ABSTRACTWe consider whether and under what conditions it is morally illicit to profit from poverty. We argue that when profit counterfactually depends on poverty, the agent making the profit is morally obliged to relinquish it. Finally, we argue that the people to whom the profit should be redirected are those on whom it counterfactually depends.

This paper examines the rhetorical dimension of arguments about global justice. It draws on postcolonial theory, an approach that has explored the relationship between knowledge and power. The global justice literature has elaborated critiques of global inequality and advanced arguments about how to overcome the legacies of domination. These concerns are also shared by critics of colonialism, yet there are also epistemological differences that separate the two scholarly communities. Despite these differences, I argue that bringing the two literatures into conversation (...) generates important benefits. Postcolonial theory draws attention to the way that abstract concepts can function as metaphors that have the unintended consequence of reinforcing power relations. Normative theory will be more effective at promoting global justice if it pays more attention to the politics of representation. (shrink)

This introductory article summarizes some key elements of Monique Deveaux’s book Poverty, Solidarity, and Poor-Led Social Movements and situates that book in the philosophical literature on global poverty. It then provides an outline of the symposium contributions by Ashwini Vasanthakumar, Luis Cabrera, Brooke Ackerly, Catherine Lu, and Avery Kolers.

What sort of person chooses to remain in a place like Rwanda when an easy exit is offered, when leaving seems the only safe or sane option, and when one is not directly connected to the would-be victims? And how does this person come to develop a circle of care that is expansive enough to include those who are radically Other? In what follows, I consider these questions through a detailed examination of the recent example of Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu (...) hotel manager in Kigali, Rwanda, who sheltered more than a thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees during the hundred-day genocide. I argue that Rusesabagina was primarily motivated by an awareness of his own mortality, his personal history, a desire to distance himself from the negative behavior of Hutu like himself, and a strong identification with the Tutsi refugees under his protection. (shrink)

Global distributive justice is directly connected to the increased inequality in the world. This inequality, which includes the huge inequality of education opportunities, is usually understood as unjust. There are two main approaches to this problem: cosmopolitan and statist. Looking from the cosmopolitan point of view, this kind of injustice is related predominantly with the socio-economic relationships among the individuals on the planet. Just the opposite is the view of the so-called statists, who claim that a more just world is (...) not a world of persons who are equal among themselves, but rather a world of nation states which are able to achieve a more just society within their borders and, consequently, a more just and egalitarian global society as well. (shrink)

Studies suggest that people's moral intuitions are sensitive to morally irrelevant factors, such as personal force, spatial distance, ethnicity or nationality. Findings of this sort have been used to construct debunking arguments. The most prominent champion of this approach is Joshua Greene, who has attempted to undermine deontology by showing that deontological intuitions are triggered by morally irrelevant factors. This article offers a critical analysis of such empirically informed debunking arguments from moral irrelevance, and of Greene’s effort to undermine deontology. (...) One problem with arguments from moral irrelevance concerns the hierarchy between the targeted case-specific intuitions and the more general intuitions about which factors are morally (ir)relevant. If we assume that general intuitions always take precedence over case-specific intuitions, arguments from moral irrelevance become dialectically useless. By contrast, if we assume that both case-specific and general intuitions should be taken seriously, particularly sweeping debunking projects, such as Greene’s, are unlikely to go through. Another problem concerns the experimental aspect of arguments from moral irrelevance. Empirically informed arguments from moral irrelevance have been presented as examples of how empirical moral psychology can advance moral theory. But arguments from moral irrelevance can also be constructed from the armchair. And basing these arguments on empirical findings about laypeople’s intuitions is even counterproductive. (shrink)

This article explores the Rawlsian goal of ensuring that distributions are not influenced by the morally arbitrary. It does so by bringing discussions of distributive justice into contact with the debate over moral luck initiated by Williams and Nagel. Rawls’ own justice as fairness appears to be incompatible with the arbitrariness commitment, as it creates some equalities arbitrarily. A major rival, Dworkin’s version of brute luck egalitarianism, aims to be continuous with ordinary ethics, and so is (a) sensitive to non-philosophical (...) beliefs about free will and responsibility, and (b) allows inequalities to arise on the basis of option luck. But Dworkin does not present convincing reasons in support of continuity, and there are compelling moral reasons for justice to be sensitive to the best philosophical account of free will and responsibility, as is proposed by the revised brute luck egalitarianism of Arneson and Cohen. While Dworkinian brute luck egalitarianism admits three sorts of morally arbitrary disadvantaging which correspond to three forms of moral luck (constitutive, circumstantial, and option luck), revised brute luck egalitarianism does not disadvantage on the basis of constitutive or circumstantial luck. But it is not as sensitive to responsibility as it needs to be to fully extinguish the influence of the morally arbitrary, for persons under it may exercise their responsibility equivalently yet end up with different outcomes on account of option luck. It is concluded that egalitarians should deny the existence of distributive luck, which is luck in the levels of advantage that individuals are due. (shrink)

In response to widespread voter ignorance, Jason Brennan argues for a voting ethics that can be summarized as one negative duty: do not vote badly. The implication that abstaining is always permissible entails no incentive for citizens to become competent voters or to vote once competent. Following the Condorcet Jury Theorem, this can lead to suboptimal outcomes, suggesting that voter turnout should concern instrumentalist epistemic accounts of democratic legitimacy. This could be addressed by adding two positive voting duties: to make (...) an effort to become a competent voter; and, once competent, to vote. (shrink)

This article clarifies what a neuroscience challenge to criminal justice must look like by sketching the basic structure of the argument, gradually filling out the details and illustrating the conditions that must be met for the challenge to work. In the process of doing so it explores influential work by Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen, and Stephen Morse respectively, arguing that the former should not be understood to present a version of the challenge, and that the latter's argument against the (...) challenge is unpersuasive. This analysis allows the article to flesh out the challenge, and demonstrate why it is currently non-completeable. However, the paper argues that contrary to what is often assumed the burden of proof falls on the defenders of criminal justice, and that they will find meeting it a monumental task. (shrink)

In light of the many recent criticisms of Henry Shue's philosophy, this article provides a defense of Shue's philosophical argument for basic rights. The author demonstrates that the latest criticisms made by Thomas Pogge, Michael Payne, and Andrew Cohen misconstrue Shue's position, and therefore fail to overturn the soundness of Shue's argument. Against those who contend that basic rights demand too much, both logically and morally, the author argues that basic rights serve as the minimal threshold for human dignity and (...) the foundation for all other rights. Consequentially, the overall moral landscape is skewed if basic rights are absent. (shrink)

Drawing from the testimony of two landmark hearings on the controversial pesticide DDT held between 1967 and 1972, this article explores how environmentalists and US chemical interests understood and articulated the risks and benefits of DDT use within the United States and beyond its borders. It examines the critical role the international use of DDT played in shaping the domestic regulation of the pesticide and sheds light on the ethical arguments made against and in defense of DDT. By exploring the (...) role of the international use of DDT as it relates of US environmental regulation, this article draws attention to the historical roots of a conflict that situates environmental ethics squarely at odds with the ethics of saving lives with a known environmental pollutant. (shrink)

Animal welfare science and ecology are both generally concerned with the lives of animals, however they differ in their objectives and scope; the former studies the welfare of animals considered ‘domestic’ and under the domain of humans, while the latter studies wild animals with respect to ecological processes. Each of these approaches addresses certain aspects of the lives of animals living in the world though neither, we argue, tells us important information about the welfare of wild animals. This paper argues (...) for the development of a new scientific discipline ‘welfare biology’ to address these issues and more, given the deficiencies of pre-existing life science disciplines to research the subject. Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of all living beings who have a welfare, with a value orientation toward promoting that welfare, regardless of the beings’ situation or relationship to humans and our activities. (shrink)

Suppose that you have deeply personal information that you do not want to share. Further suppose that this information could help others, perhaps even saving their lives. Should you reveal the information or keep it secret? With the increasing prevalence of genetic testing, more and more people are finding themselves in this situation. Although a patient's genetic results are potentially relevant to all her biological family members, her first‐degree relatives—parents, children, and full siblings—are most likely to be affected. This is (...) especially true for genetic mutations—like those in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes—that are associated with a dramatically increased risk of disease. Fortunately, people are usually willing to share results with their at‐risk relatives. Occasionally, however, a patient refuses to disclose her findings to anyone outside her clinical team. Ethicists have written little on patients’ moral duties to their at‐risk relatives. Moreover, the few accounts that have been advanced are problematic. Some unnecessarily expose patients’ genetic information to relatives who are unlikely to benefit from it, and others fail to ensure that patients’ most vulnerable relatives are informed of their genetic risks. Patients’ duty to warn can be defended in a way that avoids these problems. I argue that the duty to share one's genetic results is grounded in the principle of rescue—the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is serious and the cost or risk to oneself is sufficiently moderate. When these two criteria are satisfied, a patient will most likely have a duty to warn. (shrink)

This paper focuses on consent and third-party coercion, viz. cases in which a person consents to another person performing a certain act because a third party coerced her into doing so. I argue that, in these cases, the validity of consent depends on the behavior of the recipient of consent rather than the third party’s coercion taken separately, and I will specify the conditions under which consent is invalid. My view, which is a novel version of what I call a (...) Recipient-Focus-View, holds that coercion invalidates consent only if consent was ‘obtained by’ coercion, but not if consent was ‘merely motivated by’ coercion. I explain and support my view on the basis that it best reconciles an unnoticed tension between two fundamental principles in the debate on consent and that it can deal with cases that undermine other Recipient-Focus-Views. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence increasingly executes tasks that previously only humans could do, such as drive a car, fight in war, or perform a medical operation. However, as the very best AI systems tend to be the least controllable and the least transparent, some scholars argued that humans can no longer be morally responsible for some of the AI-caused outcomes, which would then result in a responsibility gap. In this paper, I assume, for the sake of argument, that at least some of (...) the most sophisticated AI systems do indeed create responsibility gaps, and I ask whether we can bridge these gaps at will, viz. whether certain people could take responsibility for AI-caused harm simply by performing a certain speech act, just as people can give permission for something simply by performing the act of consent. So understood, taking responsibility would be a genuine normative power. I first discuss and reject the view of Champagne and Tonkens, who advocate a view of taking liability. According to this view, a military commander can and must, ahead of time, accept liability to blame and punishment for any harm caused by autonomous weapon systems under her command. I then defend my own proposal of taking answerability, viz. the view that people can makes themselves morally answerable for the harm caused by AI systems, not only ahead of time but also when harm has already been caused. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to the issue of collective guilt and the interconnection between theoretical political thinking and ethically grounded political action, collective guilt, and personal responsibility. It assumes that facing political events in a form of media representation (such as with the war conflict in Ukraine), we mostly deal with simulacra, which affects and creates passive shock content consumption instead of active participation. The interconnection between irrational and rational ways of interpretation of political conflict is shown together with the (...) attempt to rethink the social responsibility of nowadays, switching the prospective from synchronic to diachronic dimensions. Instead of producing descriptions that multiply monstrous zombie/victims-blaming apocalyptic discourse or subconsciously continuing to symbolically support “fratricide”, it is proposed to think about the legacy for future generations and see the moral dimension of politics in terms of “adults’ responsibility for children” as each one’s personal responsibility issue. Acting “as if you would wish all children on Earth to grow in safety and deserve a happy life no matter where (s)he would be born, as if it were a universal law” – this is proposed as an ethical-political common-sense formula, based on potential equality and global interconnection, maturity, and care – which could lead to a common goal of overcoming starvation, wars, sufferings, and catastrophes. (shrink)

A popular model of normative decision-making under uncertainty suggests choosing the option with the maximum expected moral choice-worthiness, where the choice-worthiness values from each moral theory, which are assumed commensurable, are weighted by credence and combined. This study adds descriptive uncertainty about the non-moral facts of a situation into the model by treating choice-worthiness as a random variable. When agents face greater descriptive uncertainty, the choice-worthiness random variable will have a greater spread and a larger standard deviation. MEC, as a (...) decision rule, is sensitive only to the expected value of the random variable and not to its standard deviation. For example, MEC is insensitive to cases where an option with a large degree of descriptive uncertainty may have a higher probability of being below some threshold of impermissibility than does an option with less dispersion, even though the latter has a higher expected choice-worthiness. When applied to the same situation, similar moral theories will have statistically correlated choice-worthiness values. This correlation affects the dispersion of the credence-weighted sum of the random variables but not its expected value. Thus, MEC is insensitive to aspects of the normative situation to which a good decision-rule should be sensitive. (shrink)

SummaryThe paper examines David Armitage's claim that Locke makes an important contribution to international theory by exploring the place of international relations within the Two Treatises of Government. Armitage's suggestion is that the place of international theory in Locke's canonical works is under-explored. In particular, the paper examines the implication of Locke's account of the executive power of the law of nature which allows third parties to punish breaches of the law of nature wherever they occur. The corollary is a (...) general right of intervention under the law of nature. Such a right could create a chaotic individualistic cosmopolitanism and has led scholars such as John Rawls to claim that Locke has no international theory. In response to this problem the paper explores the way in which Locke's discussion of conquest, revolution and the right of peoples to determine the conditions of good government in chapters xvi to xix of the second Treatise contributes to a view of international relations that embodies a law of peoples. (shrink)

This article integrates empirical and normative discussions about why global economic inequalities matter in critically examining an approach known as derivative global egalitarianism (DGE). DGE is a burgeoning perspective that opposes excessive global economic inequality not based on the intrinsic value of equality but inequality's negative repercussions on other values. The article aims to advance the research agenda by identifying and critically evaluating four primary varieties of DGE arguments from related but distinct literatures, which span a number of disciplines, including (...) economics, international relations, and political philosophy. Overall, DGE offers a number of persuasive arguments as to why current levels of global inequality are of concern, but aspects of DGE beg further philosophical and empirical examination. By situating DGE within the wider theoretical and empirical contexts, this article provides resources for its critical assessment and theoretical development. (shrink)

Global justice is, at its core, about moral obligations to distant others. But which obligations ought to be included is a matter of considerable debate. In the discussion that follows I will explicate and challenge two objections to the inclusion of foundationally positive obligations in our account of global justice. The first objection is based on the proposition that negative obligations possess and positive obligations lack a property necessary for a moral demand to be a matter justice. The second objection (...) is that even the most trivial positive obligation becomes overly burdensome when applied to the global arena. And, though I do not offer any particular substantive account of positive obligations to distant others; I assess some of the implications that would arise were positive obligations to distant others to be included in our account of global justice. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

Moral error theorists face the now what question. How, if at all, ought they to adjust their moral practice after having discovered the error? Various answers have emerged in the literature, including, but not limited to, revisionary fictionalism, revisionary expressivism, and revisionary naturalism. Recently, François Jaquet has argued that there are only two available answers to the now what question, since every extant answer except revisionary fictionalism collapses into abolitionism. This paper provides a response. First, it argues that revisionary naturalism (...) does not collapse into abolitionism. The argument is that abolitionists can neither utter schmoralist naturalist replacement judgments that contain moral terms nor eliminativist naturalist replacement judgments that do not contain moral terms. This means that abolitionists cannot utter replacement judgments at all. Since revisionary naturalists can utter replacement judgments, their view does not collapse into abolitionism. Second, the paper gives reason to believe that this result extends beyond revisionary naturalism to the other revisionary metaethical theories, and that this is good news for moral error theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I confront Parfit’s Mixed Maxims Objection. I argue that recent attempts to respond to this objection fail, and I argue that their failure is compounded by the failure of recent attempts to show how the Formula of Universal Law can be used to demarcate the category of obligatory maxims. I then set out my own response to the objection, drawing on remarks from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals for inspiration and developing a novel account of how the Formula (...) of Universal Law can be employed to determine the deontic status of action tokens, action types, and maxims. (shrink)

Most Act-Utilitarians, including Singer are Permissivists who claim that their theory usually permits abortion. In contrast, a minority, including Hare and Tännsjö, are Restrictionists who assert that Act-Utilitarianism usually limits abortion. I argue that both Permissivists and Restrictionists have misunderstood AU’s radical implications for abortion: AU entails that abortion is, in most cases in the economically developed world, morally obligatory. According to AU, it is morally obligatory for A to do F in circumstances C if and only if A’s doing (...) F in C produces at least as much total net value as any other action that A could do in C. As mentioned above, AU has generally been seen to be fairly permissive about abortion. A little more exactly, AU is usually thought to hold that abortion is morally permissible in most cases, even during the second and third trimester. But not all AUs are Permissivists. Restrictionists maintain that the value of the future good that the fetus will experience over an entire life is likely to often outweigh the value of the good that its female parent will lose if the fetus is not aborted. Neither Permissivists nor Restrictionists have understood AU’s implications for abortion, at least as it concerns those living in economically developed countries today. First, Restrictionists have failed to recognize the marginal costs that a person in the developed world incurs on future people. One life lived now in the developed world consumes more resources than a life lived in the developing world, and in the process makes the prospects of future people considerably worse. Restrictionists ignore these costs when they claim that it is often morally impermissible to abort fetuses. Second, Permissivists have not gone far enough when they have claimed that abortion is morally permissible. Singer and others have argued that we in the developed world ought to redirect much of our wealth to the underdeveloped world because its marginal value is much higher there than here. But the average cost of raising a child in the United States is almost $13,000 per year. Hence, by forgoing a child one can save and maintain, on average, between 6 and 65 people per year. Thus, AU entails that almost everyone in the developed world who is financially capable of supporting a child should not do so, even if that means aborting a fetus. (shrink)

Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate a (...) new scale—the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale—to dissociate individual differences in the ‘negative’ (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and ‘positive’ (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between moral judgments, fallibility, and imaginative insight. It will draw heavily from the canon of classical American philosophy, the members of which (from Ralph Waldo Emerson, to C.S. Peirce, E.L. Cabot, to Jane Addams, to John Dewey) took up this relationship as pivotally important in moral theorizing. It argues that the process of hypothesis formation—characterized as “insight” by Emerson and extended by Peirce in his notion of “abduction”—is a necessary condition of moral progress for it (...) allows individuals to think through the boundaries of social and ethical life. In a world of unexpected occurrences and uncertainty, the ability to generate novel explanatory frameworks and normative ideals is a crucial, if normally underappreciated, moral faculty. This paper attempts to respond to this relative neglect. (shrink)

Der Beitrag entwickelt ein neues, machtbasiertes Verantwortungsmodell für die individuelle Verstrickung in globale strukturelle Ungerechtigkeiten. Er geht von dem Problem aus, dass die meisten Bedingungen für die Zuerkennung moralischer Haftbarkeitsverantwortung in Fällen der individuellen Verstrickung in globale strukturelle Übel nicht erfüllt sind: Wenn eine Person beispielsweise ein unter ausbeuterischen Bedingungen produziertes T-Shirt kauft, so ist diese Handlung für das Eintreten der strukturellen Ungerechtigkeit weder hinreichend noch notwendig, die Person hat die strukturell ungerechten Eff ekte ihrer Handlung häufi g nicht intendiert (...) und kann die Folgen ihrer Handlungen epistemisch nicht ausreichend gut überblicken. Nicht zuletzt ist ihre Partizipation an der kapitalistischen Weltwirtschaftsordnung unfreiwillig. Der Beitrag diskutiert, welche Lösung Iris Marion Young in ihrem Modell kollektiv geteilter Verantwortung für dieses Problem vorgeschlagen hat, und argumentiert, dass hier insbesondere in Hinblick auf das Kriterium der kausalen Relevanz Probleme bestehen bleiben. Davon ausgehend schlägt der Beitrag ein ergänzendes, machttheoretisch begründetes Modell der Zuerkennung moralischer Haftbarkeitsverantwortung vor: Verantwortung wird diesem zufolge nicht nur in Bezug auf einzelne Handlungen konzeptualisiert, sondern auch in Bezug auf die strukturell generierte und generalisierte Handlungsfähigkeit, die Personen aufgrund ihres Status in Regelsystemen gegenüber anderen Personen besitzen. In diesem Sinne wird einzelnen Personen Verantwortung nicht nur für die kausalen Eff ekte ihrer Handlungen, sondern bereits für die kausalen Eff ekte der Annahme ihrer sozialen Macht über andere übertragen. Ich argumentiere, dass Personen für ihre soziale Macht gegenüber anderen verantwortlich gemacht werden können, weil diese Macht die generalisierte Vorbedingung ihrer individuellen Handlungsfähigkeit darstellt und weil sie ihre sozial konstituierte Handlungsfähigkeit durch jegliches Handeln implizit annehmen. Soziale Macht wird Personen durch soziale Regeln übertragen: Auch dominierende Macht besitzt jemand, ohne dafür notwendigerweise etwas tun zu müssen. Sobald eine Person ausgehend von ihrer sozialen Macht handelt, reproduziert sie damit notwendigerweise die sozialen Konstitutionsbedingungen ihrer Macht über andere. Genauer stellt die Annahme ihrer sozialen Macht eine NESS-Bedingung in Hinblick auf die Reproduktion derjenigen strukturell ungerechten sozialen Regeln dar, die ihr Macht erst übertragen haben. Dabei können Personen meistens vorhersehen, dass die Annahme ihrer sozialen Macht, d.h. ihrer sozialen Statusfunktionen globale strukturelle Ungerechtigkeiten auf kausal relevante Art und Weise reproduziert. Obwohl die Annahme sozialer Statusfunktionen normalerweise unfreiwillig ist, kann Personen für diese kompensatorische Verantwortung übertragen werden, insofern sie die ungerechten Effekte dieser Annahme vorhersehen können. Da die Effekte unserer Statusannahme kausal und epistemisch kollektiv geteilt sind, schlage ich vor, diese Form der Verantwortung als eine kollektiv-geteilte zu verstehen. Um strukturellen Ungerechtigkeiten abzuhelfen, müssen Personen entsprechend dazu beitragen, handlungsfähige kollektive Akteure – d.h. gerechte politische Institutionen – zu bilden. (shrink)

This review essay discusses two recent attempts to reform the framework in which issues of international and global justice are discussed: Iris Marion Young's ?social connection' model and the practice-dependent approach, here exemplified by Ayelet Banai, Miriam Ronzoni and Christian Schemmel's edited collection. I argue that while Young's model may fit some issues of international or global justice, it misconceives the problems that many of them pose. Indeed, its difficulties point precisely in the direction of practice dependence as it is (...) presented by Banai et al. I go on to discuss what seem to be the strengths of that method, and particularly Banai et al.'s defence of it against the common claim that it is biased towards the status quo. I also discuss Andrea Sangiovanni and Kate MacDonald's contributions to the collection. (shrink)

In the wake of the Cold War a characteristic style of genocide narratives emerged in the West. For the most part, philosophers did not pay attention to this development even though they are uniquely qualified to address arguments and conceptual issues discussed in this burgeoning genocide genre. While ostensibly a response to a specific recent article belonging to the genre, this essay offers an outline of an ethics of genocide narratives in the form of four lessons on how not to (...) write about genocide. It is argued that to the extent that works on the subject of genocide are dominated by narrativism, genocidalism, activism, or extreme pacifism, they cannot properly be classified as scholarly endeavors and must be met with resistance per the requirements of academic ethics and proper scholarly methodology. (shrink)

This paper is a summary of my book 'Wild Animal Ethics'.

Actions to prepare for and prevent pandemics are a common topic for bioethical analysis. However, little attention has been paid to global catastrophic biological risks more broadly, including pandemics with artificial origins, the creation of agents for biological warfare, and harmful outcomes of human genome editing. What’s more, international policy discussions often focus on economic arguments for state action, ignoring a key potential set of reasons for states to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks: moral reasons. In this paper, I frame (...) the mitigation of such risks as a global public good, and I explore three possible categories of moral reasons that might motivate states to provide this global public good: nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and interstate obligations. Whilst there are strong objections to moral nationalism as a reason for states to act, moral cosmopolitanism may provide a broad reason which is further supplemented for individual states through the elaboration of interstate moral obligations. The obligations I consider are moral leadership, fairness, and reciprocity. Moral reasons for individual states action may more effectively or more appropriately motivate states to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks. (shrink)

In their recently published target article, Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) summarize the ethical issues at play in both the case for and the case against using NIPT to screen for non-medical traits.The...

The All or Nothing Problem is a paradox developed in recent debates about effective altruism. One argues that the paradox can be resolved by rejecting some of its claims in favor of parallel conditional claims. Another contends that the correct solution to the paradox is to reject a wrong bridge principle that is assumed in it. A third draws a distinction between two moral realms, and suggests that the paradox is only of limited relevance to some assertion of effective altruism (...) because it may not exist in certain moral realm. In this article, I argue that those solutions to the All or Nothing Problem is unsatisfactory, and propose an alternative solution. Firstly, I challenge their reasons for a claim in the paradox. Secondly, I propose a holist deontological solution to the All or Nothing Problem. Finally, in order to understand the true nature of the problem, I carry out an analysis of the underlying causes of its more general form. (shrink)

Is there a rational and ethical basis for efforts to rescue individuals in dire straits? When does rescue have ethical support, and when does it reflect an irrational impulse? This paper defines a Rule of Rescue and shows its intuitive appeal. It then proceeds to argue that this rule lacks support from standard principles of justice and from ethical principles more broadly, and should be rejected in many situations. I distinguish between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons, and argue that the Rule (...) of Rescue qualifies only in a narrow range of cases where agent-relative considerations apply. I conclude that it would be wise to set aside the Rule of Rescue in many cases, especially those involving public policies, where it has only weak normative justification. The broader implications of this analysis are noted. (shrink)

Consequentialists insist there is no rational basis for distinguishing between determinate victims and indeterminate victims. Whether it's a child drowning at our feet or needy communities abroad, our reason to help is the same. Experimental data indicate, however, that we regularly make such distinctions. In this article, I show that there are indeed persuasive normative grounds for preserving this distinction. When potential beneficiaries are determinate, they have a special claim on us grounded in fairness. I present several cases that demonstrate (...) that treating determinate beneficiaries the same as indeterminate beneficiaries is unjust. I conclude with an analysis of the relevant social psychology data.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.When Helping the Victim Matters More Than Helping a VictimVolume 25, Issue 1SCOTT M. JAMES DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000246Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. When Helping the Victim Matters More Than Helping a VictimVolume 25, Issue 1SCOTT M. JAMES DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000246Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. When Helping the Victim Matters More Than Helping a VictimVolume 25, Issue 1SCOTT M. JAMES DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000246Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Although we do not know exactly how many people die each year of malnutrition or related health problems, the number is very high, in the millions. By giving money to support famine relief efforts, each of us could save at least some of them. By not giving, we let them die.

Duties of beneficence are not well understood. Peter Singer has argued that the scope of beneficence should not be restricted to those who are, in some sense, near us. According to Singer, refusing to contribute to humanitarian relief efforts is just as wrong as refusing to rescue a child drowning before you. Most people do not seem convinced by Singer’s arguments, yet no one has offered a plausible justification for restricting the scope of beneficence that doesn’t produce counterintuitive results elsewhere. (...) I offer a defence of this restricted scope by introducing the notion of unique dependence, a notion that is both intuitively attractive and theoretically grounded. It explains why your reason to rescue the drowning child is more stringent than your reason to contribute to humanitarian relief, while blocking the conclusion that we have no reason at all to aid distant sufferers . (shrink)

Is there a moral requirement to assist wild animals suffering due to natural causes? According to the laissez-faire intuition, although we may have special duties to assist wild animals, there are no general requirements to care for them. If this view is right, then our positive duties toward wild animals can be only special, grounded in special circumstances. In this article I present the contribution argument which employs the thought that the receipt of benefits from wild animals is one such (...) kind of special circumstance. If this argument is correct, then the circle of moral agents required to assist some wild animals is significantly widened. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the ideal of justice yet disagree radically over what that ideal requires. One persistent problem for thinking about justice is that the unjust social arrangements that originally motivated our questions may also distort our thinking about possible answers. This paper suggests some strategies for improving our thinking about justice in the unjust meantime. As our world becomes more just, we may expect our thinking about justice to improve.

In 2008 the Australian Government introduced a national reform agenda to increase organ and tissue donation. Australia continues to perform poorly by international standards on measures of organ procurement, however. This paper outlines three proposals to improve donation rates and considers the empirical evidence available for each. A number of ethical objections frequently given to resist such proposals are also addressed. Firstly, it is recommended that Australia implement an ‘opt-out’ system of organ donation. Secondly, the existing veto rules should be (...) changed to better protect the wishes of those who wish to donate. Finally, a numer of incentives should be offered to increase donation rates; these could include incentives of financial value, but also non-financial incentives such as prioritisation for the receipt of organs for previous donors. (shrink)