The pregnancy rescue case (PRC) is supposed to show that when forced between preventing a fetus from being killed and preventing someone from remaining unwillingly pregnant, we are morally required to do the former. If this is true, then Hendricks argues that the typical abortion is morally wrong. I pose four problems for PRC and how Hendricks uses it here. First, one might simply deny the intuition Hendricks takes PRC to pump for reasons having to do with the moral status (...) of the fetus. Second, even if it is true that we should prevent the fetus from being killed in PRC, this might not tell us much about the moral permissibility of abortion in typical cases because there are important differences between PRC and the typical abortion. Third, I propose some modifications to PRC that would better isolate whether fetal personhood does any work to pump the target intuition. Fourth, I argue that PRC only succeeds if we presuppose that Thomson’s defence is unsound, but presupposing this comes at too high a cost. (shrink)

How can anyone be opposed to private philanthropy? Such philanthropy consists in persons freely giving of their wealth or other goods to benefit individuals and groups they consider worthy of support. As private persons, they act apart from – although not, of course, in contravention of – the political apparatus of the state. In acting in this beneficent way, the philanthropists are indeed, as their name etymologically implies, lovers of humanity; and their efforts are also justified as exercises of their (...) right to freedom, including the free use of the resources they own, which they have presumably acquired by their own free efforts or by the efforts of other persons who have freely transferred these resources to them. Thus, private philanthropy combines two of the highest values of individual and social morality: personal freedom and interpersonal beneficence. I. Moral Problems of Private Philanthropy Many questions about moral, and especially human, rights arise from private philanthropy as thus briefly characterized. These questions may be divided into three sets, which focus respectively on the agents of philanthropy, on the recipients of philanthropy, and on the objects for which philanthropic awards are given. First, regarding the agents: Do they have a right to all the wealth they possess? Have they accumulated this wealth in a way that has respected the moral rights of other persons? If the answer is negative, even in part, then in what morally valid sense is all the wealth in question theirs to give away, even if they use it for philanthropic purposes: Do they have a right to give it away as they choose? (shrink)

Since 2015 millions of migrants have paid smugglers to take them across borders. In response, states have increasingly arrested smugglers, hoping to morally condemn smuggling, and to decrease the rate of inward migration. This article argues that, even if a state is justified in morally condemning smuggling, and justified in decreasing inward migration, arresting smugglers is a disproportionate response for reaching these ends.

It is commonly claimed that when X coerces Y into consenting to Z φ-ing, Y’s consent is invalid, and Z is only permitted to φ if this reduces harm or increases optionality for Y. This article demonstrates that Y’s consent in such cases is valid if Y is choosing between options that include all those Z has a duty to offer Y and no autonomy-reducing options Z has a duty to not offer Y. When these conditions are met, Z acts (...) permissibly in φ-ing even if φ-ing does not reduce harm for Y or increase Y’s optionality. (shrink)

Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the key concepts and issues that take center stage in the (...) philosophical discussion of global poverty. The four positions to be discussed are labeled the Maximalist Position, the Minimalist Position, Intermediate Position I and Intermediate Position II. After an account of these four distinct positions, we turn, in the conclusion, to a discussion of what role empirical sciences such as economics and political science should play in normative considerations about global poverty. (shrink)

En este trabajo cuestiono las razones que ofrecen David Miller y Laura Valentini para afirmar que el deber de reducir la desigualdad dentro del propio Estado tiene prioridad sobre el deber de reducir la pobreza extrema global. Según Miller, los deberes globales, a diferencia de los domésticos, no pueden legítimamente hacerse cumplir mediante la fuerza, y por esa razón son meros deberes humanitarios que tienen menor peso que los deberes domésticos, que son deberes de justicia. Según Valentini, el deber de (...) reducir la desigualdad doméstica tiene prioridad sobre los deberes humanitarios globales porque el primero es un deber de no dañar, mientras que los segundos son meros deberes de ayudar. El problema principal de ambas propuestas consiste en que fallan en su intento de mostrar que los deberes de reducir la pobreza extrema global no son también deberes de justicia. In this article I question David Miller and Laura Valentini's reasons to claim that duties to reduce inequalities inside the State should be prioritized over duties to reduce extreme global poverty. According to Miller, global duties, unlike domestic ones, cannot be legitimately enforced, and they are therefore mere humanitarian duties that weigh less than domestic duties, which are duties of justice. According to Valentini, domestic duties should be prioritized over global humanitarian duties because the former are duties not to harm, while the latter are mere duties to help. I argue that both views fail in their attempt to show that duties to reduce extreme global poverty are not duties ofjustice too. (shrink)

Moral evaluation is concerned with the attribution of values whose distinction into two broad groups has become familiar. On the one hand, there are the most general moral values of lightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, and what ought to be or to be done. On the other, there is a great diversity of more specific moral values which these objects can have: of being a theft, for instance, or a thief; of honesty, reliability or callousness. Within the recent body of work (...) attempting to restore to the virtues a central place in ethical thinking, two claims stand out. One is that, of these two kinds of values, the specific ones are explanatorily prior to the general – that if an action is wrong, it is because it is wrong in one of those specific respects. A second claim, though, is now standardly made definitive of ‘Virtue ethics’: that amongst the specific values, the value of character is explanatorily prior to that of action – that if an action is callous, say, it is because it expresses callousness of character – and that in this sense, the moral value of action derives from that of character. This second claim has been widely attacked; in what follows, I present a reason for believing that, at least in the case of callousness, it is right. (shrink)

The two leading traditions of theorizing about democratic legitimacy are liberalism and deliberative democracy. Liberals typically claim that legitimacy consists in the consent of the governed, while deliberative democrats typically claim that legitimacy consists in the soundness of political procedures. Despite this difference, both traditions see the need for legitimacy as arising from the coercive enforcement of law and regard legitimacy as necessary for law to have normative authority. While I endorse the broad aims of these two traditions, I believe (...) they both misunderstand the nature of legitimacy. In this essay I argue that the legitimacy of a law is neither necessary nor sufficient for its normative authority, and I argue further that the need for legitimacy in law arises regardless of whether the law is coercively enforced. I thus articulate a new understanding of the legitimacy and authority of law. (shrink)

Bioethicists invoke a duty to rescue in a wide range of cases. Indeed, arguably, there exists an entire medical paradigm whereby vast numbers of medical encounters are treated as rescue cases. The intuitive power of the rescue paradigm is considerable, but much of this power stems from the problematic way that rescue cases are conceptualized—namely, as random, unanticipated, unavoidable, interpersonal events for which context is irrelevant and beneficence is the paramount value. In this article, I critique the basic assumptions of (...) the rescue paradigm, reframe the ethical landscape in which rescue obligations are understood, and defend the necessity and value of a wider social and institutional view. Along the way, I move back and forth between ethical theory and a concrete case where the duty to rescue has been problematically applied: the purported duty to regularly return incidental findings and individual research results in genomic and genetic research. (shrink)

In recent decades, a ‘realist’ alternative to ideal theories of politics has slowly taken shape. Bringing together philosophers, political theorists, and political scientists, this countermovement seeks to reframe inquiry into politics and political norms. Among the hallmarks of this endeavor are a moral psychology that includes the passions and emotions; a robust conception of political possibility and rejection of utopian thinking; the belief that political conflict — of values as well as interests — is both fundamental and ineradicable; a focus (...) on institutions as the arenas within which conflict is mediated and contained; and a conception of politics as a sphere of activity that is distinct, autonomous, and subject to norms that cannot be derived from individual morality. For political realists, a ‘well-ordered society’ is rarely attainable; a modus vivendi without agreement on first principles is often the only practical possibility. Not only will ‘full compliance’ never be achieved, but also it is an assumption that yields misleading accounts of political norms. While realists offer a number of compelling criticisms of ideal theory, there are some lacunae in their stance. It is not yet clear whether realism constitutes a coherent affirmative alternative to idealism. Nor have realists clarified the extent of conflict that is consistent with political order as such. And because both sides accept ‘ought implies can’ as a constraint on the validity of political norms, much of the debate between realists and idealists revolves around deep empirical disagreements that are yet to be clarified. (shrink)

Przedmiotem tego artykułu jest zakres i charakter obowiązków, które w ujęciu Tomasza z Akwinu należą do szczególnej podklasy aktów dobroczynności lub czynienia dobra, noszącej u niego nazwę eleemosyna. Tłumacząc ten termin przez „pomoc potrzebującym” lub „pomoc w potrzebie”, biorę pod rozwagę pytanie, w jakich okolicznościach udzielanie tej pomocy jest według Tomasza działaniem obowiązkowym, a w jakich tylko zalecanym lub nawet niewłaściwym. W szczególności staram się ustalić, jak wiele z naszego osobistego dobra jego etyczna teoria każe nam przeznaczać na wspieranie innych, (...) nawet przy założeniu, że oni tego wsparcia potrzebują. (shrink)

Recently theorists have demonstrated a growing interest in the ethical aspects of resource allocation in international non-governmental humanitarian, development and human rights organizations (INGOs). This article provides an analysis of Thomas Pogge's proposal for how international human rights organizations ought to choose which projects to fund. Pogge's allocation principle states that an INGO should govern its decision making about candidate projects by such rules and procedures as are expected to maximize its long-run cost-effectiveness, defined as the expected aggregate moral value (...) of the projects it undertakes divided by the expected aggregate cost of these projects? I critique Pogge's argument on two fronts: (1) I demonstrate that his view is problematic on his own terms, even if we accept the cost-effectiveness framework he employs. (2) I take issue with his overall approach because it generates results which can undermine the integrity of INGOs. Further, his approach mis-characterizes the nature of INGOs, and this mistake is at the root of his problematic view of INGO priority-setting. Ultimately, I argue for a conception of INGOs in which they are understood as ?organizations of principle?, in the sense that they are independent moral agents and so should be permitted a fairly wide sphere of autonomy within reasonable moral constraints. (shrink)

This article asks whether our moral duties are created by others’ non-compliance and whether we should fulfill them or not. For example, do we need to donate more of our income to eradicate world poverty because billionaires do not donate? If so, how much should we donate? In short, should we make up for others’ defaulting on their moral duties – and if so, how and to what extent? Such situations are called non-ideal circumstances in political philosophy. With the increasing (...) importance of non-ideal theories of justice and ethics, the question of how we should act in non-ideal situations has received more attention in the ethics literature in recent years. This article poses and addresses the question of whether we should take up the slack when others do not comply with their own moral duty. This article examines how consequentialism and contractualism might respond to non-ideal situations of taking up the slack and then defends a contractualist-constructivist approach to dealing with these situations. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between policies concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and philosophical moral theories. The objective is to determine which moral theories form the basis for CSR policies. Are they based on ethical egoism, libertarianism, utilitarianism or some kind of common-sense morality? In order to address this issue, I conducted an empirical investigation examining the relation between moral theories and CSR policies, in companies engaged in CSR. Based on the empirical data I collected, I start by suggesting some (...) normative arguments used by the respondents. Secondly, I suggest that these moral arguments implicitly rely on some specific moral principles, which I characterise. Thirdly, on the basis of these moral principles, I suggest the moral theories upon which the CSR policies are built. Previous empirical studies examining the relation between philosophical moral theories and the ethical content of business activities have mainly concentrated on the ethical decision-making of managers. Some of the most prominent investigations in that regard propose that managers mainly act in accordance with utilitarian moral theory (Fritzsche, D. J. and H. Becker: 1984 , Academy of Management Journal 27 (1), 166–175; Premeaux, S. and W. Mony: 1993 , Journal of Business Ethics 12 , 349–357; Premeaux, S.: 2004 , Journal of Business Ethics 52 , 269–278). I conclude that CSR policies are not based on utilitarian thinking, but instead, on some kind of common-sense morality. The ethical foundation of companies engaged in CSR, thus, does not mirror the ethical foundation of managers. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between policies concerning Corporate Social Responsibility and philosophical moral theories. The objective is to determine which moral theories form the basis for CSR policies. Are they based on ethical egoism, libertarianism, utilitarianism or some kind of common-sense morality? In order to address this issue, I conducted an empirical investigation examining the relation between moral theories and CSR policies, in companies engaged in CSR. Based on the empirical data I collected, I start by suggesting some normative (...) arguments used by the respondents. Secondly, I suggest that these moral arguments implicitly rely on some specific moral principles, which I characterise. Thirdly, on the basis of these moral principles, I suggest the moral theories upon which the CSR policies are built. Previous empirical studies examining the relation between philosophical moral theories and the ethical content of business activities have mainly concentrated on the ethical decision-making of managers. Some of the most prominent investigations in that regard propose that managers mainly act in accordance with utilitarian moral theory, 166–175; Premeaux, S. and W. Mony: 1993, Journal of Business Ethics12, 349–357; Premeaux, S.: 2004, Journal of Business Ethics52, 269–278). I conclude that CSR policies are not based on utilitarian thinking, but instead, on some kind of common-sense morality. The ethical foundation of companies engaged in CSR, thus, does not mirror the ethical foundation of managers. (shrink)

This article moves between Aristotle, Maimonides, and the Stoics. Aristotle’s moral taxonomy, outlined in NE 7.1, appears problematic, given his view that, in the sphere of moral virtue, the intermediate (temperance, courage) is the extreme, and there is no excess of temperance or courage. This is hard to square with the moral agent whom he describes as possessed of “hyperbolic” (hyperbole, excessive) virtue. As Aristotle has very little to say about the latter, I turn to Maimonides and the Stoics for (...) clarification and enlightenment. (shrink)

​Rosamond Rhodes contends, by reference to seven examples, that medical ethics is distinctly different from non-medical ethics. Each of those examples, on proper examination, illustrates precisely the opposite contention. It is clear not only that medical ethics relies on the same principles as non-medical ethics, but that it should so rely. A distinctively medical ethics would be dangerous: it would divorce ethical medical decision-making from the patients whom medicine exists to serve.

We can distinguish two kinds of moral universalization tests for practical principles. One requires that the universal practice of the principle, i.e., universal conformity to it by all agents in a given world, satisfies some condition. The other requires that conformity to the principle by any possible agent, in any situation and at any time, satisfies some condition. We can call these universal practice and universal applicability tests respectively. The logical distinction between these tests is rarely appreciated, and many philosophers (...) systematically confuse them with each other. In practice, UP tests are more frequently used to defend deontological norms, while UA tests are used to defend consequentialist norms. Both conceptual argument and practical examples of their applications will show that UA tests are decisively superior to UP tests for grounding moral norms, casting greater doubt upon deontological theories which rely upon the latter unless they can reformulate their arguments using some version of a UA test. (shrink)

We discuss Kant’s conception of beneficence against the background of the overdemandingness debate. We argue that Kant’s conception of beneficence constitutes a sweet spot between overdemandingess and undemandingess. To this end we defend four key claims that together constitute a novel interpretation of Kant’s account of beneficence: 1) for the same reason that we are obligated to be beneficent to others we are permitted to be beneficent to ourselves; 2) we can prioritise our own ends; 3) it is more virtuous (...) to do more rather than less when it comes to helping others; and 4) indifference to others is vicious. Finally, we explain how this represents a system of duties that gives our personal ends a moral standing without unacceptably moralising them. (shrink)

If Alison McQueen is right that there is a broad ‘family’ of realist approaches to political theory, then it follows there are several ways of ‘doing’ realism, as illustrated by this collection. Here, I set out one such way, normative behaviourism, by explaining its realist character on four fronts: Its starting point; its values; its ambitions; and its treatment of a shared problem. The argument then considers two key objections to the described approach, both of which affect a range of (...) possible realisms. (shrink)

In his recent book, Until Justice and Peace Embrace, Nicholas Wolterstorff claims that in ethics there exist “sustenance rights,” also called “positive rights,” which demand that people be provided the requirements of productive social living, including food, clothing, shelter, healthful environments, and elementary health care. I defend Wolterstorff’s claims against attacks by social theologian Richard John Neuhaus, who argues in effect that to grant sustenance rights implies both personal and theoretical acceptance of an unreasonable obligation which I call the Duty (...) of Sacrifice (DOS) to transfer all one’s wealth to meet those needs, a charge which Wolterstorff interprets as a demand that he sell his house. (shrink)

I argue that public officials and health workers ought to respect and protect women’s rights to make risky choices during childbirth. Women’s rights to make treatment decisions ought to be respected even if their decisions expose their unborn children to unnecessary risks, and even if it is wrong to put unborn children at risk. I first defend a presumption of medical autonomy in the context of childbirth. I then draw on women’s birth stories to show that women’s medical autonomy is (...) often ignored during labor. Medical interventions are performed during childbirth without women’s consent. Childbirth is risky and some coercive medical interventions may be understood as attempts to protect children and to prevent mothers from acting impermissibly. However, even if it is wrong to make risky choices during childbirth, women have rights to do wrong in these cases. Therefore, coercive medical interventions are impermissible during childbirth and institutions should adopt specific protections for obstetric autonomy. (shrink)

I explore two thought-experiments in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s important article, “A Defense of Abortion”: the violinist example and the people-seeds example. I argue (contra Thomson) that you have a moral duty not to unplug yourself from the violinist and also a moral duty not to destroy a people-seed that has landed in your sofa. Nevertheless, I also argue that there are crucial differences between the thought-experiments and the contexts of pregnancy due to rape or to contraceptive failure. In virtue of (...) these differences, it would not follow from my conclusions about the violinist and people-seeds cases that abortion would not be permissible in a case of rape or in a case of voluntary intercourse with contraceptive failure. (shrink)

On May 15, 2006, 34 year-old mountaineer David Sharp died in a small cave a few hundred meters below the peak of Mount Everest in the aptly named “death zone”. As he lay dying, Sharp was passed by forty-plus climbers on their way to the summit, none of whom made an effort to rescue him. The climbers’ failure to rescue Sharp sparked much debate in mountaineering circles and the mainstream media, but philosophers have not yet weighed in on the issues. (...) This is surprising, since Sharp’s case raises interesting puzzles about the duty to rescue. Commonsense morality suggests that it was wrong for the climbers to put their summit bids ahead of saving a human life. But rescuing Sharp was extremely risky. If you and I are not required to assume significant risks to rescue others, why think the climbers had a moral duty to do this? My primary focus is on a new principle of rescue, which I dub the comparable risk principle, that has not been discussed in the duty-to-rescue literature. More generally, I explore the limits of the duty to rescue not just in Sharp’s case, but in relevantly similar high-risk environments common in action sports. (shrink)

El artículo explora algunos de los principales rasgos políticos de la época globalizada y defiende la necesidad de entidades políticas representativas que superen el marco del Estado nación. A continuación se pregunta bajo qué presupuestos ético-políticos podría defenderse un modelo político-jurídico global para un mundo axiológicamente diverso y qué concepciones políticas y valores podrían proponerse como referente normativo para una gobernanza global cuya meta habría de ser el ejercicio legítimo del poder. Teniendo en cuenta las dificultades de tal empresa, se (...) presentan posibles estrategias y razones que invitan a considerar que la posibilidad de un acuerdo global no es del todo implausible. (shrink)

This paper argues that two single-factor accounts of exploitation are inadequate and instead defends a two-factor account. Purely distributive accounts of exploitation, which equate exploitation with unfair transaction, make exploitation pervasive and cannot deliver the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. Recent, non-distributive alternatives, which make unfairness unnecessary for exploitation, largely avoid these problems, but their arguments for the non-necessity of unfairness are unconvincing. This paper defends a two factor account according to which A exploits B iff A gains unfairly from (...) B and either A believes that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B, or A is culpably unaware that the gains he receives in the transaction wrong B. This account avoids the problems of non-distributive approaches and also delivers the intuition that exploiters are blameworthy. (shrink)

The world's aging populations face novel health challenges never experienced before in human history. The moral landscape thus needs to adapt to reflect this novel empirical reality. In this paper I take for granted one basic moral principle advanced by Peter Singer and explore the implications that empirical considerations from demography, evolutionary biology, and biogerontology have for the way we conceive of fulfilling this principle at the operational level. After bringing to the fore a number of considerations that Singer ignores, (...) such as the probability that nonintervention will result in harm and the likelihood that different kinds of extrinsic and intrinsic harms can be prevented, I argue that the aspiration to extend the human biological warranty period (by retarding the rate of aging) is a pressing moral imperative for the twenty-first century. In the final sections I briefly address some standard objections raised against life extension and conclude that, while there may be some legitimate concerns worth addressing, they are not compelling enough to provide a rational basis for forfeiting the potential health and economic benefits that could be realized by extending the biological warranty period. (shrink)

This short essay offers a commentary on Chapter 11 of David Wiggins’,Ethics(2006). The essay asks how we should interpret Wiggins’ defense of ethical ‘objectivity’ given his subjectivist metaethics. An interpretation is drawn from Sharon Street's work on metaethical constructivism, of which Wiggins’ view is taken to be one variety.

The Millennium Development Goals were effective from 2000 to 2015. Statistics show that most of the goals were met, and particularly success in the goal of reducing extreme poverty gained wide recognition. Despite the strong ethical language related to poverty reduction, there has been little analysis of the ethical significance of the MDG achievements. Since statistical and ethical definitions and representations of poverty never completely overlap, conclusions concerning ethical progress are not directly available from the statistics. This article shows how (...) this ethical significance can be analysed and what kinds of controversies and uncertainties relate to the issue. As part of this analysis, utilitarian issues, population ethics, and the social aspect of poverty are discussed. Keywords: poverty, Millennium Development Goals, statistics, ethics, poverty line. (shrink)

In 2012, a U.S. Institute of Medicine report called for a different approach to health care: “Left unchanged, health care will continue to underperform; cause unnecessary harm; and strain national, state, and family budgets.” The answer, they suggested, would be a “continuously learning” health system. Ethicists and researchers urged the creation of “learning health organizations” that would integrate knowledge from patient‐care data to continuously improve the quality of care. Our experience with an ongoing research study on atrial fibrillation—a trial known (...) as IMPACT‐AFib—gave us some insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. Although the proposed educational intervention study placed no restrictions on what providers and health plans could do, the oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be “bystanders” in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the researchers designed a “workaround” that allowed the project to go forward. We believe the experience suggests that what we call “bystander ethics” will create challenges for the kinds of quality improvement research that LHOs are designed to do. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a plausible and renewed defence of the axioms of the already well-known account of political philosophy ‘luck egalitarianism’. By finding certain support not only in the Kantian moral programme but also in widely accepted intuitions of our time, it is contended that luck egalitarianism possesses sufficient justification to become an ethical guide at the global level, revealing plausibly the existence of a compelling positive moral duty to terminate global poverty and denouncing its toleration as nothing (...) but a matter of injustice. The arguments provided to embrace such a proposal are built upon the widely accepted claim in moral philosophy that ‘all persons are equal in fundamental moral worth’. From this standpoint, I argue that the luck egalitarian doctrine can not only satisfy such a claim to its ultimate consequences, but it also reasonably overcome its most severe challenges that have diminished its merits in recent times when it aspires to become a tenable theory of justice. (shrink)

Moral disagreement is widely held to pose a threat for metaethical realism and objectivity. In this paper I attempt to understand how it is that moral disagreement is supposed to present a problem for metaethical realism. I do this by going through several distinct (though often related) arguments from disagreement, carefully distinguishing between them, and critically evaluating their merits. My conclusions are rather skeptical: Some of the arguments I discuss fail rather clearly. Others supply with a challenge to realism, but (...) not one we have any reason to believe realism cannot address successfully. Others beg the question against the moral realist, and yet others raise serious objections to realism, but ones that—when carefully stated—can be seen not to be essentially related to moral disagreement. Arguments based on moral disagreement itself have almost no weight, I conclude, against moral realism. (shrink)

Much business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature suggests, implicitly or explicitly, that firms ought to engage in activities that can be characterized as philanthropy, namely, expending resources beyond what is required by law and market norms to promote others’ welfare at the expense of firm profits. However, this literature has struggled to provide a normative framework for evaluating corporate philanthropy, although scholars have noted that such expenditures can potentially remedy market failures and provide public goods more efficiently. I articulate (...) two specific rationales that can justify corporate philanthropy based on considerations of welfare economics: 1) firms making strategic but high-risk investments in activities that are likely to generate positive externalities even if they prove unprofitable and 2) firms possessing a strong comparative advantage in their ability to address a social problem at lower social cost. Moreover, these rationales can be evaluated by a concept I develop called the philanthropy multiplier, indicating the ratio of net positive externalities to net costs. I suggest that firms consider publicizing their philanthropy multipliers, and I discuss theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Many familial and cultural traditions rely on animals for their fulfillment - think of Christmas ham, Rosh Hashannah chicken soup, Fourth of July barbeques, and so forth. Though philosophers writing in animal ethics often dismiss interests in certain foods as trivial, these food-based traditions pose a significant moral problem for those who take animals’ lives and interests seriously. One must either turn one’s back on one’s community or on the animals. In this paper, I consider the under-theorized area of intra-cultural (...) critique. My focus is how we should think about and seek to resolve inter-animal conflicts of interest that arise within our own communities and cultural or religious groups. How should a theory that takes animals seriously approach a conflict between animals’ interests and culturally important human interests in the context of one’s own cultural, ethnic, or religious group? How, for example, should we think about the person staring down at a bowl of her grandmother’s chicken soup while recognizing the moral impermissibility of slaughtering chickens for human consumption? In contrast to traditional approaches that fail to take these robust, food-based, interests into account, I offer an ecofeminist approach that highlights the importance of respecting animals’ interests while also undertaking the work of moral repair to address damage done to relationships of love and care in the process. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality while they are implementing reasonable public (...) health interventions. Practically, a noncrisis level of mortality is that experienced during a bad influenza season, which society considers an acceptable background risk. Governments take action to limit mortality from influenza, but there is no emergency that includes severe lockdowns. This “flu-risk standard” is a nonarbitrary and generally accepted heuristic. Mortality above the flu-risk standard justifies greater governmental interventions, including retaining vaccines for a country's own citizens over global need. The precise level of vaccination needed to meet the flu-risk standard will depend upon empirical factors related to the pandemic. This links the ethical principles to the scientific data emerging from the emergency. Thus, the FPR framework recognizes that governments should prioritize procuring vaccines for their country when doing so is necessary to reduce mortality to noncrisis flu-like levels. But after that, a government is obligated to do its part to share vaccines to reduce risks of mortality for people in other countries. We consider and reject objections to the FPR framework based on a country: having developed a vaccine, raising taxes to pay for vaccine research and purchase, wanting to eliminate economic and social burdens, and being ineffective in combating COVID-19 through public health interventions. (shrink)

Do we have a legal and moral right to health care against others? There are international conventions and institutions that say emphatically yes, and they summarize this in the expression of “the right to health,” which is an established part of the international human rights canon. The International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights outlines this as “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” but declarations such as this remain tragically (...) unfulfilled. According to recent figures, roughly two billion people lack access to essential drugs or to primary health care. Millions are afflicted by infections and illnesses that are easily avoidable or treatable. In the developing world many children die or grow stunted and damaged for lack of available treatments. Tropical diseases receive little or no attention by the major pharmaceutical companies’ research departments. Is this a massive violation of the right to health? And if so, why does it attract so little attention? Is it because our supposed commitment to human rights and the rule of law is hypocritical and hollow? Or is it because the right to health is a special case of a right, so that these tragedies are no violation at all? Jennifer Prah Ruger summarized this puzzle when she wrote: “one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial or nebulous human right than the right to health.” In this essay I discuss three different theories of a right to health care. I conclude by offering my own reconstruction of one such theory. (shrink)