This thesis consists of a series of papers in population ethics: a subfield of normative ethics concerned with the distinctive issues that arise in cases where our actions can affect the identities or number of people of who ever exist. Each paper can be read independently of the others. In Chapter 1, I present a dilemma for Archimedean views in population axiology: roughly, those views on which adding enough good lives to a population can make that population better than any (...) other. In Chapter 2, I extend Gustaf Arrhenius’s famous impossibility theorems in population axiology into the domain of choices under risk. My risky impossibility theorems dispense with the assumption that welfare levels are finitely fine-grained, and so tell against lexical views in population axiology. In Chapter 3, I present objections to critical-level and critical-range views in population axiology. I then sketch out what I call the ‘Imprecise Exchange Rates View’ and argue that it is an attractive alternative. In Chapter 4, I address critical-level and critical-range views again. This time, I note that they are vulnerable to objections from biographical identity: identity between lives. I suggest that these objections give us reason to reject critical-level and critical-range views and embrace the Total View. In Chapter 5, I argue that objections of the same form – objections from personal identity – tell against person-affecting views in population ethics. In Chapter 6, I draw out some counterintuitive implications of two recent complaints-based theories of the procreation asymmetry. (shrink)

Procreative obligations are often discussed by evaluating only the consequences of reproductive actions or omissions; less attention is paid to the moral role of intentions and attitudes. In this paper, I assess whether intentions and attitudes can contribute to defining our moral obligations with regard to assisted reproductive technologies already available, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and those that may be available in future, such as reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis, in a way compatible with person‐affecting constraints. I propose (...) the parent–child relationship argument, which is based on the moral distinction between creating and parenting a child. Hence, I first argue that intentions and attitudes can play a role in defining our moral obligations in reproductive decisions involving PGD. Second, I maintain that if we accept this and recognize reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis as person‐affecting procedures, we should be committed to arguing that prospective parents may have moral reasons to prefer reproduction via such techniques than via sexual intercourse. In both cases, I observe an extension of our procreative responsibility beyond what is proposed by the consequentialist person‐affecting morality. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a fundamental but under-appreciated distinction between two ways of understanding the desire-satisfaction theory of well-being. According to proactive desire satisfactionism, a person is benefited by the acquisition of new satisfied desires. According to reactive desire satisfactionism, a person can be benefited only by the satisfaction of their existing desires. I first offer an overview of this distinction. I then canvass several ways of developing a general formulation of desire satisfactionism that would capture the reactive view, (...) and argue that all come with significant costs. (shrink)

According to a common view, sentience is necessary and sufficient for moral status. In other words, whether a being has intrinsic moral relevance is determined by its capacity for conscious experience. The _epistemic objection_ derives from our profound uncertainty about sentience. According to this objection, we cannot use sentience as a _criterion_ to ascribe moral status in practice because we won’t know in the foreseeable future which animals and AI systems are sentient while ethical questions regarding the possession of moral (...) status are urgent. Therefore, we need to formulate an alternative criterion. I argue that the epistemic objection is dissolved once one clearly distinguishes between the question what determines moral status and what criterion should be employed in practice to ascribe moral status. Epistemic concerns are irrelevant to the former question and—I will argue—criteria of moral status have inescapably to be based on sentience, if one concedes that sentience determines moral status. It follows that doubts about our epistemic access to sentience cannot be used to motivate an alternative criterion of moral status. If sentience turns out to be unknowable, then moral status is unknowable. However, I briefly advocate against such strong pessimism. (shrink)

Written both for general readers and college students, Dialogues on Climate Justice provides an engaging philosophical introduction to climate justice, and should be of interest to anyone wanting to think seriously about the climate crisis. -/- The story follows the life and conversations of Hope, a fictional protagonist whose life is shaped by a terrifyingly real problem: climate change. From the election of Donald Trump in 2016 until the 2060s, the book documents Hope’s discussions with a diverse cast of characters. (...) As she ages, her conversations move from establishing the nature of the problem, to engaging with climate skepticism, to exploring her own climate responsibilities, through managing contentious international negotiations, to considering big technological fixes, and finally, as an older woman, to reflecting with her granddaughter on what one generation owes another. Following a philosophical tradition established by Plato more than two thousand years ago, these dialogues are not only philosophically substantive and carefully argued, but also distinctly human. The differing perspectives on display mirror those involved in real-world climate dialogues going on today. (shrink)

In this paper, I'm questing the human insecurity and loneliness in a world struggling with a newfound understanding of mortality, change and technological intervention. I took Kazu Ishiguro's novel "Klara and the Sun" as it contains certain themes that depict not only the idea of struggling man in the new age, but also how the digital age is disrupting the human feelings. It reflects the patterns of the changing world while exploring the true meaning of love. Ishiguro has used a (...) science fictional lens to deeply explain how humans interact and connect and has also tried to analyze the loneliness, isolation, and emotional behavior of humans. Mentioning that, the writer has also shed light on different layers of the society and has beautifully penned the lives of people in different segments of the society. I suppose that we are ironically ill prepared for the new psychological world we are creating. Making robots which are emotionally powerful as Klara; while at the same time, hearing statements such as “technology is just a tool” that deny the power of our creations both on us as individuals and on our culture. I am concerned here with the ways technologies change our human identities and interrelations. Are the designers of these robots regarding them as just tools? Then why their users experience them as carriers of meanings and emotions? I am raising a controversial question here: is just a robot capable of exchanging emotion and love? Have humans been drained completely from the ability of reciprocating compassion and understanding? Now the point is not what computers can do or what computers will be like in the future, but rather, what we will be like? What we need to ask is not whether robots will be able to love us but rather why we might love robots. (shrink)

Rivka Weinberg advances an error theory of ultimate meaning with three parts: (1) a conceptual analysis, (2) the claim that the extension of the concept is empty, and (3) a proposed fitting response, namely being very, very sad. Weinberg’s conceptual analysis of ultimate meaning involves two features that jointly make it metaphysically impossible, namely (i) the separateness of activities and valued ends, and (ii) the bounded nature of human lives. Both are open to serious challenges. We offer an internalist alternative (...) to (i) and a relational alternative to (ii). We then draw out implications for (2) and conclude with reasons to be cheerful about the prospects of a meaningful life. (shrink)

When an abortion is performed, someone dies. Are we killing a human person? Widespread disagreement exists. However, it is not necessary to establish personhood in order to establish the wrongness of abortion: a substantial chance of personhood is enough. We defend The Do Not Risk Homicide Argument: abortions are wrong after 10 weeks gestation because they substantially and unjustifiably risk homicide, the unjust killing of a human person. Why 10 weeks? Because the cumulative evidence establishes a substantial chance (a more (...) than one in five chance) that preborn human beings are persons after 10 weeks (if not before then). We submit evidence from our bad track record, widespread disagreement about personhood (after 10 weeks gestation), problems with theories of personhood, the similarity between preborn human beings and premature newborns, miscalculations of gestational age, and the common intuitive responses of women to their pregnancies and miscarriages. Our argument is cogent because it bypasses the stalemate over preborn personhood and rests on common ground rather than contentious metaphysics. It also strongly suggests that society must do more to protect preborn human beings. We briefly discuss its practical implications for fetal pain relief, social policy, and abortion law. (shrink)

Personites are like continuant people but shorter-lived. Johnston argues that personites do not exist since otherwise personites would have the same moral status as persons, which is untenable. I argue that Johnston’s arguments fail. To do that I propose an alternative way to understand intrinsicness and I clarify the meaning of reductionism about persons. I also argue that a plausible ethical theory is possible even if personites have the same moral status as persons. My arguments draw on Johnston’s earlier debate (...) with Parfit about personal identity and the place of ordinary concerns in a naturalistic world. I also describe an important but metaphysics-free problem that arises from Johnston’s discussion. (shrink)

En teoría del valor y en teoría normativa, es común considerar que lo positivo y lo negativo tienen la misma importancia. Algunas rechazan esta idea y consideran que lo negativo tiene mayor importancia. Aquí se presentarán algunos de los argumentos en favor de la asimetría. Tras esto, daré cuenta de los diferentes tipos de posiciones asimétricas defendibles. Explicaré cuáles son las características de cada teoría y qué puntos a favor y en contra de estas posiciones se pueden postular. Por último, (...) consideraré que no hay razones para creer que haya una posición asimétrica claramente superior a las demás. (shrink)

‘Sentience’ sometimes refers to the capacity for any type of subjective experience, and sometimes to the capacity to have subjective experiences with a positive or negative valence, such as pain or pleasure. We review recent controversies regarding sentience in fish and invertebrates and consider the deep methodological challenge posed by these cases. We then present two ways of responding to the challenge. In a policy-making context, precautionary thinking can help us treat animals appropriately despite continuing uncertainty about their sentience. In (...) a scientific context, we can draw inspiration from the science of human consciousness to disentangle conscious and unconscious perception (especially vision) in animals. Developing better ways to disentangle conscious and unconscious affect is a key priority for future research. (shrink)

Phenomenal consciousness appears to be particularly normatively significant. For this reason, sentience-based conceptions of ethics are widespread. In the field of animal ethics, knowing which animals are sentient appears to be essential to decide the moral status of these animals. I argue that, given that materialism is true of the mind, phenomenal consciousness is probably not particularly normatively significant. We should face up to this probable insignificance of phenomenal consciousness and move towards an ethic without sentience.

The Politics of Military Force uses discourse theory to examine the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that (...) result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally. (shrink)

To capture genuine utilitarian tendencies, (Kahane et al., Psychological Review 125:131, 2018) developed the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale (OUS) based on two subscales, which measure the commitment to impartial beneficence and the willingness to cause harm for the greater good. In this article, I argue that the impartial beneficence subscale, which breaks ground with previous research on utilitarian moral psychology, does not distinctively measure utilitarian moral judgment. I argue that Kantian ethics captures the all-encompassing impartial concern for the well-being of all (...) human beings. The Oxford Utilitarianism Scale draws, in fact, a point of division that places Kantian and utilitarian theories on the same track. I suggest that the impartial beneficence subscale needs to be significantly revised in order to capture distinctively utilitarian judgments. Additionally, I propose that psychological research should focus on exploring multiple sources of the phenomenon of impartial beneficence without categorizing it as exclusively utilitarian. (shrink)

The mass extinction visited upon us by capitalism involves many kinds of devastation. Here I clarify the grounds for assessing the most obvious of these harms, i.e., decimation of species diversity. The thesis that variety among species has intrinsic value motivates, and in turn follows from, the “variable value view” (VVV) of abundance within any given species. In contrast, standard axiologies have no place for the intrinsic value of species diversity. I show that the VVV provides a better justification than (...) the latter do, of the way in which a widely-used empirical indicator summarizes the overall state of life on Earth. These considerations favor ecocentric value theory – which ascribes intrinsic value to properties of ecological wholes, like species diversity, that do not supervene on the well-being of their constituent organisms – over its main competitors. I conclude by widening the focus from wild nature alone to the biosphere comprising both wilderness and the domesticated realm. This broadened perspective helps to link the science and ethics of biodiversity with the political struggle to extract ourselves from the moral abyss of mass extinction. (shrink)

Uniformity in human actions and attitudes incumbent with the ceteris paribus clause of folk psychology lucidly transits moral thoughts into the domain of subject versus object-centric explorations. In Zettel, Wittgenstein argues, “Concepts with fixed limits would demand uniformity of behaviour, but where I am certain, someone else is uncertain. And that is the fact of nature.” (Wittgenstein 2007, 68). Reflecting on the moral principle of “ethical giving” revives a novel stance in modern moral philosophy. An “ethical giving” is a moral (...) position that looks at giving from the context of harmonizing the changing demands of situations with normative ethical principles. Despite giving more prominence to the query of intuition, the chapter brings up the justification of normative moral principles pertaining to their applications and purports. Human activities aimed at decision-making goals conducted by the moral compass are nothing but the sanction of certain ethical norms and rules. In this context, two principles, the normative aspect and the perspective aspect need to be expounded in parallel. The perspective-based principle seeks practical guides to action, whereas the normative aspect principle looks for the concrete moral justification behind it. Normatively based moral decisions hinge on the probabilities and interests of agents that can sometimes lead towards a better choice. Thomas Nagel’s thought sounds more appealing, since his idea of practical conflict bends towards “...conflict between values which are incomparable for reasons apart from uncertainty about the facts.” (Nagel 2013, 128). Positions on moral personality and equality of justice collide with the conception of verities of the agents’ reason that cogitate a minimal aspect on the morally significant properties (range properties), which can hardly be possessed by all human beings equally. This argument sounds reasonable in light of Singer’s thought of “the principle of equal consideration of interests.” (Singer 2003, 21–22) The concern of this section is deliberative about how an agent could balance the demand of moral situations and the spirit of the moral principle devoid of being close to the relative truth. The conception of the moral decision remains capricious in line with the agent’s mood, time, and situation. The germane queries are: (a) How could one get the simpliciter of moral balance in “ethical giving” or offering help to the poor, orphans, and so on, who need helps from the agents and society? (b) Can we find any universalized principle in defense of ethical giving? (shrink)

Virtue ethics has many times been suggested as a promising recipe for the construction of artificial moral agents due to its emphasis on moral character and learning. However, given the complex nature of the theory, hardly any work has de facto attempted to implement the core tenets of virtue ethics in moral machines. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate how virtue ethics can be taken all the way from theory to machine implementation. To achieve this goal, we (...) critically explore the possibilities and challenges for virtue ethics from a computational perspective. Drawing on previous conceptual and technical work, we outline a version of artificial virtue based on moral functionalism, connectionist bottom–up learning, and eudaimonic reward. We then describe how core features of the outlined theory can be interpreted in terms of functionality, which in turn informs the design of components necessary for virtuous cognition. Finally, we present a comprehensive framework for the technical development of artificial virtuous agents and discuss how they can be implemented in moral environments. (shrink)

Although Theravada Buddhism and Roman Catholicism agree on the moral justification for palliative sedation, they differ on the premises underlying the justification. While Catholicism justifies palliative sedation on the ground of the Principle of Double Effect, Buddhism does so on the basis of the Third Noble Truth. Despite their theological differences, Buddhism and Catholicism both value the moral significance of the physician’s intent to reduce suffering and both respect the sanctity of life. This blurs the demarcation line between Buddhism and (...) Catholicism regarding the moral justification of palliative sedation. -/- . (shrink)

– We offer a new motivation for imprecise probabilities. We argue that there are propositions to which precise probability cannot be assigned, but to which imprecise probability can be assigned. In such cases the alternative to imprecise probability is not precise probability, but no probability at all. And an imprecise probability is substantially better than no probability at all. Our argument is based on the mathematical phenomenon of non-measurable sets. Non-measurable propositions cannot receive precise probabilities, but there is a natural (...) way for them to receive imprecise probabilities. The mathematics of non-measurable sets is arcane, but its epistemological import is far-reaching; even apparently mundane propositions are liable to be affected by non-measurability. The phenomenon of non-measurability dramatically reshapes the dialectic between critics and proponents of imprecise credence. Non-measurability offers natural rejoinders to prominent critics of imprecise credence. Non-measurability even reverses some of the critics’ arguments—by the very lights that have been used to argue against imprecise credences, imprecise credences are better than precise credences. (shrink)

Animal replaceability is supposed to be a feature of some consequentialist theories, like Utilitarianism. Roughly, an animal is replaceable if it is permissible to kill it because the disvalue thereby caused will be compensated by the value of a new animal’s life. This is specially troubling since the conditions for such compensation seem easily attainable by improved forms of raising and killing animals. Thus, grounding a strong moral status of animals in such theories is somewhat compromised. As is, consequently, their (...) position as an alternative to rights-based theories in animal ethics. Recognising this, some utilitarians tried to disassociate utilitarianism and replaceability. I will here add my voice to this project. However, instead of seeing the culprit in the usual suspects (hedonism, maximisation or the total view), I advance a new proposal. After identifying that the compensating value for a disvaluable action has to be its consequence, I present a restriction on consequences: consequences of sequences of actions cannot be consequences of the isolated actions in the sequences. Given this, the main argument is simple: killing an animal is permissible only if the the value of the new animal’s life is a consequence of the killing; but this value is a consequence of a sequence of actions which involves the killing plus some additional actions; therefore, since, via the restriction, such value is not a consequence of the killing, it is irrelevant to its normative status. I then present two further motivations for the restriction: firstly, it prevents the value of conditional actions from trivially influencing the value of the actions on which they are conditional; secondly, it is useful – even if not a complete solution – to reply other objections to consequentialism: the accordion effect of action and the cluelessness problem. I finally consider a couple of objections. (shrink)

This volume collects selected papers delivered at the 15th Conference of the International Society for Utilitarian Studies, which was held at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in July 2018. It includes papers dealing with the past, present, and future of utilitarianism – the theory that human happiness is the fundamental moral value – as well as on its applications to animal ethics, population ethics, and the future of humanity, among other topics.

The ability of a computer to have a sense of humor, that is, to generate authentically funny jokes, has been taken by some theorists to be a sufficient condition for artificial consciousness. Creativity, the argument goes, is indicative of consciousness and the ability to be funny indicates creativity. While this line fails to offer a legitimate test for artificial consciousness, it does point in a possibly correct direction. There is a relation between consciousness and humor, but it relies on a (...) different sense of “sense of humor,” that is, it requires the getting of jokes, not the generating of jokes. The question, then, becomes how to tell when an artificial system enjoys a joke. We propose a mechanism, the GHoST test, which may be useful for such a task and can begin to establish whether a system possesses artificial consciousness. (shrink)

Freedom of speech has traditionally been a cause championed by the left and liberal side of the political spectrum, against conservatives who have tried to limit the expression of radical ideas. Here are three examples from the United States: 1) When I was appointed to Princeton University in 1999, Steve Forbes, whose father had endowed the university’s Forbes College, called for my appointment to be rescinded, and pledged that he would not donate to the university as long as I was (...) on the faculty. Forbes was, at the time, running for the Republican nomination for president. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of what it means to moralize about future technological innovations. Specifically, I have been invited to comment on three papers that attempt to think about what seems to be an impending social reality: the availability of life-like sex robots. In response, I explore what it means to moralize about future technological innovations from a secular perspective, i.e., a perspective grounded in an immanent, socio-historically contingent view. I review the arguments of Nancy Jecker, Mark Howard and (...) Robert Sparrow, and Wang Jue and respond to their arguments concerning the permissible limits of human-robot sexual interaction. I argue that we are in a poor epistemic position regarding what the actual future human response will be towards sex robots and how it affects society generally. Given this poor epistemic position, I argue that moralizing about future trends like human-robot sex is difficult because we do not have the relevant facts to work with. Furthermore, I remain skeptical as to policy recommendations based on socio-historically contingent moral viewpoints both because they do not carry in principle moral authority to say what future others may or may not do with their property and they may not even appeal to future secular others, insofar as secular morality is plural and consistently develops anew. (shrink)

In this chapter, the focus is on robotics development and its ethical implications, especially on some particular applications or interaction principles. In recent years, such developments have happened very quickly, based on the advances achieved in the last few decades in industrial robotics. The technological developments in manufacturing, with the implementation of Industry 4.0 strategies in most industrialized countries, and the dissemination of production strategies into services and health sectors, enabled robotics to develop in a variety of new directions. Policy (...) making and ethical awareness addressed these issues using socio-economic knowledge and also in an effort to solve some of the application problems raised in a range of different circumstances and sectoral environments. (shrink)

There are numerous ways in which “the particular”—particular individuals, particular ideologies, values, beliefs, and perspectives—are sometimes overlooked, ignored, or even driven out of the healthcare profession. In many such cases, this is bad for patients, practitioners, and the profession. Hence, we should seek to find a place for the particular in health care. Specific topics that I examine in this essay include distribution of health care based on the particular needs of patients, the importance of protecting physicians’ right to conscientious (...) objection, the value in tolerating a plurality of moral and medical perspectives within the field, and more. Ultimately, as the imagery in the essay’s title suggests, I argue that if one cares about the “well-being” of the medical profession, then one should seek to avoid destroying the many diverse and particular entities that constitute it. (shrink)

Denna artikel är den andra i en serie om två artiklar som introducerar astrobiologins filosofi. Detta är ett förhållandevis nytt och i Sverige nästan okänt forskningsfält som dock befinner sig i snabb tillväxt internationellt. Ämnet presenteras här i form av exempel på några centrala frågeställningar inom området. I den här artikeln presenteras några frågeställningar hemmahörande i praktisk filosofi.

BackgroundIn precision medicine biomarkers stratify patients into groups that are offered different treatments, but this may conflict with the principle of equal treatment. While some patient characteristics are seen as relevant for unequal treatment and others not, it is known that they all may influence treatment decisions. How biomarkers influence these decisions is not known, nor is their ethical relevance well discussed.MethodsWe distributed an email survey designed to elicit treatment preferences from Norwegian doctors working with cancer patients. In a forced-choice (...) conjoint analysis pairs of hypothetical patients were presented, and we calculated the average marginal component effect of seven individual patient characteristics, to estimate how each of them influence doctors’ priority-setting decisions.ResultsA positive biomarker status increased the probability of being allocated the new drug, while older age, severe comorbidity and reduced physical function reduced the probability. Importantly, sex, education level and smoking status had no significant influence on the decision.ConclusionBiomarker status is perceived as relevant for priority setting decisions, alongside more well-known patient characteristics like age, physical function and comorbidity. Based on our results, we discuss a framework that can help clarify whether biomarker status should be seen as an ethically acceptable factor for providing unequal treatment to patients with the same disease. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

This book sheds light on various ethical challenges military and humanitarian health care personnel face while working in adverse conditions. Contexts of armed conflict, hybrid wars or other forms of violence short of war, as well as natural disasters, all have in common that ordinary circumstances can no longer be taken for granted. Hence, the provision of health care has to adapt, for example, to a different level of risk, to scarce resources, or uncommon approaches due to external incentives or (...) requirements. This affects the practice of health care as well as its ethics. This book offers a panoramic overview on various challenges healthcare faces in extraordinary situations and provides new insights from practitioners’ as well as from academic scholars’ perspectives. (shrink)

Consciousness has an important role in ethics: when a being consciously experiences the frustration or satisfaction of its interests, those interests deserve higher moral priority than those of a behaviourally similar but non-conscious being. I consider the relationship between this ethical role and an a posteriori (or “type-B”) materialist solution to the mind-body problem. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if type-B materialism is correct, then the reference of the concept of phenomenal consciousness is radically indeterminate between a (...) neuronal-level property that is distinctive to mammals and a high-level functional property that is much more widely shared. This would leave many non-mammalian animals (such as birds, fish, insects and octopuses) with indeterminate moral status. There are ways to manage this radical moral indeterminacy, but all of these ways lead to profoundly troubling consequences. (shrink)

The role of microaggressions has gained increasing philosophical attention in recent years. However, microaggressions only tell part of the story. An often-overlooked component of inequality is the uneven and unjust distribution of microaffirmations. In this paper, I give a new definition of microaffirmations as signals that a recipient belongs to some valued or high-status class. Microaffirmations can—but need not—lead individuals to gain a sense of confidence, belonging, and merit. I then explain the harms of microaffirmations, arguing that when microaffirmations are (...) distributed inequitably, they can have larger ramifications for injustice, harming some vulnerable groups more than others. In addition, microaffirmations can lead individual actors to make choices based on who gives them microaffirmations and where they receive them, and thus can have outsized influence over the direction of an individual’s life because individuals tend to migrate to where they feel valued, appreciated, and included. I then turn to solutions to the problems I raise. I argue we should attend to and attempt to rectify inequalities in microaffirmations because doing so can help ensure not just the absence of negative attention, but also that the presence of positive attention is flowing in a just and equitable way. (shrink)

Extremism about Demands is the view that morality is significantly more demanding than prevailing common-sense morality acknowledges. This view is not widely held, despite the powerful advocacy on its behalf by philosophers such as Peter Singer, Shelly Kagan, Peter Unger, and G.A. Cohen. Most philosophers have remained attracted to some version of Moderation about Demands, which holds that the behavior of typical well-off people is permissible, including the ways that such people tend to employ their economic and other resources. It (...) is difficult to resist the conclusion that proponents of Extremism have not taken sufficiently seriously the central convictions that motivate the Moderate view. -/- This dissertation offers an improved defense of Extremism about Demands. At its center is an argument that appeals dialectically to requirements of justice that Moderates themselves already implicitly accept. Specifically, I claim that any plausible set of Moderate moral principles will, when applied to a world like ours, yield demands on typical well-off people that far exceed the demands of common-sense morality. -/- My argument has two cruxes. The first is the idea that our concern for justice is at least partially grounded in a concern for individuals’ interests, broadly construed. The other is a principle that I call Injustice entails Obligations, which says that we are collectively subject to requirements of justice that, if fully complied with, would ensure the transition from current injustice to a just state of affairs. Any view that is compatible with both the interest-based view of (part of) our concern for justice and Injustice entails Obligations will, I argue, require sacrifices from typical well-off people that substantially exceed what prevailing common-sense morality requires of them. -/- Moderates typically emphasize the idea that each person has an important interest in pursuing the projects, plans, relationships, and commitments that are most important to her. But they also believe that acceptable Moderate principles will properly balance this idea with the idea that from a properly impartial perspective everyone, and everyone's interests, are equally morally important. Because Moderates accept the latter idea, they are already committed to thinking that in a just world, everyone would have a sufficient minimum share of society’s resources. I argue that even if we limit our focus to distributive justice in a single society such as the United States, and even if we assume that distributive justice requires only a sufficient minimum, the extent to which the status quo must be transformed in order for justice to be achieved is still too great to be compatible with Moderate demands on typical well-off people. -/- There are a number of ways to try to argue that Moderate principles and Injustice entails Obligations are compatible with Moderation about Demands. For instance, it might be argued that all or nearly all of the demands to sacrifice in order to promote justice can be assigned to the super-rich, rather than to typical well-off people. Or it might be argued that the sacrifices of a single well-off person cannot be required because they amount to a mere “drop in the bucket” relative to what needs to be done in order to fully achieve justice. I show that such arguments fail. -/- The argument that I consider in greatest detail derives from John Rawls’s view that the principles of justice apply to the institutions of the “basic structure of society,” and do not apply directly to the conduct of individuals. If this “Institutionalism” is right, then it cannot be the case that individuals are obligated to promote justice directly in the way that I suggest they are. Furthermore, it might seem that a view that assigns all of the burdens of promoting justice to the basic structure satisfies the imperative to transition from injustice to justice, since if the relevant institutions were to begin doing everything that the Rawlsian view says they ought to be doing, the requirements of justice would be met. I argue, however, that there is no understanding of Institutionalism on which it is itself consistent with the following desiderata: Moderate principles, and the associated interest-based view of (part of) the ground of our concern for justice; Injustice entails Obligations; and Moderate demands. So, Institutionalism cannot make Moderate principles and Injustice entails Obligations compatible with Moderate demands. -/- Moderate principles and Injustice entails Obligations, then, remain incompatible with Moderation about Demands. Since there are compelling reasons to accept both Moderate principles and In justice entails Obligations, I conclude that we must reject Moderation about Demands. The obligations that justice places on typical well-off people are substantially more extensive than is acknowledged by prevailing common-sense morality. (shrink)

The expansion of research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) and adaptive DBS (aDBS) raises important neuroethics and policy questions related to data sharing. However, there has been little empirical research on the perspectives of experts developing these technologies. We conducted semi-structured, open-ended interviews with aDBS researchers regarding their data sharing practices and their perspectives on ethical and policy issues related to sharing. Researchers expressed support for and a commitment to sharing, with most saying that they were either sharing their data (...) or would share in the future and that doing so was important for advancing the field. However, those who are sharing reported a variety of sharing partners, suggesting heterogeneity in sharing practices and lack of the broad sharing that would reflect principles of open science. Researchers described several concerns and barriers related to sharing, including privacy and confidentiality, the usability of shared data by others, ownership and control of data (including potential commercialization), and limited resources for sharing. They also suggested potential solutions to these challenges, including additional safeguards to address privacy issues, standardization and transparency in analysis to address issues of data usability, professional norms and heightened cooperation to address issues of ownership and control, and streamlining of data transmission to address resource limitations. Researchers also offered a range of views on the sensitivity of neural activity data (NAD) and data related to mental health in the context of sharing. These findings are an important input to deliberations by researchers, policymakers, neuroethicists, and other stakeholders as they navigate ethics and policy questions related to aDBS research. (shrink)

Scholars in the field of environmental and animal ethics have propounded theories that outline what, in their view, ought to constitute an ethical relationship between humans and the environment and humans and nonhuman animals respectively. In the field of animal ethics, the contributions by Western scholars to theorize a body of animal ethics, either as an ethic in its own right or as a branch of the broader field of environmental ethics is clearly seen. Consequently, there are, notably, two main (...) schools of thought in the field of animal ethics. These are the ‘welfarist’ and the ‘rightist’ approaches (Regan, 2006; Owoseni & Olatoye, 2014). Unfortunately, a clearly concerted effort to theorize on animal ethics from an African perspective is at the minimal, although there is a lot written in African environmental ethics, broadly construed. It is within this context that this study locates an African animal ethic within the two main theories in the global animal ethics debate, using traditional Akan ontology and ethics particularly, those that speak to their relationship with the environment and, especially animals. Thus, using Akan ontological worldview and ethics as foundational sources, alongside learned principles from the emerging theories in African environmental ethics, the study seeks to find the place of Akan animal ethics within the rightist and welfarist debates. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to shed light on some challenging questions regarding public health and medical ethics that the Turkish healthcare system has recently been forced to confront. In recent years, terrorists in eastern Turkey have launched increasingly destructive attacks, including numerous attempts to undermine the social order by targeting not only government agencies but also the healthcare system. In this study, 54 terrorist incidents specifically targeting the Turkish healthcare system and healthcare professionals were analyzed and divided into (...) 6 categories according to the type of attack. Each category was evaluated in terms of the relevant ethical issues, with regard to both public health and medical ethics. This study shows that terrorist activity may lead to numerous breaches of public health and clinical ethics rules. Therefore, healthcare policy must involve special precautions to minimize breaches of public health and medical ethics in the face of terrorist attacks. (shrink)

The morality of abortion is a longstanding controversy. One may wonder whether it’s even possible to make significant progress on an issue over which so much ink has already been split and there is such polarizing disagreement (Boyle 1994). The papers in this issue show that this progress is possible—there is more to be said about abortion and other crucial beginning-of-life issues. They do so largely by applying contemporary philosophical tools to moral questions involving life’s beginning. The first two papers (...) defend the pro-life view from recent objections involving miscarriage and abortion doctors. The third shows how the social model of disability and the concept of transformative experience applies to classic debates like abortion and euthanasia. The final two papers address how rights and harms apply to children and to beings that do not yet exist. All five papers make a noteworthy contribution to the moral issues that arise at the beginning of life. (shrink)

Upholding cooperative norms via punishment is of central importance in organizations. But what effect does punishing have on the reputation of the punisher? Although previous research shows third parties can garner reputational benefits for punishing transgressors who violate social norms, we proposed that such reputational benefits can vary based on the perceived motive for the punishment. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that individuals who endorsed a consequentialist (versus deontological) motive for punishing were seen as more trustworthy. In Study (...) 3, the results showed that when pitted against one another, a person who endorsed a consequentialist (versus deontological) motive for punishing was chosen more often as a partner in a Trust Game. In Study 4, we found that a manager who expressed a consequentialist reason for punishing an employee was seen as having less psychopathic tendencies, and this related to the manager being perceived as more trustworthy and a superior cooperation partner. Using a recall methodology, Study 5 results showed that employees who perceived their managers as having more consequentialist (versus deontological) motives for punishing also perceived their managers as being less psychopathic and more trustworthy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this commentary, I will consider the implications of the argument made by Christopher Stratman (2020) in ‘Ectogestation and the Problem of Abortion’. Clearly, the possibility of ectogestation will have some effect on the ethical debate on abortion. However, I have become increasingly sceptical that the possibility of ectogestation will transform the problem of abortion. Here, I outline some of my reasons to justify this scepticism. First, that virtually everything we already know about unintended pregnancies, abortion and adoption does not (...) prima facie support the assumption that a large shift to ectogestation would occur. Moreover, if ectogestation does not lead to significant restrictions to abortion then there is unlikely to be any radical transformation of the practice of abortion. Second, abortion is already associated with stigma and so the presence of ectogestation would need to create additional stigma to modify behaviour. Finally, I argue that ectogestation shifts the debate away from the fetus to the human subject of the artificial womb—the gestateling. Therefore, creating a new category of killing—gestaticide—and this would only reorient the debate rather than end it. (shrink)

Can there be an objective morality without God? Derek Parfit argues that it can and offers a theory of morality that is neither theistic nor naturalistic. This book provides a critical assessment of Parfit's metaethical theory. Jakobsen identifies some problems in Parfit’s theory – problems concerning moral normativity, the ontological status of morality, and evolutionary influence on our moral beliefs – and argues that theological resources can help solve them. By showing how Parfit’s theory may be improved by the help (...) of theology, Jakobsen demonstrates the relevance of theology in philosophical and metaethical debates and argues that Christian theism offers a better explanation of morality than what Parfit’s non-naturalism does. (shrink)

Some religious requirements seem genuinely arbitrary in the sense that there seem to be no sufficient explanation of why those requirements with those contents should pertain. This paper aims to understand exactly what it might mean for a religious requirement to be genuinely arbitrary and to discern whether and how a religious practitioner could ever be rational in obeying such a requirement. We lay out four accounts of what such arbitrariness could consist in, and show how each account provides a (...) different sort of baseline for understanding how obedience to arbitrary requirements could, in principle, be rational. (shrink)

This paper considers the hotly debated issue of whether one should grant moral and legal personhood to intelligent robots once they have achieved a certain standard of sophistication based on such criteria as rationality, autonomy, and social relations. The starting point for the analysis is the European Parliament’s resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics and its recommendation that robots be granted legal status and electronic personhood. The resolution is discussed against the background of the so-called Robotics Open Letter, which (...) is critical of the Civil Law Rules on Robotics. The paper reviews issues related to the moral and legal status of intelligent robots and the notion of legal personhood, including an analysis of the relation between moral and legal personhood in general and with respect to robots in particular. It examines two analogies, to corporations and animals, that have been proposed to elucidate the moral and legal status of robots. The paper concludes that one should not ascribe moral and legal personhood to currently existing robots, given their technological limitations, but that one should do so once they have achieved a certain level at which they would become comparable to human beings. (shrink)

Works of science fiction tend to describe hypothetical futures, or counterfactual pasts or presents, to entertain their readers. Philosophical thought experiments tend to describe counterfactual situations to test their readers’ philosophical intuitions. Indeed, works of science fiction can sometimes be read as containing thought experiments. I compare one especially famous thought experiment from Plato’s Republic with what I read as two thought experiments from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. All three thought experiments concern myths used in political contexts, and comparing them (...) permits me to analyze the morality of political mythologizing. (shrink)

Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection. This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implications for liberal theories of justice. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, it argues (...) that both the CMP and the potential capacity for moral personality are bases of moral status. This pluralist account of the basis of moral status can broaden the scope of justice and provide a solid philosophical justification for the common-sense intuition that almost all human beings have a moral status that is different and superior to that of nonhuman animals. Second, contra what is commonly suggested, it contends that potential and actual moral persons have different and unequal rights, other things being equal. (shrink)

Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well- being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate (...) wild animals with negative well-being to ensure future such animals do not exist. We argue that this conflict is overstated. Once we have properly accounted for indirect effects, such as the role that our policies play in shaping moral attitudes and behavior and the importance of accepting policies that are robust against deviation, we can see that consequentialism may converge with animal rights theory significantly, even if not entirely. (shrink)

This essay considers how ancient Stoic cosmopolitanism – roughly, the claim all human beings are members of the same “cosmopolis”, or universal city, and so are entitled to moral concern in virtue of possessing reason – informs Stoic thinking about how we ought to treat non-human entities in the environment. First, I will present the Stoic justification for the thesis that there are only rational members of the cosmopolis – and so that moral concern does not extend to any non-human (...) part of the natural world – and explore the foundations of these views in Stoic physics. Next, I will show that, like other anthropocentric theories, Stoic cosmopolitanism allows for environmental preservation and protection of non-human entities, so long as these activities ultimately benefit human beings. However, because the Stoics include the appreciation of natural beauty as a component of the happy life, this justification is not as feeble as it might seem. Humans are naturally set up to contemplate the order and complexity of the universe, and so environmental degradation and species loss, in marring this harmonious system, frustrates the achievement of the human goal. After exploring these facets of Stoic philosophy, and assessing to what extent they might justify environmental conservation, I close with a critical appraisal of Stoic theory – specifically, of the claims that (i) only humans possess reason and (ii) only rational creatures are deserving of moral concern. (shrink)