David Benatar has argued both for anti-natalism and for a certain pessimism about life's meaning. In this paper, I propose that these positions are expressions of a deeply impersonal philosophical temperament. This is not a problem on its own; we all have our philosophical instincts. The problem is that this particular temperament, I argue, leads Benatar astray, since it prevents him from answering a question that any moral philosopher must answer. This is the question of rational authority, which requires the (...) moral philosopher to say why existing human agents have strong practical reasons to comply with the philosopher's dictates. A purely impersonal ethical system can never do this, and this is why Benatar has no answer to this question. (shrink)

The ethics of biological procreation has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet, as I show in this paper, much of what has come to be called procreative ethics is conducted in a strangely abstract, impersonal mode, one which stands little chance of speaking to the practical perspectives of any prospective parent. In short, the field appears to be flirting with a strange sort of practical irrelevance, wherein its verdicts are answers to questions that no-one is asking. (...) I go on to articulate a theory of what I call existential grounding, a notion which explains the role that prospective children play in the lives of many would-be parents. Procreative ethicists who want their work to have real practical relevance must, I claim, start to engage with this markedly first-personal kind of practical consideration. (shrink)

What is the function of morality? On this question, something approaching a consensus has recently emerged. Impressed by developments in evolutionary theory, many philosophers now tell us that the function of morality is to reduce social tensions, and to thereby enable a society to efficiently promote the well-being of its members. In this paper, I subject this consensus to rigorous scrutiny, arguing that the functional hypothesis in question is not well supported. In particular, I attack the supposed evidential relation between (...) an evolutionary genealogy of morals and the functional hypothesis itself. I show that there are a great many functionally relevant discontinuities between our own culture and the culture within which morality allegedly emerged, and I argue that this seriously weakens the inference from morality’s evolutionary history to its present-day function. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in order to explain our own moral reliability, we must provide a theory of error for those who disagree with us. Any story that seeks to vindicate our own reliability must also explain how so many others have gone wrong, otherwise it is not actually a vindicatory story. Thus, we cannot claim to have vindicated our own moral reliability unless we can explain the unreliability of those who hold contrary beliefs. This, I show, requires (...) us to engage directly with cultural history, a topic which has been unfortunately obscured by the meta-ethicist’s near-exclusive focus on evolutionary challenges to moral belief. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2, Page 255-272, Summer 2022.

Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal some inherent dynamic (...) or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening. (shrink)

I recently told my uncle that I thought I had come up with a way of showing that a mother who saw her child about to be stung by a wasp should try to intervene. I’d been working on this for several months. My uncle did not look very impressed. To be fair, it doesn’t sound like a very impressive result. Surely it is just utterly obviously that mothers should protect their children from wasps? So why had this taken me (...) months of work? I am trying to come up with a moderate account of maternal duties. Maternal duties pick out what a mother is morally required to do for her children. In doing so, I’ve discovered that it is harder than it might at first appear to come up with a moderate account of maternal duties that recognises ‘obvious’ duties like the duty not to let your child be stung by a wasp. I’ve also found that in the context of maternal duties, even more than in other contexts, we need be cautious before we accept our judgments about what seems obvious. Yet, it is absolutely vital to come up with a good moderate account of maternal duties – because doing so is necessary to protect vulnerable women and children. (shrink)

The Demandingness Objection is the objection that a moral theory or principle is unacceptable because it asks more than we can reasonably expect. David Sobel, Shelley Kagan and Liam Murphy have each argued that the Demandingness Objection implicitly – and without justification – appeals to moral distinctions between different types of cost. I discuss three sets of cases each of which suggest that we implicitly assume some distinction between costs when applying the Demandingness Objection. We can explain each set of (...) cases, but each set requires appeal to a separate dimension of the Demandingness Objection. (shrink)

Four decades ago, Bernard Williams accused Kantian moral theory of providing agents with ‘one thought too many’. The general consensus among contemporary Kantians is that this objection has been decisively answered. In this paper, I reconstruct the problem, showing that Williams was not principally concerned with how agents are to think in emergency situations, but rather with how moral theories are to be integrated into recognizably human lives. I show that various Kantian responses to Williams provide inadequate materials for solving (...) this ‘integration problem’, and that they are correspondingly ill-positioned to account for the authority of morality, as Williams suspected all along. (shrink)

I defend the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing: the claim that doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. A thing does not genuinely belong to a person unless he has special authority over it. The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing protects us against harmful imposition – against the actions or needs of another intruding on what is ours. This protection is necessary for something to genuinely belong to a person. The opponent of the Doctrine must claim that (...) nothing genuinely belongs to a person, even his own body. (shrink)

"Ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems." Bernard Williams offered this cryptic remark in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, and in this chapter I argue that understanding it is the key to understanding Williams' skepticism about moral theory and about systematization in ethics. The difficulty for moral philosophy, Williams believed, is that ethics looks one way to embodied, active agents, but looks entirely different when considered from the standpoint of theory. This, in turn, means that following (...) a moral theory is a sure route to practical alienation. I argue that once we see it for what it is, we can see that Williams own skepticism undermines his later attempts to vindicate Truthfulness. Moreover, given the pervasiveness of reflective practical alienation in ordinary life, it leaves us with a difficult question: what would a non-alienated ethical existence even look like for us? (shrink)

Discussion of the behaviour of pregnant women and mothers, in academic literature, medical advice given to mothers, mainstream media and social media, assumes that a mother who fails to do something to benefit her child is liable for moral criticism unless she can provide sufficient countervailing considerations to justify her decision. I reconstruct the normally implicit reasoning that leads to this assumption and show that it is mistaken. First, I show that the discussion assumes that if any action might benefit (...) her child, the mother has a defeasible duty to perform that action. I suggest that this assumption is implicitly supported by two arguments but that each argument is unsound. The first argument conflates moral reasons and defeasible duties; the second misunderstands the scope of a defeasible duty to benefit. This argument has important practical and theoretical implications: practically, it provides a response to a highly damaging discourse on maternal behaviour; theoretically, it provides the framework for a clearer understanding of the scope and nature of defeasible duties to benefit. (shrink)

In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master-concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical role in this conceptual shift. Once we understand that (...) our narrow, reductionist focus on “thin” ethical concepts is a contingent historical development, we are, I claim, in a much better position to evaluate it. (shrink)

I advance a novel interpretation of Kant's argument that our original representation of space must be intuitive, according to which the intuitive status of spatial representation is secured by its infinitary structure. I defend a conception of intuitive representation as what must be given to the mind in order to be thought at all. Discursive representation, as modelled on the specific division of a highest genus into species, cannot account for infinite complexity. Because we represent space as infinitely complex, the (...) spatial manifold cannot be generated discursively and must therefore be given to the mind, i.e. represented in intuition. (shrink)

For many women experiencing motherhood for the first time, the message they receive is clear: mothers who do not breastfeed ought to have good reasons not to; bottle feeding by choice is a failure of maternal duty. We argue that this pressure to breastfeed arises in part from two misconceptions about maternal duty: confusion about the scope of the duty to benefit and conflation between moral reasons and duties. While mothers have a general duty to benefit, we argue that this (...) does not imply a duty to carry out any particular beneficent act. Therefore, the expectation that mothers should breastfeed unless they have sufficient countervailing reasons not to is morally unwarranted. Recognising the difference between reasons and duties can allow us to discuss the benefits of breastfeeding and the importance of supporting mothers who wish to breastfeed without subjecting mothers who bottle feed to guilt, blame and failure. (shrink)

L.A. Paul argues that interesting issues for rational choice theory are raised by epistemically transformative experiences: experiences which provide access to knowledge that could not be known without the experience. Consideration of the epistemic effects of pregnancy has important implications for our understanding of epistemically transformative experiences and for debate about the ethics of abortion and applied ethics more generally. Pregnancy is epistemically transformative both in Paul’s narrow sense and in a wider sense: those who have not been pregnant face (...) significant barriers to acquiring the knowledge made accessible through pregnancy. This knowledge is crucial for engaging with the ethics of abortion. The epistemically transformativeWIDE nature of pregnancy may require us to use new methods to try to partially grasp what pregnancy is like such as for example, significant engagement with narrative literature. Because pregnancy is also epistemically transformative in a narrow sense, we need to work out how to engage in ethical reasoning when relevant knowledge is not fully accessible to all. This argument has implications beyond the debate about abortion. Philosophers in many areas of applied ethics will need to work out how to respond appropriately to epistemically transformative experiences. (shrink)

Our pollution of the environment seems set to lead to widespread problems in the future, including disease, scarcity of resources, and bloody conflicts. It is natural to think that we are required to stop polluting because polluting harms the future individuals who will be faced with these problems. This natural thought faces Derek Parfit’s famous Non-Identity Problem ( 1984 , pp. 361–364). The people who live on the polluted earth would not have existed if we had not polluted. Our polluting (...) behaviour does not make these individuals worse off. It may therefore seem that we do not harm them by polluting. Parfit argues that we should replace person-affecting principles with an impersonal principle of beneficence, Principle Q ( 1984 , p. 360.). I argue that Principle Q cannot give an adequate account of our duties to refrain from polluting. I consider attempts to solve the Non-Identity Problem by denying that to harm someone an agent must make them worse off. I argue that such responses provide a partial solution to the Non-Identity Problem. They do show that we harm future individuals in a morally relevant sense by polluting. Nonetheless, this is only a partial solution. The Non-Identity Problem still suggests that our harm-based reasons not to pollute are less strong than we intuitively believe. Thus on its own an appeal to the claim that we harm future individuals is not able to give a fully satisfactory account of why we are required not to pollute. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically analyze the notion that self-interest distorts moral belief-formation. This belief is widely shared among modern moral epistemologists, and in this paper, I seek to undermine this near consensus. I then offer a principle which can help us to sort cases in which self-interest distorts moral belief from cases in which it does not. As it turns out, we cannot determine whether such distortion has occurred from the armchair; rather, we must inquire into mechanisms of social (...) power and advantage before declaring that some moral position is distorted by self-interest. (shrink)

Many philosophers display relaxed scepticism about the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and the Doctrine of Double Effect, suspecting, without great alarm, that one or both of these Doctrines is indefensible. This relaxed scepticism is misplaced. Anyone who aims to endorse a theory of right action with Nonconsequentialist implications should accept both the DDA and the DDE. First, even to state a Nonconsequentialist theory requires drawing a distinction between respecting and promoting values. This cannot be done without accepting some deontological (...) distinction. Second, if someone is going to accept any deontological distinction she should accept either the DDE or the DDA or some replacement. Finally, anyone who accepts either the DDE or the DDA should accept both doctrines or a replacement of each. Unless both Doctrines can be defended or given a defensible replacement, any Nonconsequentialist is in trouble. (shrink)

The Body Ownership Thesis states that each person owns her body. I address a prominent objection, the Generation Problem: the Body Ownership Thesis apparently implies that parents own their children: as we own the fruit of our property, if a parent owns her own body, she must own her child and her child's body. I argue that a person does not own the fruit of her property when that fruit is a person or the body of a person. Persons have (...) conclusive title to their bodies, but only defeasible title to the fruits of their bodies. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the first of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the analysis of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I explore some of the most prominent attempts to analyse this distinction:. Philippa Foot’s sequence account, Warren (...) Quinn’s action/ inaction account, and counterfactual test accounts put forward by Shelly Kagan and Jonathan Bennett. I also discuss Jeff McMahan’s account of the removal of barriers to harm. I argue that analysis of the distinction has often been made more difficult by two mistaken assumption: (1) the assumption that when an agent does or allows harm his behaviour makes the difference to whether or not the harm occurs (2) the assumption that the distinction between doing and allowing and the distinction between action and inaction are interchangeable. I suggest that Foot’s account is the most promising account of the doing/allowing distinction, but that it requires further development. (shrink)

Breastfeeding advocates have criticised the phrase ‘breast is best’ as mistakenly representing breastfeeding as a departure from the norm rather than the default for infant feeding. Breastfeeding mothers have an interest in representing breastfeeding as the default, for example, to counteract criticism of breastfeeding outside the home. This connects to an increasing trend to frame feeding babies formula as harmful, which can be seen in research papers, public policy and information presented to parents and prospective parents. Whether we frame infant-feeding (...) decisions in terms of harming or benefit, protection or risk matters because these distinctions are generally morally significant and thus holding that those who decide to use formula ‘harm’, ‘risk harm’ to their babies or describing formula feeding as ‘dangerous’ is likely to contribute to guilt associated with formula feeding and thus to undermine the well-being of vulnerable women. It may undermine attempts to improve breastfeeding rates by leading women to reject information about health outcomes surrounding infant-feeding decisions. However, these distinctions do not apply easily to infant-feeding decisions, in part because of difficulties in determining whether we should treat breastfeeding as the normative baseline for infant feeding. I show that neither the descriptive ‘facts of the matter’ nor moral or pragmatic considerations provide an easy answer before discussing how to respond to these considerations. (shrink)

The distinction between doing and allowing appears to have moral significance, but the very nature of the distinction is as yet unclear. Philippa Foot's ‘pre-existing threats’ account of the doing/allowing distinction is highly influential. According to the best version of Foot's account an agent brings about an outcome if and only if his behaviour is part of the sequence leading to that outcome. When understood in this way, Foot's account escapes objections by Warren Quinn and Jonathan Bennett. However, more analysis (...) is required to show what makes a relevant condition part of a sequence. Foot's account is promising, but incomplete. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, the distinction between doing and allowing harm is morally significant. Doing harm is harder to justify than merely allowing harm. This paper is the second of a two paper critical overview of the literature on the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing. In this paper, I consider the moral status of the distinction between doing and allowing harm. I look at objections to the doctrine such as James’ Rachels’ Wicked Uncle Case and Jonathan (...) Bennett’s argument that any acceptable analysis of the distinction leaves it implausible that the distinction is morally relevant. I consider putative defences of the Doctrine from Philippa Foot and Warren Quinn. I argue that neither Foot not Quinn provides a satisfactory justification of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, but that the idea of self-ownership discussed by Quinn can be developed to provide a justification of the doctrine. (shrink)

It is a philosophy of patient care, and is therefore open to critique and evaluation.Using the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine Third Edition as their ...

This paper provides a categorization of cross-modal experiences. There are myriad forms. Doing so allows us to think clearly about the nature of different cross-modal experiences and allows us to clearly formulate competing hypotheses about the kind of experiences involved in different cross-modal phenomena.

Pragmatic Genealogy involves constructing fictional, quasi-historical models in order to discover what might explain and justify our concepts, ideas or practices. It arguably originated with Hume, but its most prominent practitioners are Edward Craig, Bernard Williams and Mathieu Queloz. Its defenders allege that the method allows us to understand “what the concept does for us, what its role in our life might be” (Craig, 1990), and that this in turn can ground practical reasons to preserve or further a conceptual practice. (...) In this paper, I argue that none of this is true, and that only a turn to the actual recent history of such practices can reveal those sorts of practical reasons. (shrink)

I became a philosopher because I was fascinated by the ethics of abortion. Not only is abortion a crucial practical issue – a matter of life or death – but it forces us to grapple with some of the hardest and yet most significant philosophical questions: If we agree that all human beings have a right to life, what entities do we count as human beings? What characteristics, if any, are necessary? What happens when one entity’s life clashes with another’s (...) bodily integrity? What are the roles of responsibility, consent and fore-knowledge? (shrink)

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Boonin’s The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People and Rivka Weinberg’s The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When and Why Procreation May Be Permissible are both important books for those interested in procreative ethics. Each argues for surprising and controversial conclusions: Boonin argues that we should solve the non-identity problem by accepting its apparently unacceptable conclusion (...) that actions cannot be wrong due to their effects on future people whose lives are worth living and who would not exist were the actions not performed; Weinberg argues that there is no non-identity problem, that future children have no interest in existing, but significant interest in avoiding harm and that procreation is, therefore, a much more morally risky business than we tend to think. Even if... (shrink)

As its title indicates, Philip Pettit’s “Three Mistakes about Doing Good (and Bad)” identifies and rejects three common claims restricting what can count as a good (or bad ) effect of action. The key question here is how do we work out how much good you have brought about by your action? The first common claim is that only causal effects or consequences of action can count as goods that are brought about by an action. The second, that we can (...) only count behavioural effects of action. The third, that we can only count consequences of “an all-or-nothing or on-off or discrete kind”. Pettit argues that all three of these claims are mistaken: the first claim is mistaken because our actions can bring about goods that are constitutive consequences of those actions; the second claim is mistaken because the good consequences of an action can depend upon the agent having acted out of certain dispositions; the third claim is mistaken because the good consequences of an action can include the extra effects of pursuing more basic good consequences (such as benefits to others) in a more deliberate or reliable manner. (shrink)

In Responding to Global Poverty: Harm, Responsibility, and Agency, Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland address the two types of argument that have dominated discussion of the responsibilities of the affluent to respond to global poverty. The second type of argument appeals to ‘contribution-based responsibilities’: the affluent have a duty to do something about the plight of the global poor because they have contributed to that plight. Barry and Øverland rightly recognize that to assess contribution-based responsibility for global poverty, we need (...) to understand what it is for an agent to contribute to harm rather than merely failing to prevent it. Barry and Øverland argue that we should replace the traditional bipartite distinction doing and allowing with a bipartite distinction between doing, allowing and enabling. I argue that their discussion represents a significant contribution to this debate. However, more detail on their key ideas of ‘relevant action’ and ‘complete causal process’ is needed. Moreover, in cases involving the removal of barriers, the non-need based claims of those involved matter. (shrink)

The main aim of Lupyan’s paper is to claim that perception is cognitively penetrated and that this is consistent with the idea of perception as predictive coding. In these remarks I will focus on what Lupyan says about whether perception is cognitively penetrated, and set aside his remarks about epistemology. I have argued (2012) that perception can be cognitively penetrated and so I am sympathetic to Lupyan’s overall aim of showing that perception is cognitively penetrable. However, I will be critical (...) of some of Lupyan’s reasoning in arguing for this position. I will also call for clarification of that reasoning. First, I will discuss what is meant by cognitive penetration and, in light of this, the sort of evidence that can be used to establish its existence. Second, I will question whether Lupyan establishes that all cases of cross-modal effects are cases of cognitive penetration. In doing so, I will suggest a form of cognitive penetration that has heretofore not been posited, and give an example of how one might test for its existence. Third, I will question whether Lupyan puts forward convincing evidence that categorical knowledge and language affect perception in a way that conclusively shows that cognitive penetration occurs. Fourth, I will closely examine Lupyan’s reply to the argument against cognitive penetration from illusion. I show that his reply is not adequate and that he misses a more straightforward reply that one could give. Fifth, I briefly concur with the remarks that Lupyan makes about the role of attention with respect to cognitive penetration. And finally, sixth, I spell out exactly what I think the relationship is between the thesis that predictive coding is the correct model of perception and the thesis that there is cognitive penetration. (shrink)

In this paper we critically evaluate an argument put forward by William Lane Craig for the existence of God based on the assumption that if there were no God, there could be no objective morality. Contrary to Craig, we show that there are some necessary moral truths and objective moral reasoning that holds up whether there is a God or not. We go on to argue that religious faith, when taken alone and without reason or evidence, actually risks undermining morality (...) and is an unreliable source of moral truths. We recommend a viewpoint on morality that is based on reason and public consensus, that is compatible with science, and that cuts across the range of religious and non-religious positions. (shrink)

This paper uses a dilemma presented by David Benatar to explore the challenges that ‘Sexual Liberals’ face in giving a satisfactory account of sexual ethics. A satisfactory Sexual Liberal account of sexual ethics must be able to fully explain the wrongness of sexual assault without implying that sexual activity should be restricted to those in love. The assumption that this is impossible may be due to mistakes in our thinking about sexual assault. However, even when such mistakes are resolved, producing (...) a satisfactory account of sexual ethics requires Sexual Liberals to confront the significance of the sexual in human life. I describe an account of sexual desire that explains the significance of the sexual in human life without forcing us to endorse a restrictive sexual ethics. (shrink)

The existence of deep and persistent moral disagreement poses a problem for a defender of moral knowledge. It seems particularly clear that a philosopher who thinks that we know a great many moral truths should explain how human populations have failed to converge on those truths. In this paper, I do two things. First, I show that the problem is more difficult than it is often taken to be, and second, I criticize a popular response, which involves claiming that many (...) false moral beliefs are the product of nonmoral ignorance. (shrink)

How does visual imagination differ from visual perceptual experience? And how should we describe experiences of visual imagery? Moreover how can people who have visual imagery convey what it is like to have it to those who have never had it – congenital aphantisics? This paper addresses these questions using examples of illusions and other perceptual phenomena to hone in on the answers.

Provides an overview and examples of what impossible figures are, and explains their interest to many different disciplines including philosophy, psychology, art and mathematics.

Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics1 lives up to its title. It presents the methods and contents of Kamm’s nonconsequentialist ethical theory with discussion of some alternatives, both substantive and methodological. The main focus is on the distinctions that non- consequentialist ethical theory draws between different ways of bringing about states of affairs. This is presented in Kamm’s char- acteristic style. Readers should expect highly complex, subtle arguments as Kamm draws out fine-grained distinctions from intuitive responses to cases. Those who find their (...) intuitions less than firm at such a level of detail may find Intricate Ethics frustrat- ing at times. Nonetheless, it is a highly significant work. It dis- cusses issues at the heart of nonconsequentialist ethical theory with prodigious insight and clarity of thought. Even those whose intuitions prevent them from following Kamm to her conclusions will find the discussion along the way richly rewarding. (shrink)

It may be tempting for breastfeeding advocates to respond to challenges to breastfeeding older children or breastfeeding in public by pointing out the nutritional or developmental benefits of breastfeeding or by noting that breastfeeding is often extremely discreet. Such responses may concede more than they should: by focusing on rebutting the empirical claim, breastfeeding supporters may end up implicitly accepting two presuppositions about breastfeeding: first, the presupposition that breastfeeding requires justification in terms of health or developmental benefits to the child; (...) second, the presupposition that breastfeeding in public is only acceptable if assumed standards of discretion are met. -/- This paper aims to use the methods of analytic philosophy to: (a) show how, if left unchallenged, these implicit assumptions can become part of the pragmatic presuppositions of the conversation, so that the discussion proceeds taking their acceptance for granted; (b) argue that we can expect these presuppositions to have negative effects on all mothers, no matter how they feed their babies, and on the tenor of public discussion of infant feeding; (c) reconstruct the reasoning that might underlie these presuppositions and show that this reasoning is mistaken; (d) show that recognising breastfeeding as a family way of life and a loving interaction between parent and child gives rise to a moral right to breastfeed in public without social sanction, whether one is able to breastfeed discreetly or not. (shrink)

This volume presents ten new essays on the nature of perceptual imagination and perceptual memory, framed by an introductory overview of these topics. How do perceptual imagination and memory resemble and differ from each other and from other kinds of sensory experience? And what role does each play in perception and in the acquisition of knowledge? These are the two central questions that the contributors seek to address.

In this paper, I try to pin down the essence of conservative political theory. I then show that no-one really believes this theory, because all of us embrace progressive values and principles under the right circumstances. This doesn't mean that there aren't such things as conservative political reasons, and I offer an account of such reasons here. But in my view no-one really thinks that such reasons are the sole or even the primary political reasons.

When a mother deliberately harms her child, it is tempting to assume that she must be either insane or lacking the "natural" love of a mother for her children. We want to believe that such mothers have almost nothing in common with "good" mothers. Drawing extensively on empirical research, Sarah LaChance Adams' Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers, and What A "Good" Mother Would Do shows that maternal ambivalence, simultaneous desires to nurture and violently reject one's children, is both common and reasonable, (...) the result of genuine conflicts between mothers' interests and those of their children. Both appropriate support and deliberative agency are necessary to avoid maternal ambivalence... (shrink)

It is hoped that modern sensory substitution and augmentation devices will be able to replace or expand our senses. But to what extent has this been achieved to date? To what extent are the experiences created by sensory substitution devices like the sensory experiences that we are trying to replace? To what extent can we augment people’s senses providing them with new information and new experiences? The first aim of this introduction is to delve deeply into this question to discover (...) the usefulness of these devices, to outline the different sorts of experience that might be created, and what the evidence tells us about these experiences. While there are some reasons to be hopeful about the powers of sensory substitution devices, there are also reasons to wonder whether they will ever really have the practical applications that we hope they might have. The second aim is to look to see whether the study of modern sensory substitution and augmentation devices can shed light on the nature of our senses and perception in general. Much of the philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific work that takes place concerning sensory substitution and augmentation is keenly aware of the possibility that it might help our understanding and it seeks to comprehend many different aspects of perception. (shrink)

The distinction between action and omission is of interest in both theoretical and practical philosophy. We use this distinction daily in our descriptions of behaviour and appeal to it in moral judgements. However, the very nature of the act/omission distinction is as yet unclear. Jonathan Bennett’s account of the distinction in terms of positive and negative facts is one of the most promising attempts to give an analysis of the ontological distinction between action and omission. According to Bennett’s account, an (...) upshot is the result of an agent’s action if and only if the relevant fact about her conduct is positive. A proposition about an agent’s conduct is positive if and only if most possible movements of the agent would not have made that proposition true. However, Bennett’s account will fail unless it is possible to make sense of claims about ‘most possible movements of the agent’. We need a way of comparing the size of subsets of the behaviour space (the set of possible movements). I argue that Bennett’s own method of comparison is unsatisfactory. I present an alternative method of comparing subsets of the behaviour space. (shrink)

Attempts to defend the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing harm directly have left many unconvinced. I give an indirect defence of the moral significance of the distinction between doing and allowing, focusing on the agent's duty to reason in a way that is responsive to possible harmful effects of their behaviour. Due to our cognitive limitations, we cannot be expected to take all harmful consequences of our behaviour into account. We are required to be responsive to (...) harmful consequences that have some feature that makes it easy for us to become aware of them. I show that, under Jonathan Bennett's analysis of the doing/allowing distinction, harm that is incidentally done has such a feature, which is not shared by harm that is incidentally allowed. Any plausible analysis of the doing/allowing distinction will entail a similar asymmetry. It follows that, prima facie, an agent who incidentally does harm has violated a moral requirement (the deliberative requirement) which an agent who incidentally allows harm has not violated. 1. (shrink)

Murdoch and Levinas both believe that our humanity requires us to suppress our natural egoism and to be morally responsive to others. Murdoch insists that while such a morality presupposes a ’transcendent background’, God should be kept out of the picture altogether. By contrast, Levinas argues that, in responding morally to others, we make contact with God (though not the God of traditional Christianity) and that in doing so we become more God-like. I attempt to clarify their agreements and differences, (...) and I offer some criticisms of their conception of humanity, God, and the relationship between them. (shrink)

Many philosophers have recently become interested in conceptual engineering, or the activity of producing better conceptual schemes in human populations. But few, if any, are asking the question: what would it mean for actual human agents to possess the social authority to modify a conceptual scheme in this way? This paper argues for a deontological approach to conceptual engineering, wherein we have to secure social authority qua engineers before attempting to modify social concepts. I show that the dominant, consequentialist conception (...) of engineering violates basic rights that concept-users have, particularly over their own identity-constituting concepts. Using examples from the philosophy of race and sexuality, I show that conceptual engineers cannot authoritatively modify social concepts if they employ consequentialist reasoning about those concepts. (shrink)

Infant feeding decisions are highly emotionally charged. I argue elsewhere that many problems surrounding infant feeding decisions result from a moralized context created by mistakes in our assumptions about maternal duties including the mistaken assumption that mothers have a defeasible moral duty to breastfeed. Mothers have a reason, but not a moral duty to breastfeed. Even those who are convinced by my argument in the case of full-term babies, might find it harder to accept in the case of premature babies. (...) It might seem that mothers do have a defeasible moral duty to breastfeed or, as is more likely to be appropriate in such cases, to express breastmilk. Here, I explain why preterm neonates present a tricky case for the right not to breastfeed. I show why, nonetheless, moral pressure for mothers to express breastmilk in the neonatal unit is neither permissible nor pragmatically advisable. I argue that instead we should address structural barriers to providing breastmilk and support donor milk initiatives. (shrink)