _Volume 14, Issue 1, pp 73 - 87 According to action-relative accounts of harming, an action harms someone only if it makes her worse off in some respect than she would have been, had the action not been performed. Action-relative accounts can be contrasted with effect-relative accounts, which hold that an action may harm an individual in virtue of its effects on that individual, regardless of whether the individual would have been better off in the absence of the (...) action. In this paper, I argue that our judgments about the strength of the reason against harming lend support to effect-relative accounts over action-relative accounts. I first criticize Fiona Woollard’s argument for the claim that an effect-relative account of harming could ground only a weak reason against harming. I then argue for a set of three principles that can be conjoined with an effect-relative account to explain the strength of the reason against harming. (shrink)

This thesis in an invistigation into the concept of "harm" and its moral relevance. A common view is that an analysis of harm should include a counterfactual condition: an act harms a person iff it makes that person worse off. A common objection to the moral relevance of harm, thus understood, is the non-identity problem. -/- This thesis criticises the counterfactual condition, argues for an alternative analysis and that harm plays two important normative roles. -/- The main ground for rejecting (...) the counterfactual condition is that it has unacceptable consequences in cases of overdetermination and pre-emption. Several modifications to the condition are considered but all fail to solve this problem. -/- According to the alternative analysis to do harm is to perform an act which is responsible for the obtaining of a state of affairs which makes a person’s life go worse. It is argued that should be understood in terms of counterfactual dependence. This claim is defended against counterexamples based on redundant causation. An analysis of is also provided using the notion of a well-being function. It is argued that by introducing this notion it is possible to analyse contributive value without making use of counterfactual comparisons and to solve the non-identity problem. -/- Regarding the normative importance of harm, a popular intuition is that there is an asymmetry in our obligations to future people: that a person would have a life worth living were she to exist is not a reason in favour of creating that person while that a person would have a life not worth living is a reason against creating that person. It is argued that the asymmetry can be classified as a moral option grounded in autonomy. Central to this defence is the suggestion that harm is relevant to understanding autonomy. Autonomy involves partly the freedom to pursue one’s own aims as long as one does no harm. (shrink)

Many of us agree that we ought not to wrong future people, but there remains disagreement about which of our actions can wrong them. Can we wrong individuals whose lives are worth living by taking actions that result in their very existence? The problem of justifying an answer to this question has come to be known as the non-identity problem.[1] While the literature contains an array of strategies for solving the problem,[2] in this paper I will take what I call (...) the harm-based approach, and I will defend an account of harming—which I call the existence account of harming—that can vindicate this approach. -/- Roughly put, the harm-based approach holds that, by acting in ways that result in the existence of individuals whose lives are worth living, we can harm and thereby wrong those individuals. An initially plausible way to try to justify this approach is to endorse the non-comparative account of harming, which holds that an event harms an individual just in case it causes her to be in a bad state, such that the state’s badness does not derive from a comparison between that state and some alternative state that the individual would or could have been in. However, many philosophers argue that the non-comparative account of harming is inadequate,[3] and one might be tempted to infer from this that any harm-based approach to the non-identity problem will fail. My proposal, which I call the existence account of harming, will show that this inference is faulty: we can vindicate the harm-based approach without relying on the non-comparative account of harming. (shrink)

I first distinguish four types of objection to paternalism and argue that only one – the principled objection – amounts to a substantive and distinct normative doctrine. I then argue that this doctrine should be understood as preventing certain facts from playing the role of reasons they would otherwise play. I explain how this filter approach makes antipaternalism independent of several philosophical controversies: On the role reasons play, on what reasons there are, and on how reasons are related to values. (...) I go on to contrast the filter approach with the competing and dominant action-focused approach, which understands objections to paternalism in terms of paternalistic action, behavior, law, policy and the like. Seana Shiffrin and Peter de Marneffe are singled out as prominent recent proponents of this approach. By engaging with their definitions of paternalism, I explain how the action-focused approach makes antipaternalism dependent on the sorting of actions into paternalistic and nonpaternalistic according to what reasons support them. Because one and the same action can be supported by many different reasons, and by different sorts of reasons, such sorting is very difficult. The upshot is that antipaternalism on the action-focused account fails to provide the precise normative implications of the filter approach that I favor. (shrink)

Legal moralists hold that the immorality of an action is a sufficient reason for the state to prevent it. Liberals in the tradition of Mill generally reject legal moralism. However, Larry Alexander has recently developed an argument that suggests that a class of legal restrictions on freedom that most liberals endorse is, and perhaps can only be, justified on moralistic grounds. According to Alexander, environmental restrictions designed to preserve nature or beauty are forms of legal moralism. In this paper, I (...) explore two liberal lines of response to Alexander’s argument. The first argues that an aesthetic interest is among our basic legally protectable interests. This argument claims that environmental and other regulations designed to protect beauty and nature are justified in order to prevent setbacks to this aesthetic interest. The second focuses on a democratic conception of the public interest. It holds that democratic communities are entitled, through their institutions, to shape the community and environment they live in. On this view, the community need not appeal to moralism to justify its adoption of environmental regulations, since in adopting such regulations it is simply enacting its collective preferences. On these grounds, I claim that Alexander’s case for the claim that aesthetic regulations can only be justified on moralistic grounds is much weaker than he takes it to be. (shrink)

Reasonable individuals often share a rationale for a decision but, in other cases, they make the same decision based on disparate and often incompatible rationales. The social contract tradition has been divided between these two methods of solving the problem of social cooperation: must social cooperation occur in terms of common reasoning, or can individuals with different doctrines simply converge on shared institutions for their own reasons? For Hobbes, it is rational for all persons, regardless of their theological beliefs, to (...) consent to the sovereign's power. But for Locke, only Protestants with a shared theology could be party to the social contract. Rousseau thought that private reasons are not part of the general will, and in Kant's hypothetical contract, pure noumena reach common principles for the social order through the same reasoning process. In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls agreed with Rousseau and Kant: selecting the principles of justice requires modeling parties to the original position as having identical reasons. But in Political Liberalism, Rawls embraced the idea of an overlapping consensus, which accords distinct reasons justificatory force. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that cultural objects ought to be returned to their place of origin in order to remedy injustices committed in the past. In this paper, it is shown that significant challenges attach to this way of arguing. Although there is considerable intuitive appeal in the idea that if somebody wrongs another person then she ought to compensate for that injustice, the principle is difficult to apply to wrongdoings committed many decades or centuries ago. It is not clear (...) that historic injustices can meaningfully be corrected, or compensated for, and there are several arguments why, even in cases where there is a prima facie moral case for compensation, repatriation might not be a legitimate means of remedy. In order to bring analytical clarity to the issue, this paper discusses the various steps of the argument that must be addressed in order to ground a valid repatriation claim based on historic injustices. (shrink)

We provide a new wrinkle to the Argument from Unfair Advantage, a rather popular one in the ethics of doping in sports discussions. But we add a new argument that we believe places the moral burden on those who favor doping in sports. We also defend our position against some important concerns that might be raised against it. In the end, we argue that for the time being, doping in sports ought to be banned until it can be demonstrated that (...) our concerns can be satisfied. (shrink)

One of the features of John Locke’s moral philosophy is the idea that morality is based on our beliefs concerning the future good. In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding II, xxi, §70, Locke argues that we have to decide between the probability of afterlife and our present temptations. In itself, this kind of decision model is not rare in Early Modern philosophy. Blaise Pascal’s Wager is a famous example of a similar idea of balancing between available options which Marcelo Dascal (...) has discussed in his important 2005 article “The Balance of Reason”. -/- Leibniz, however, was not always satisfied with this kind of simple balancing. In his commentary to Locke’s Essay, Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, II, xxi, §66, he presented an alternative model which is based on an idea of plural, mutually conflicting inclinations. This kind of model, called as vectorial theory of rational decision by Simo Knuuttila, fits well with Leibniz’s theory of the soul where volitions are formed as a kind of compromise between different inclinations to different goods. -/- I will present these two models and show how they illustrate the practical rationality of Locke and Leibniz and how their moral philosophies differ, although being similar in certain respects. The topics include Leibniz’s criticism of Lockean hedonism and the discussion of akratic behaviour in II, xxi of Essay and Nouveaux essais. (shrink)

What makes a life good for the person who lives it? According to one answer, enjoyment. Hedonists tell us that one's life goes well to the extent that he enjoys himself and avoids pain. Another answer is that we do well in life to the extent to which we get what we desire. Some versions of this last answer count only "rational" of "informed" desires as relevant to well-being. I defend the view that a person's quality of life is determined (...) by the overall fit between what he actually wants and what he gets, whether or not he is informed or rational. In Chapter 1, I present and explain a theory about well-being, Actual Desire Satisfactionism. I discuss some intuitions about the value of getting what we want and show several ways to develop a theory around these intuitions. In Chapter 2, I respond to the objection that well-being cannot be determined by the satisfactions and frustrations of our actual desires because sometimes our actual desires are defective. In Chapter 3, I argue that our lives can be improved by getting what we want even when the things we want are apparently irrelevant to how our lives unfold. In Chapter 4, I show that Actual Desire Satisfactionism is consistent with our ordinary intuitions about self-sacrifice. In Chapter 5, I respond to an objection based on the fact that our desires often change over time. In Chapter 6, I discuss an argument based on the idea that some of our desires are unwanted. In Chapter 7, I show that Actual Desire Satisfactionism is compatible with various common intuitions about the narrative arrangement and variety of goods in a life. Finally, in Chapter 8, I suggest several ways to reconcile Actual Desire Satisfactionism with hedonistic accounts of well-being. (shrink)

Two normative principles of toleration are offered, one individual-regarding, the other group-regarding. The first is John Stuart Mill’s harm principle; the other is “Principle T,” meant to be the harm principle writ large. It is argued that the state should tolerate autonomous sacrifices of autonomy, including instances where an individual rationally chooses to be enslaved, lobotomized, or killed. Consistent with that, it is argued that the state should tolerate internal restrictions within minority groups even where these prevent autonomy promotion of (...) members of the group. Finally, it is argued that toleration excludes external protections of minority groups. (shrink)

Vaccine refusal harms and risks harming innocent bystanders. People are not entitled to harm innocents or to impose deadly risks on others, so in these cases there is nothing to be said for the right to refuse vaccination. Compulsory vaccination is therefore justified because non-vaccination can rightly be prohibited, just as other kinds of harmful and risky conduct are rightly prohibited. I develop an analogy to random gunfire to illustrate this point. Vaccine refusal, I argue, is morally similar to firing (...) a weapon into the air and endangering innocent bystanders. By re-framing vaccine refusal as harmful and reckless conduct my aim is to shift the focus of the vaccine debate from non-vaccinators’ religious and refusal rights to everyone else’s rights against being infected with contagious illnesses. Religious freedom and rights of informed consent do not entitle non-vaccinators to harm innocent bystanders, and so coercive vaccination requirements are permissible for the sake of the potential victims of the anti-vaccine movement. (shrink)

This paper responds to Antje du-Bois Pedain’s discussion of the wrongfulness constraint on the criminal law. Du-Bois Pedain argues that the constraint is best interpreted as stating that φing is legitimately criminalised only if φing is wrongful for other-regarding reasons. We take issue with du-Bois Pedain’s arguments. In our view, it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of legitimate criminalisation that φing is wrongful in du-Bois Pedain’s sense. Rather, it is a necessary condition of legitimate criminalisation that φing is (...) what we call bare wrongful —that is, that the reasons in favour of φing are defeated by the reasons against. Though du-Bois Pedain is critical of this view, we argue that her criticisms do not convince. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Joel Feinberg was wrong to suppose that liberals must oppose any criminalization of “harmless immorality”. The problem with a theory that permits criminalization only on the basis of his harm and offense principles is that it is underinclusive, ruling out laws that most liberals believe are justified. One objection (Arthur Ripstein’s) is that Feinberg’s theory is unable to account for the criminalization of harmless personal grievances. Another (Larry Alexander’s and Robert George’s) is that it (...) cannot account for public decency laws. I shall reject both of these underinclusiveness objections in favor of one that focuses on the “free floating evil” of corpse desecration. Liberals need “pure” legal moralism (PLM) to explain their support for a criminal ban on mistreatment of the dead. I also argue that while deterrence is plausibly regarded as the primary rationale for criminalizing and punishing wrongs like murder or rape, it is not plausibly regarded as any part of the rationale for criminalizing free floating evils. The point of punishing corpse desecrators has to be either retribution or the promotion of virtue/discouraging of vice. Finally, I consider Feinberg’s reason for rejecting all PLM, namely, that competent adults have a right to personal sovereignty or autonomy, and the state’s duty to respect that right trumps the desirability of punishing or reducing the vice associated with harmless immorality. I argue that Feinberg’s argument here fails because it exaggerates the right’s strength and scope. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out and defend a new theory of value, whole-life welfarism. According to this theory, something is good only if it makes somebody better off in some way in his life considered as a whole. By focusing on lifetime, rather than momentary, well-being, a welfarist can solve two of the most vexing puzzles in value theory, The Badness of Death and The Problem of Additive Aggregation.

Whereas liberals tend to emphasize harm as the decisive criterion for legitimizing criminalisation, moralists take a qualified notion of wrongfulness as sufficient even when no harm is at hand. This comment takes up Andreas von Hirsch ’s “dual element approach” requiring both harm and wrongfulness as necessary conditions for criminalisation and argues that Joel Feinberg’s account of harming as violation of moral rights is perfectly compatible with it. Subsequently, two issues from the liberalism-moralism debate on criminalisation are examined: The difficulty (...) of how to determine wrongfulness beyond the scope of harming, and the so far disregarded question of whether the democratic legislator is free within the framework of constitution to criminalise whatever conduct he wants to prevent irrespective of philosophical constraints. (shrink)

Contemporary theories of criminalisation address, with varying emphasis, themes concerning the harmfulness and the wrongfulness of the conduct. In his article for the present issue, Antony Duff relies chiefly on notions of wrongfulness as the basis for his proposed criminalisation doctrines; whereas in their 2011 volume on criminalisation, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch invoke both wrongfulness and harmfulness as prerequisites for prohibiting conduct. The present article assesses the comparative merits of these approaches, and argues in favour of the latter, (...) two-element perspective. In this article, the author puts forward a number of reasons suggesting why the two-element approach is preferable. These reasons include, firstly, an inductive argument—that the kinds of wrongful conduct for which criminalisation seems a plausible response are those that include an element of harm or risk of harm. Secondly, a defining role for the state is one of resource-protection: of safeguarding the means and resources through which citizens can live good lives. Thus the concept of citizens’ living resources—and the related conception of harm—should be made a constitutive and explicit element of criminalisation theory, rather than subsuming resource-protection under a general rubric of wrongfulness. Thirdly, a two-element approach provides reciprocal limiting principles concerning the scope of criminalisation. One can, for example, employ wrongfulness requirements to limit the criminalisation of conduct that has remote harmful consequences; and, conversely, use a harmfulness requirement as means for restricting the criminalisation of wrongful acts. (shrink)

Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the “fetish ethic.” Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply “infected” our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by 1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, (...) by 2) “sublimating” our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by 3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn’t as obviously misguided as some suggest. (shrink)

Eudaimonistic theorists of welfare have recently attacked conative accounts of welfare. Such accounts, it is claimed, are unable to classify states normally associated with physical and emotional health as non-instrumentally good and states associated with physical and psychological damage as non-instrumentally bad. However, leading eudaimonistic theories such as the self-fulfillment theory and developmentalism have problems of their own. Furthermore, conative theorists can respond to this challenge by dispositionalizing their theories, i.e., by saying that it is not merely the realization of (...) one’s values that is non-instrumentally good for one, but that the disposition to realize one’s values is also non-instrumentally good for one. This approach, properly elaborated, can accommodate the idea that, in many cases, states normally associated with physical and psychological health (or unhealth) are non-instrumentally good (or bad). It also preserves the many well-known advantages of conative theories. (shrink)

Is it ever bad to take pleasure in the suffering of fictional characters? I think so. I attempt to show when and why. I begin with two powerful objections to my view: (1) engaging with fiction is akin to morally unproblematic autonomous fantasy, and (2) since no one is harmed, it is morally unproblematic. I reply to the objections and defend a Moorean view on the issue: It is intrinsically bad to enjoy evil, actual (past, present, or future) and merely (...) imagined. In support, I offer four examples. Then I argue against Moore's claim that it is equally bad to delight in fictional suffering as it is to enjoy actual suffering. Finally, I argue that even though it is bad to enjoy imagined suffering, the power of fiction is often mitigating. The moral problems are more often with the works of fiction than with the audience. (shrink)

This paper considers the justifiability of criminalising anti-social behaviour through two-step prohibitions such as the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO). The UK government has recently proposed to abolish and replace the ASBO; however, the proposed new orders would retain many of its most controversial features. The paper begins by criticising the definition of anti-social behaviour employed in both the current legislation and the new proposals. This definition is objectionable because it makes criminalisation contingent upon the irrational judgements of (putative) victims, and (...) its often modest preventive benefits come at a high cost to citizens’ liberty and autonomy. The paper then goes on to propose a new definition of anti-social behaviour that would meet these objections: that is, as a course of conduct that causes others to experience serious and justifiable anxiety about the safety of their local community. Whilst this definition identifies a serious form of wrongdoing, its precise scope is inevitably uncertain. The paper thus concludes that we have good reason to use two-step prohibitions such as the ASBO to regulate such conduct, so as to enable the use of the criminal law against it whilst minimising possible concerns of legality arising from the proposed definition’s uncertain scope. (shrink)

This article argues against the view that affirmative action is wrong because it involves assigning group rights. First, affirmative action does not have to proceed by assigning rights at all. Second, there are, in fact, legitimate “group rights” both legal and moral; there are collective rights—which are exercised by groups—and membership rights—which are rights people have in virtue of group membership. Third, there are continuing harms that people suffer as blacks and claims to remediation for these harms can fairly treat (...) the (social) property of being black as tracking the victims of those harms. Affirmative action motivated in this way aims to respond to individual wrongs; wrongs that individuals suffer, as it happens, in virtue of their membership in groups. Finally, the main right we have when we are being considered for jobs and places at colleges is that we be treated according to procedures that are morally defensible. Morally acceptable procedures sometimes take account of the fact that a person is a member of a certain social group. (shrink)

One of the many arguments against capital punishment is that execution is irrevocable. At its most simple, the argument has three premises. First, legal institutions should abolish penalties that do not admit correction of error, unless there are no alternative penalties. Second, irrevocable penalties are those that do not admit of correction. Third, execution is irrevocable. It follows that capital punishment should be abolished. This paper argues for the third premise. One might think that the truth of this premise is (...) self-evident. But in his paper “Is the Death Penalty Irrevocable?” Mike Davis argues that it is false: the death penalty is not irrevocable. While Davis’ argument is itself somewhat compelling, it receives additional support from work in the metaphysics of death, specifically the literature on posthumous harm. Strengthened in this way, the argument deserves careful consideration. I begin with a quick sketch of Davis’ argument, then show how the Pitcher-Feinberg theory of posthumous harm enables a more robust argument against the irrevocability of capital punishment, defending their theory of harm against standard objections in the literature. Having established the coherency of the robust argument, I conclude that it nevertheless fails to make the case against irrevocability. This is because it ignores the full set of practical requirements incumbent on legal institutions that wrongly punish someone. (shrink)

I first provide an analysis of Joel Feinberg’s anti-paternalism in terms of invalidation of reasons. Invalidation is the blocking of reasons from influencing the moral status of actions, in this case the blocking of personal good reasons from supporting liberty-limiting actions. Invalidation is shown to be distinct from moral side constraints and lexical ordering of values and reasons. I then go on to argue that anti-paternalism as invalidation is morally unreasonable on at least four grounds, none of which presuppose that (...) people can be mistaken about their own good: First, the doctrine entails that we should sometimes allow people to unintentionally severely harm or kill themselves though we could easily stop them. Second, it entails that we should sometimes allow perfectly informed and rational people to risk the lives of themselves and others, though they are in perfect agreement with us on what reasons we have to stop them for their own good. Third, the doctrine leaves unexplained why we may benevolently coerce less competent but substantially autonomous people, such as young teens, but not adults. Last, it entails that there are peculiar jumps in justifiability between very similar actions. I conclude that as liberals we should reject anti-paternalism and focus our efforts on explicating important liberal values, thereby showing why liberty reasons sometimes override strong personal good reasons, though never by making them invalid. (shrink)

I argue for the recognition of a particular kind of interest that one has in freedom of expression: an interest served by expressive activity in forming and discovering one’s own beliefs, desires, and commitments. In articulating that interest, I aim to contribute to a family of theories of freedom of expression that find its justification in the interests that speakers have in their own speech or thought, to be distinguished from whatever interests they may also have as audiences or third (...) parties for speech. Although there are many differences among such speaker-centered theories, a core commitment that most share is that expressive liberty plays a fundamental role in securing or constituting some form of individual self-realization. My account is a defense and elaboration of what I take to be one specific way in which the nature of such self-realization should be understood. In my proposal, self-realization is sometimes internally related to the very activity of expression, viz, expressing ourselves is one way in which we come to form and know our own minds. (shrink)

Our decision-making is often subject to framing effects: alternative but equally informative descriptions of the same options elicit different choices. When a decision-maker is vulnerable to framing, she may consent under one description of the act, which suggests that she has waived her right, yet be disposed to dissent under an equally informative description of the act, which suggests that she has not waived her right. I argue that in such a case the decision-maker’s consent is simply irrelevant to the (...) permissibility of proceeding. I then consider two alternative views. According to the first, people susceptible to framing are able to give valid consent so long as they are sufficiently informed. This suggestion, I argue, maintains an overly narrow focus on mere quantity of information to the exclusion of other choice-affecting factors. A second response, which appeals to hypothetical consent, is likewise of little use in resolving the moral problem posed by framing effects. I conclude that if susceptibility to framing undermines the validity of consent, we may have good reason to reconsider whether consent has the rights-waiving function commonly attributed to it. (shrink)

The harm principle, understood as the normative requirement that conduct should be criminalized only if it is harmful, has difficulty in dealing with those core cases of criminal wrongdoing that can occur without causing any direct harm. Advocates of the harm principle typically find it implausible to hold that these core cases should not be crimes and so usually seek out some indirect harm that can justify criminalizing the seemingly harmless conduct. But this strategy justifies criminalization of a wide range (...) of conduct on the basis of the fear, worry, and anxiety it generates among those who are not the direct victims of the conduct, and thereby undermines the limiting role of the harm principle by permitting the very move it was meant to prevent: the criminalization of harmless conduct on the ground of others’ feelings about it. The best way to avoid this dilemma is to recognize that people have rights, operating independently of the harm principle, to be treated in certain ways just because they are persons. The existence of such rights provides a ground for both criminalizing conduct and limiting the scope of criminalization because these rights point both to conduct that people must be permitted to engage in and conduct that might well be criminalized. A complete account of criminal law will therefore require the harm principle to work together with an independent account of rights. (shrink)

The paper is a preliminary examination of the origin and role of psychological perception or “feeling” of dignity in human beings. Following Ayala's naturalistic account of morality, a sense of emotional dignity is seen as an outcome of processes of natural selection, cultural evolution, and above all a need for social inclusion. It is suggested that the existence of emotional dignity as part of a human species-related continuum provides an explanation of why we treat those in a persistent vegetative state, (...) the severely and hopelessly mentally impaired, the senile demented, cadavers and archaeological remains with dignity and respect. For older Europeans, dissonance between physical and mental abilities, unfamiliarity with social and cultural changes and relative proximity to death may influence their emotional dignity and hence vulnerability. (shrink)

This paper defends a distinctly liberal approach to public health ethics and replies to possible objections. In particular, I look at a set of recent proposals aiming to revise and expand liberalism in light of public health's rationale and epidemiological findings. I argue that they fail to provide a sociologically informed version of liberalism. Instead, they rest on an implicit normative premise about the value of health, which I show to be invalid. I then make explicit the unobvious, republican background (...) of these proposals. Finally, I expand on the liberal understanding of freedom as non-interference and show its advantages over the republican alternative of freedom as non-domination within the context of public health. The views of freedom I discuss in the paper do not overlap with the classical distinction between negative and positive freedom. In addition, my account differentiates the concepts of freedom and autonomy and does not rule out substantive accounts of the latter. Nor does it confine political liberalism to an essentially procedural form. (shrink)

Intellectual property typically involves claims of ownership of types, rather than particulars. In this article I argue that this difference in ontology makes an important moral difference. In particular I argue that there cannot be an intrinsic moral right to own intellectual property. I begin by establishing a necessary condition for the justification of intrinsic moral rights claims, which I call the Rights Justification Principle. Briefly, this holds that if we want to claim that there is an intrinsic moral right (...) to φ, we must be able to show that (a) violating this right would typically result in either a wrongful harm or other significant wrong to the holder of the right, and (b) the wrongful harm or other wrong in question is independent of the existence of the intrinsic right we are trying to justify. I then argue that merely creating a new instance of a type is not the kind of action which can wrongfully harm the creator of that type. Insofar as there do seem to be wrongs involved in copying a published poem or computer program, these wrongs presuppose the existence of an intrinsic right to own intellectual property, and so cannot be used to justify it. I conclude that there cannot be an intrinsic right to own intellectual property. (shrink)

Desire-satisfaction theories about welfare come in two main varieties: unrestricted and restricted. Both varieties hold that a person's welfare is determined entirely by the satisfactions and frustrations of his desires. But while the restricted theories count only some of a person’s desires as relevant to his well-being, the unrestricted theories count all of his desires as relevant. Because unrestricted theories count all desires as relevant they are vulnerable to a wide variety of counterexamples involving desires that seem obviously irrelevant. Derek (...) Parfit offers a well-known example involving a stranger afflicted with what seems to be a fatal disease. Similar examples are offered by Thomas Scanlon, James Griffin, Shelly Kagan, and others. In this paper I defend a simple unrestricted desire-based theory of welfare from the claim that some of our desires are irrelevant to how well our lives go. I begin by introducing the theory I aim to defend. I then formulate the Irrelevant-Desires Problem and reject a few rationales for its key premise. I then consider and reject a few flawed responses to the problem. I finally offer an obvious but widely overlooked response: I bite the bullet. My overall goal is to dissuade those sympathetic to a desire-based approach to welfare from rejecting unrestricted forms of desire satisfactionism simply because some desires may seem irrelevant to how well our lives go. (shrink)

The creation of chimeras by introducing human stem cells into nonhu- man animals has provoked intense concerns. Addressing objections that appeal to human dignity, I focus in this essay on stem cell research intended to generate human neurons in Great Apes and rodents. After considering samples of dignity- based objections from the literature, I examine the underlying assumption that nonhuman animals have lower moral status than personsFwith particular attention to what it means to speak of higher and lower moral statusFbefore (...) evaluating the chimera research in question. I argue that (1) such experiments involving Great Apes should be prohibited out of respect for the research subjects and (2) such experiments involving rodents may or may not be permissible, depending on how we answer unresolved questions regarding rodents’ moral status. In the end, concerns about human dignity prove insignificant. (shrink)

This paper argues that the standard account of posthumous harm is untenable. The standard account presupposes the desire-fulfillment theory of welfare, but I argue that no plausible version of this theory can allow for the possibility of posthumous harm. I argue that there are, at least, two problems with the standard account from the perspective of a desire-fulfillment theorist. First, as most desire-fulfillment theorists acknowledge, the theory must be restricted in such a way that only those desires that pertain to (...) one’s own life count in determining one’s welfare. The problem is that no one has yet provided a plausible account of which desires these are such that desires for posthumous prestige and the like are included. Second and more importantly, if the desire-fulfillment theory is going to be at all plausible, it must, I argue, restrict itself not only to those desires that pertain to one’s own life but also to those desires that are future independent, and this would rule out the possibility of posthumous harm. If I’m right, then even the desire-fulfillment theorist should reject the standard account of posthumous harm. We cannot plausibly account for posthumous harm in terms of desire fulfillment (or the lack thereof). (shrink)

In this paper I examine the prevailing assumption that there is a right to procreate and question whether there exists a coherent notion of such a right. I argue that we should question any and all procreative activities, not just alternative procreative means and contexts. I suggest that clinging to the assumption of a right to procreate prevents serious scrutiny of reproductive behavior and that, instead of continuing to embrace this assumption, attempts should be made to provide a proper foundation (...) for it. I argue that the focus of procreative activities and discourse on reproductive ethics should be on obligations instead of rights, as rights talk tends to obfuscate recognition of obligations toward others, particularly those who bear the most significant burdens of the procreative process. I examine some possible foundations of a right to procreate as well as John Robertson’s thoughtful account of “procreative liberty” but conclude that at the present time there exists no compelling account of a right to procreate. Finally, I conclude that in the absence of a satisfactory account of a right to procreate, we should refrain from grounding practices or polices on the assumption that there is such a right. (shrink)

According to the Harm Principle, roughly, the state may coerce a person only if it can thereby prevent harm to others. Clearly, this principle depends crucially on what we understand by harm. Thus, if any sort of negative effect on a person may count as a harm, the Harm Principle will fail to sufficiently protect individual liberty. Therefore, a more subtle concept of harm is needed. I consider various possible conceptions and argue that none gives rise to a plausible version (...) of the Harm Principle. Whether we focus on welfare, quantities of welfare or qualities of welfare, we do not arrive at a plausible version of this principle. Instead, the concept of harm may be moralized. I consider various ways this may be done as well as possible rationales for the resulting versions of the Harm Principle. Again, no plausible version of the principle turns up. I also consider the prospect of including the Harm Principle in a decision-procedure rather than in a criterion of rightness. Finally, in light of my negative appraisal, I briefly discuss why this principle has seemed so appealing to liberals. (shrink)

Many believe that paternalism is less wrong in intimate relationships. In this paper, we argue that this view cannot be justified by appeal to (i) beneficence, (ii) shared projects, (iii) vulnerability, (iv) epistemic access, (v) expressivism, or (vi) autonomy as nonalienation. We finally provide an error theory for why many may have believed that paternalism is less wrong in intimate relations.

Overall, there’s a rich literature on free speech and hate speech. However, there’s been comparatively less discussion on hate speech that brings in empirical psychological and medical evidence on the possible health harms hate speech can have for minorities. I introduce and piece together a set of pre-existing scientific data that’s new to the philosophical literature to help sufficiently establish an argument that governments should ban hate speech. Given the adverse effects hate speech can have on one’s mental and physical (...) health, hate speech causes harm at many times. Since it causes such harm and leads to overridingly negative consequences, the government ought to regulate such speech. (shrink)

One could argue that the use, extraction, and development of natural resources for human purposes, i.e. resource exploitation, constitutes a form of instrumentalization of the ecosystems from which these resources are derived. Moreover, that such instrumentalization may be carried out in a way that has adverse social and environmental impacts. Given that a number of ecosystems are indispensable for the satisfaction of human interests and needs, their instrumentalization may nevertheless be justified. In this context, if the amount and rate of (...) instrumentalization of ecosystems leads to their depletion, people whose well-being depends on the ecosystems’ existence may be profoundly harmed. Those instrumentalization practices and actions that lead to states of depletion are generally considered as harmful, but only to those whose interests and needs are frustrated as a result of such practices and actions. In this paper, I argue that the way in which ecosystems are instrumentalized, and not just the quantity and rate, may also cause a philosophically relevant form of harm, and not necessarily to humans: A given ecosystem may be meaningfully harmed not only when it is depleted, but also when its functioning is altered in such a way that it cannot retain core capacities it had before it was instrumentalized. (shrink)

This volume bridges contemporary philosophical conceptions of risk and responsibility and offers an extensive examination of the topic. It shows that risk and responsibility combine in ways that give rise to new philosophical questions and problems. Philosophical interest in the relationship between risk and responsibility continues to rise, due in no small part due to environmental crises, emerging technologies, legal developments, and new medical advances. Despite such interest, scholars are just now working out how to conceive of the links between (...) risk and responsibility, the implications that risks may have to conceptions of responsibility (and vice versa), as well as how such theorizing might play out in applied cases. With contributions from leading scholars, this volume brings together new work examining the interplay between risk and responsibility, exploring its varied philosophical aspects and applications to contemporary issues in law, bioethics, technology, and environmental ethics. Risk and Responsibility in Context will be of interest to philosophers working in ethics, bioethics, philosophy of law, and philosophy of technology, as well as scholars and practitioners in law, health and science management, public policy, and environmental studies. (shrink)

Stephen Schulhofer's book, Unwanted Sex: The Culture of Intimidation and the Failure of Law, provides a carefully constructed and powerful case for rape-law reform. His effort is distinctive in three ways: (1) it takes the basic question of reform to be the moral one of determining which sexual interactions ought to be the subject of the criminal law, (2) it takes the right of sexual autonomy to serve as the basis for any successful legal reform, and (3) it makes a (...) philosophically sophisticated case for his own reform proposal. Schulhofer's efforts should be of great interest to philosophers, especially feminist legal philosophers, interested in questions that bear direct relevance to the relationships between autonomy, coercion, and consent as constrained by the requirements of due process. His careful and scrupulously fair discussion of influential reform recommendations set the stage for his own position (discussed in section VII), a critical evaluation thereof (sections VII and VIII), and sympathetic recommendations in VIII and IX. Of special value here is Schulhofer's attempt to extend his analysis of coerced consent to include certain "offers" made in contexts (e.g., the workplace) characterized by significant power differentials between persons. Section IX offers suggestions, generally friendly to Schulhofer's overall reform proposals, for identifying wrongful sexual interactions occurring in certain institutional or professional contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A new ‘political philosophy’ is indispensable to the ‘post-Corona world,’ and this paper tries to analyze the future of ‘liberal democracy’ in it. It shows that ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that has begun before, but the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic,’ as a setback for it, strongly encourages that crisis. ‘Liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed by ‘political philosophers’ to go together, are now becoming decoupled, and the ‘liberal values’ of ‘democracy’ are eroding. To find why and (...) how, this paper analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ and the evils and propensities of ‘democracy’ that bring about further erosions of ‘liberal values.’ There may be difficult trade-offs to be made between ‘liberal’ and ‘authoritarian’ ‘values’ - and, after the experience of ‘Coronavirus,’ this paper shows the ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy’ may become stronger. -/- KEYWORDS: democracy, liberalism, liberal democracy, illiberal democracy, the novel Coronavirus pandemic, Covid-19, authoritarianism, totalitarianism. -/- EXTENDED ABSTRACT For almost a century in West, ‘democracy’ has meant ‘liberal democracy’-a political system marked not only by ‘free and fair elections,’ but also by ‘liberal values.’ ‘Liberalism’ applied to the problem of the limits of the criminal law would require commitment to the presumption in favor of ‘liberty.’ If the word ‘liberal’ is to have any utility in this context, it should refer to one who has so powerful a commitment to ‘liberty’ that she is motivated to limit the number of acknowledged liberty-limiting or coercion-legitimizing principles as narrowly as possible. So, she only believes in ‘harm-principle’ as the morally relevant reason for criminal prohibitions. ‘Offense principle’ and ‘paternalistic’ and ‘moralistic’ considerations, when introduced as support for penal legislation, have no weight at all. So, it means ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-regarding vs. other-regarding actions distinction’ based on which the human is the owner of her mind and body and everything consenting adults do is beyond the realm of morality and law. It leads to ‘individual’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties’ of ‘speech,’ ‘religion,’ and ‘property’ and ‘collective’ ‘basic rights and liberties’ such as ‘basic rights and liberties of assembly,’ ‘civil society,’ ‘political pluralism,’ ‘democratic institutions,’ and ‘non-governmental organizations.’ ‘Liberalism’ also believes in ‘equality of conditions, ‘equal and free participatory rights in political decision making,’ and ‘collective self-governance.’ It also believes in the ‘rule of law,’ a ‘separation of powers,’ and ‘checks and balances.’ However, even under fair and free elections, the elected leaders can be ‘populists,’ ‘ultra-nationalists,’ ‘racists,’ ‘fascists,’ and ‘authoritarians’ who do not respect ‘inviolable basic rights and liberties,’ and suppress ‘minorities.’ Democratically elected leaders can routinely ignore constitutional limits on their power and deprive their citizens of ‘basic rights and liberties.’ The two strands of ‘liberal democracy’ have been coming apart in the world, and the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ have been fraying and eroding even before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ Even before the Coronavirus hit, there was already much discussion of a crisis of ‘liberal democracy.’ In particular, there has been a debate about whether ‘liberalism’ and ‘democracy,’ which had long been assumed to go together, were becoming decoupled. This paper shows ‘liberal democracy’ faces a ‘global crisis’ that had begun before the ‘novel Coronavirus pandemic.’ It also analyzes ‘authoritarianism,’ ‘totalitarianism,’ ‘liberalism,’ and ‘democracy’ and shows that Covid-19 is a setback for ‘liberal democracy.’ What is striking about the current moment is that many of the ‘liberal’ elements of ‘democracy’ are so far holding up under immense pressure. ‘Illiberal democracies’ seemed to be emerging in many countries. This model of ‘illiberal democracy,’ in which elections continue to be held but some individual rights and liberties are curtailed, may emerge stronger from this new crisis. In that sense, the ‘pandemic’ may become a challenge not only to ‘democracy’ as such but also to ‘liberal democracy’ in particular – in other words, a system of popular sovereignty together with guaranteed basic rights, such as freedom of association and expression and checks and balances on executive power. ‘Authoritarian’ procedures may succeed in mitigating the spread of the ‘Coronavirus,’ but the world now faces another problem: that when the virus recedes, many ‘liberal democracies’ will be far less ‘liberal’ or ‘democratic’ than they were before. In times of crisis, ‘liberal values’ have been ignored temporarily in the name of executive power. However, the ‘temporary’ can become ‘permanent.’ In addition, if citizens lose their faith in the legitimacy of ‘liberal democracy’ as the best form of government, and think ‘liberal democracy’ cannot function effectively during a crisis, and ‘authoritarian regimes’ manage the crisis more decisively, the world will slide towards ‘illiberal or authoritarian democracy,’ and many ‘liberal democracies’ will be at grave risk of failure. There may now be difficult trade-offs to be made between those basic rights and security - and, after the experience of Covid-19, many citizens may choose security. (shrink)

I argue here that the practice of penal torture is not intrinsically wrongful. A common objection against the practice of penal torture is that there is something about penal torture that makes it wrongful, while this is not the case for other modes of punishment. I call this claim the asymmetry thesis. One way to defend this position is to claim that penal torture is intrinsically wrongful. It is the claim I argue against here. I discuss and reject three versions (...) this claim. I first address a version that is based on the idea that penal torture, unlike other modes of punishment, is intrinsically wrong because it is inhuman. I then address a version grounded on the claim that, because penal torture is an assault upon the defenseless, it is morally impermissible. Finally, I discuss a version that concerns the idea that penal torture attacks human dignity and undermine agency. (shrink)

Should college teachers still teach works with immoral content? What if the works are by deeply immoral thinkers? This guide is intended to help us answer these sorts of pedagogical questions by articulating the pertinent moral issues and then suggesting strategies for navigating them.

A key question in disability studies, philosophy, and bioethics concerns the relationship between disability and well-being. The mere difference view, endorsed by Elizabeth Barnes, claims that physical and sensory disabilities by themselves do not make a person worse off overall—any negative impacts on welfare are due to social injustice. This article argues that Barnes’s Value Neutral Model does not extend to intellectual disability. Intellectual disability is (1) intrinsically bad—by itself it makes a person worse off, apart from a non-accommodating environment; (...) (2) universally bad—it lowers quality of life for every intellectually disabled person; and (3) globally bad—it reduces a person’s overall well-being. While people with intellectual disabilities are functionally disadvantaged, this does not imply that they are morally inferior—lower quality of life does not mean lesser moral status. No clinical implications concerning disability-based selective abortion, denial of life-saving treatment, or rationing of scarce resources follow from the claim that intellectual disability is bad difference. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to move toward a relational moral theory of harm through examination of a common yet underexplored form of child maltreatment: childhood psychological abuse. I draw on relational theory to consider agential, intrapersonal, and interpersonal ways in which relational harms develop and evolve both in intimate relationships and in conditions of oppression. I set forth three distinctive yet interconnected forms of relational harm that childhood psychological abuse causes: harm to the relational agency of individuals, harm (...) to the relationships individuals hold with themselves, especially with regard to how they respect, know, and trust themselves, and harm to interpersonal relationships of both a direct and indirect nature in present and future timeframes. I close by noting that while relationships can be the site of human brutality that destroys the relational self, paradoxically and promisingly, they also can be a primary means of the relational reconstitution of the self. Ultimately, relational analyses of the harms of childhood psychological abuse reveal several key elements of a relational theory of harm and demonstrate the significance of relational harms for moral philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When does a state of affairs constitute a harm to someone? Comparative accounts say that being worse off constitutes harm. The temporal version of the comparative account is seldom taken seriously, due to apparently fatal counterexamples. I defend the temporal version against these counterexamples, and show that it is in fact more plausible than the prominent counterfactual version of the account. Non-comparative accounts say that being badly off constitutes harm. However, neither the temporal comparative account nor the non-comparative account (...) can correctly classify all harms. I argue that we should combine them into a hybrid account of harm. The hybrid account is extensionally adequate and presents a unified view on the nature of harm. (shrink)