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)

All ordinary decisions involve some risk. If I go outside for a walk, I may trip and injure myself. But if I don’t go for a walk, I slightly increase my chances of cardiovascular disease. Typically, we disregard most small risks. When, for practical purposes, is it appropriate for one to ignore risk? This issue looms large because many activities performed by those in wealthy societies, such as driving a car, in some way risk contributing to climate harms. Are these (...) activities morally appropriate? -/- In this paper, I first summarize and respond to some arguments that purport to show that it is appropriate to ignore or discount very small risks. I argue that because our rationality is bounded, it is impossible for us to include every small risk in our decision-making process, and so we may reasonably use heuristics to guide many decisions. However, contrary to some thinkers, I argue that this does not violate the spirit of expected value theory; it merely shows that we should adopt a so-called "two-level" view. Our use of heuristics allows for the reasonable ignoring of some risks, and this perhaps explains why one might be inclined to think that individual climate-related risks are negligible. However, virtually all greenhouse-gas emitting activities in fact have some climate risk on the negative side of the ledger, and the use of heuristics does not permit the general ignoring of climate-change-related risk by individuals on grounds of expediency of judgment and decision-making. (shrink)

There is a surprising consensus among vegan philosophers that freeganism—eating animal-based foods going to waste—is permissible. Some ethicists even argue that vegans should be freegans. In this paper, we offer a novel challenge to freeganism drawing upon Donaldson and Kymlicka’s ‘zoopolitical’ approach, which supports ‘restricted freeganism’. On this position, it’s prima facie wrong to eat the corpses of domesticated animals, as they are members of a mixed human-animal community, ruling out many freegan practices. This exploration reveals how the ‘political turn’ (...) in animal ethics can offer fertile lenses through which to consider ethical puzzles about eating animals. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Calum Miller skillfully and creatively argues for the counterintuitive view that there aren’t any good reasons to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense. By Miller’s lights, such reasons are either weak in their own right or they also favor the view that non-human animals don’t feel morally relevant pain. In this paper, I explain why Miller’s view is mistaken. In particular, I sketch a very reasonable abductive argument for (...) the conclusion that non-human animals feel morally relevant pain. This argument shows that, even in the face of Miller’s moderate skepticism about whether non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense, it’s still more epistemically reasonable to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense than not. In which case, I conclude that Miller has failed to show that there aren’t any good reasons to believe that non-human animals don’t feel pain in a morally relevant sense that don’t also count in favor of the view that non-human animals don’t feel morally relevant pain. (shrink)

This article argues that governments in countries that currently permit intensive animal agriculture - especially but not exclusively high-income countries - are, in principle, morally justified in taking steps to restrict or even eliminate intensive animal agriculture to protect public health from the risk of zoonotic pandemics. Unlike many extant arguments for restricting, curtailing, or even eliminating intensive animal agriculture which focus on environmental harms, animal welfare, or the link between animal source food (ASF) consumption and noncommunicable disease, the argument (...) in this article appeals to the value of protecting populations from future global health emergencies and their broad social, economic, and health impacts, taking the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a particularly salient example. The article begins by identifying how intensive animal agriculture contributes to the outbreak (and risk of future outbreaks) of zoonotic diseases. Next, we explore three specific policy options: 1. Incentivizing plant-based and cell-based ASF alternatives through government subsidies; 2. Disincentivizing intensive ASF production through the adoption of a “zoonotic tax”; and 3. Eliminating intensive ASF production through a total ban. We argue that all three of these measures are permissible, although we remain agnostic as to whether these measures are obligatory. We argue for this conclusion on the grounds that each measure is justified by the same sorts of considerations that justify other widely accepted public health interventions, and each is compatible with a variety of theories of justice. We then address potential objections. Finally, we discuss how our novel argument relates to extant ethical arguments in favor or curtailing ASF production and consumption. (shrink)

Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of (...) false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia, often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness. (shrink)

This paper argues that individuals in many high-income countries typically have moral reasons to limit their beef consumption and consume plant-based protein instead, given the negative effects of beef production and consumption. Beef production is a significant source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, high levels of beef consumption are associated with health risks, and some cattle production systems raise animal welfare concerns. These negative effects matter, from a variety of moral perspectives, and give us collective moral (...) reasons to reduce beef production and consumption. But, as some ethicists have argued, we cannot draw a straight line from the ethics of production to the ethics of consumption: even if a production system is morally impermissible, this does not mean that any given individual has moral reasons to stop consuming the products of that system, given how miniscule one individual’s contributions are. This paper considers how to connect those dots. We consider three distinct lines of argument in support of the conclusion that individuals have moral reasons to limit their beef consumption and shift to plant-based protein, and we consider objections to each argument. This argument applies to individuals in high beef-consuming and high greenhouse gas-emitting high-income countries, though we make this argument with a specific focus on the United States. (shrink)