Dignity appears to be an important concept in nursing philosophy and more widely in health care policy and provision. Recent events in the UK have generated much interest in the subject. However, there appears to be some confusion about the precise meaning and application of the concept. An influential contribution to the debate has come from Nordenfelt, who, as part of a European project investigating dignity and the care of older people, has proposed a four‐part typology of dignity. In this (...) article, we will explore some of the background to the dignity debate in UK nursing and health care, give a brief overview of Nordenfelt's position, offer some criticisms of his work and propose some modifications to his view. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. This entry covers: (1) the challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism (i.e., humancenteredness) embedded in traditional western ethical thinking; (2) the early development of the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s; (3) the connection of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics; (4) the attempt to apply (...) traditional ethical theories, including consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; and (5) the focus of environmental literature on wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline. (shrink)

In this essay, I develop a moderate hierarchical position about the moral status of animals that is based on two factors: on the level of mental development of a being who is affected and on the significance of the interests that are affected. I argue that this view accommodates two different sets of moral intuitions. On one hand, it explains why, in general, humans have the special moral standing that is typically attributed to us. On the other hand, it also (...) allows us to accommodate much of our intuition about how animals ought to be treated. In addition, this view is supported also by plausible general theoretical considerations. Subsequently, I explore some implications of this view for some real-life examples of our interactions with animals, especially, for the practice of raising them for food using industrial methods. I argue that this practice is morally wrong and that the correct approach is to adopt a (nearly) plant-based lifestyle. (shrink)

In this article, I propose, defend, and apply a principle for applied ethics. According to this principle, we should exercise moral caution, at least when we can. More formally, the principle claims that if you should believe or suspend judgment that doing an action is a serious moral wrong, while knowing that not doing that action is not morally wrong, then you should not do that action. After motivating this principle, I argue that it has significant application in applied ethics. (...) The application to applied ethics comes by way of the epistemic significance of disagreement. Though such a principle has perhaps a number of applications in applied ethics, my focus here is limited to the question of whether it is morally permissible to eat animals for pleasure. (shrink)

We live in an age of great scientific and technological innovation, and what seemed out of the question or at least very doubtful only a few years ago, today lies almost within our grasp. In no area is this more true than that of human health care, where lifesaving and life-enhancing technologies have given, or have the enormous potential in the not so distant future to give, relief from some of the most terrible human illnesses. On two fronts in particular, (...) xenograft or cross-species transplantation and genetic engineering of animals on behalf of gene therapy in humans, such relief appears very promising, if not actually on the horizon. Certainly, extensive research work on both fronts is underway both in the United States and abroad. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of the contention that, over the past decades, we have been witnessing the rise of the ‘posthuman condition’. To this end, the analysis draws on the work of the contemporary philosopher Rosi Braidotti. The paper is divided into four parts. The first part centres on the concept of posthumanism, suggesting that it reflects a systematic attempt to challenge humanist assumptions underlying the construction of ‘the human’. The second part focuses (...) on the concept of post-anthropocentrism, demonstrating that it articulates a desire to reject the twin ideas of ‘species supremacism’ and ‘human exceptionalism’, which it seeks to replace with ‘species egalitarianism’ and ‘monistic vitalism’. The third part is concerned with the concept of critical posthumanities, positing that its advocacy is based on the cross-fertilization of posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism. The fourth part offers an assessment of the ‘posthuman condition’ thesis, evaluating the extent to which it sheds new light on the ways in which our engagements with the world are shaped by the confluence of zoe-, geo-, and techno-based dimensions. The paper concludes with a brief summary of the key insights gained from the preceding inquiry. (shrink)

Most scientific theories of consciousness are challenging to apply outside the human case insofar as non‐human systems (both biological and artificial) are unlikely to implement human architecture precisely, an issue I call the specificity problem. After providing some background on the theories of consciousness debate, I survey the prospects of four approaches to this problem. I then consider a fifth solution, namely the theory‐light approach proposed by Jonathan Birch. I defend a modified version of this that I term the modest (...) theoretical approach, arguing that it may provide insights into challenging cases that would otherwise be intractable. (shrink)

To be able to believe that a dog with a broken paw is not really in pain when it whimpers is a quite extraordinary achievement even for a philosopher. Yet according to the standard interpretaion, this is just what Descartes did believe. He held, we are informed, the ‘monstrous’ thesis that ‘animals are without feeling or awareness of any kind’. The Standard view has been reiterated in a recent collection on animal rights, which casts Descartes as the villain of the (...) piece for his alleged view that animals merely behave ‘ as if they feel pain when they are, say, kicked or stabbed’. The basis for this widely accepted interpretation is Descartes' famous doctrine of ‘animal machine’ ; a doctrine that one critic condemns as ‘a grim fortaste of a mechanically minded age’ which ‘brutally violates the old kindly fellowship of living things’. (shrink)