In this paper I present an argument in favour of a parental duty to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). I argue that if embryos created in vitro were able to decide for themselves in a rational manner, they would sometimes choose PGD as a method of selection. Couples, therefore, should respect their hypothetical choices on a principle similar to that of patient autonomy. My thesis shows that no matter which moral doctrine couples subscribe to, they ought to conduct the PGD (...) procedure in the situations when it is impossible to implant all of the created embryos and if there is a significant risk for giving birth to a child with a serious condition. (shrink)

Reclamation of a slur involves the creation of a new, positively-valenced meaning that gradually replaces the old pejorative meaning. This means that at a critical stage, the slur is ambiguous. It has been claimed that this ambiguity is polysemy. However, it is far from clear whether the view can explain why the introduction of the new meaning forces the old one out of existence. I argue that this datapoint can be explained by invoking the mechanism of homonymic conflict, and, therefore, (...) that the ambiguity involved in reclamation is homonymy. One generalization that follows from my account is that conventionalized verbal irony, unlike conventionalized metonymy and metaphor, begets homonymy. Along the way, I criticize the standard ways of drawing the distinction between polysemy and homonymy in terms of semantic and etymological relatedness. If the notions of polysemy and homonymy are to be invoked in explanations, they should be understood in terms of how meanings are stored in the mental lexicon. My account also provides an elegant way of conceptualizing the difference between two types of conceptual engineering, namely reclamation and amelioration. (shrink)

My paper builds on the conceptual tools from three interrelated philosophical debates that—as I believe—may help structure important if chaotic discussions about surrogates for living human brains and resolve some practical issues related to regulatory matters. In particular, I refer to the discussions about the “moral precautionary principle” in research ethics (Koplin and Wilkinson 2019); about normative uncertainty in ethics (MacAskill, Bykvist, and Ord 2020), and about the inductive risk problem for animal welfare scientists (Birch 2018). I elucidate upon the (...) possible meanings of the phrase “a too good human brain surrogate” used by Henry T. Greely (2021), and I demonstrate that the evaluation of the practical and regulatory implications of the “goodness” of such surrogates created for research purposes should be sensitive to the possible consequences of two types of errors: the under-attribution and over-attribution of moral status to such beings. Many authors writing about this topic (including Greely 2021, but see also, e.g., Koplin and Savulescu 2019) concentrate only on the first type of error, neglecting the negative consequences of the second type, i.e., over-attribution. (shrink)

According to what McMahan and Savulescu (2024) call the “popular position”, embryo selection is less ethically problematic than gene editing (other things being equal). The Two-Tier View, defended by McMahan and Savulescu, implies that the popular position is mistaken. The authors treat gene editing of embryos similarly to standard cases of medical treatments that promise expected benefits for the (subsequent) person even though gene editing also may create risks of harmful side effects for her. McMahan and Savulescu assume that if (...) gene editing is (successfully) done, it is better for the person who developed from the beneficently edited embryo. And, if the editing had not been done, although it was possible, that would have been worse for the same person in question. Thus, the comparator must always be a possible, even if unlikely, world in which she would have existed. That is why gene editing, in their view, resembles medical treatments. Therefore, assuming that standard medical treatments are not more ethically problematic than embryo selection, they conclude that (in general) gene editing should also be treated as not more problematic than embryo selection. In this paper, I am taking one step further than McMahan and Savulescu in questioning the central assumptions in the bioethical debates about new reproductive technologies. In the previous work, we argued that the very distinction between person-affecting and identity-affecting interventions is based on a questionable form of material-origin essentialism (Żuradzki and Dranseika 2022). Here, I argue that the bipartite distinction between person-affecting and impersonal reasons, as used by McMahan and Savulescu, insufficiently represents different possible counterfactual comparisons between real and merely possible outcomes. In particular, I argue that the evaluation of gene editing requires counterfactual comparisons to situations in which the benefited person might or might not exist. Such evaluation requires an additional class of reasons, let me call them “semi-person-affecting,” that cannot be reduced to either person-affecting or impersonal ones. This aspect of gene editing makes it dissimilar to standard cases of medical treatments. (shrink)

In this commentary paper, we are taking one step further in questioning the central assumptions in the bioethical debates about reproductive technologies. We argue that the very distinction between “person affecting” and “identity affecting” interventions is based on a questionable form of material-origin essentialism. Questioning of this form of essentialist approach to human identity allows treating genome editing and genetic selection as more similar than they are taken to be in the standard approaches. It would also challenge the idea that (...) normative reasons we have in these two types of cases markedly differ in strength. (shrink)

In this article, I present a new interpretation of the pro-life view on the status of early human embryos. In my understanding, this position is based not on presumptions about the ontological status of embryos and their developmental capabilities but on the specific criteria of rational decisions under uncertainty and on a cautious response to the ambiguous status of embryos. This view, which uses the decision theory model of moral reasoning, promises to reconcile the uncertainty about the ontological status of (...) embryos with the certainty about normative obligations. I will demonstrate that my interpretation of the pro-life view, although seeming to be stronger than the standard one, has limited scope and cannot be used to limit destructive research on human embryos. (shrink)

Obecny ranking czasopism humanistycznych jest skrajnie niesprawiedliwy: za publikację w najlepszych czasopismach w swoich dziedzinach humaniści mogą otrzymać tylko 10 pkt (lista C); za publikacje w najsłabszym w danej dziedzinie czasopiśmie indeksowanym przez Thomson Reuters (TR) i posiadającym Impact Factor (IF) dostaje się obecnie 15, a w najlepszym – 50 (lista A). W tym tekście najpierw omawiam trzy możliwości sporządzenia rankingu czasopism filozoficznych, a potem przedstawiam własną propozycję rankingu opartego na liście ERIH i indeksie SCImago (Scopus). Główna zaleta mojego rozwiązania (...) polega na tym, że cytowania nie są głównym kryterium, ale służą jako uzupełnienie pierwotnego podziału opartego na kryteriach jakościowych przeprowadzonego przez ekspertów na zlecenie European Research Council. (shrink)

One can often hear that intuitions are standardly “appealed to”, “relied on”, “accounted for”, or “used as evidence” in ethics. How should we interpret these claims? I argue that the typical understanding is what Bernard Molyneux calls “descriptive evidentialism”: the idea that intuition-states are treated as evidence of their propositional contents in the context of justification. I then argue that descriptive evidentialism is false- on any account of what intuitions are. That said, I admit that ethicists frequently rely on intuitions (...) to clarify, persuade, discover, or to support things other than the intuitions’ contents. The contents of intuitions are also commonly used as starting premises of philosophical arguments. However claims about these practices need to be sharply distinguished from the prevalent dogma. (shrink)

I will argue that physicians have an ethical obligation to justify their conscientious objection and the most reliable interpretation of the Polish legal framework claims that conscientious objection is permissible only when the justification shows the genuineness of the judgment of conscience that is not based on false beliefs and arises from a moral norm that has a high rank. I will demonstrate that the dogma accepted in the Polish doctrine that the reasons that lie behind conscientious objection in medicine (...) cannot be evaluated or controlled by anyone is based either on a mistaken interpretation of the Constitution or on the unreliable concept of conscience. I will refer to the legal regulations concerning military refusals that require from objectors to reveal and justify their views. Finally, I will demonstrate why conscientious objection under uncertainty does not deserve acceptance, because it is based on a specific version of the precautionary principle. (shrink)

According to psychological research, people are more eager to help identified individuals than unidentified ones. This phenomenon significantly influences many important decisions, both individual and public, regarding, for example, vaccinations or the distribution of healthcare resources. This paper aims at presenting definitions of various levels of identifiability as well as a critical analysis of the main philosophical arguments regarding the normative significance of the identifiability effect, which refer to: (1) ex ante contractualism; (2) fair distribution of chances and risks; (3) (...) anti-aggregationist principles that recommend the distribution of bad effects and the concentration of good ones. I will show that these arguments, although connected with interesting philosophical problems regarding e.g. counterfactuals, aggregation, or probability, are unconvincing. (shrink)

Konserwatywni przeciwnicy prowadzenia badań naukowych na ludzkich embrionach argumentują, że od momentu poczęcia mają one status moralny równy statusowi ludzi dorosłych: zarodki mają takie samo prawo do życia jak dorośli. W artykule przedstawiam oryginalną argumentację za tym stanowiskiem, której źródła można znaleźć w XVII-wiecznej teologii moralnej i współczesnej teorii decyzji. Argumentacja ta nie odwołuje się do statusu ontologicznego embrionów, ale do pewnego typu rozumowania praktycznego na temat tego, co należy robić w rozmaitych sytuacjach niepewności. Na pierwszy rzut oka wydaje się (...) ona wzmacniać stanowisko konserwatywne, ponieważ nie zależy od kontrowersyjnych metafizycznych założeń na temat statusu zarodków czy kwestii ich potencjalności. W artykule pokażę jednak, że argumentacja ta obarczona jest poważnymi wadami, które sprawiają, że nie da się jej zastosować do uzasadnienia sprzeciwu wobec moralnej czy prawnej dopuszczalności np. badań na zarodkowych komórkach macierzystych. (shrink)

According to latitudinarianism, S’s belief that x is F is about x solely in virtue of S’s believing a proposition that ascribes F- ness to x. Saul Kripke (2011b) has recently objected to this view by arguing that it entails that S believes of arbitrary objects that they are F. In this paper I revisit Ernest Sosa’s (1995a, 1995b) notion of associative aboutness to put forward a novel account of mental reference, called ‘associative exportation,’ that evades the troublesome consequence pointed (...) out by Kripke, while preserving the spirit of latitudinarianism. In particular, the proposed view: (1) does not invoke any form of acquaintance with the object of belief; (2) validates a weak reducibility thesis of de re belief to de dicto; (3) is compatible with the observation that our unreflective aboutness judgments are latitudinarian; (4) offers new insights about the notorious tallest- spy objection. (shrink)

It is part of the phenomenology of perceptual experiences that objects seem to be presented to us. The first guide to objects is their perceptual presence. Further reflection shows that we take the objects of our perceptual experiences to be among the causes of our experiences. However, not all causes of the experience are also objects of the experience. This raises the question indicated in the title of this paper. We argue that taking phenomenal presence as the guide to the (...) objects of perception, we can see that at least in two sensory modalities, smell and touch, there is no uniform answer to this question. The objects of olfactory and tactile experiences can move along the causal chain. Accordingly, the content of olfactory and tactile experience may vary. (shrink)

The empirically documented fact is that people’s preferences are time -biased. The main aim of this paper is to analyse in which sense do time -biases violate the requirements of rationality, as many authors assume. I will demonstrate that contrary to many influential views in psychology, economy and philosophy it is very difficult to find why the bias toward the near violates the requirements rationality. I will also show why the bias toward the future violates the requirements of rationality in (...) a very basic sense. (shrink)

An important part of the influential Humean doctrine in philosophy is the supervenience principle (sometimes referred to as the principle of separability). This principle asserts that the complete state of the world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of its most fundamental components and their spatiotemporal relations (the so-called Humean mosaic). There are well-known arguments in the literature purporting to show that in quantum mechanics the Humean supervenience principle is violated, due to the existence of entangled states. Recently, however, arguments have (...) been presented to the effect that the supervenience principle can be defended in Bohmian mechanics. The key element of this strategy lies in the observation that according to Bohmian mechanics the fundamental facts about particles are facts about their spatial locations, and moreover, for any proper subsystem of the world its state may non-trivially depend on the spatial configuration of the rest of the universe. Thus quantum-mechanical states of subsystems do not represent their intrinsic properties but rather characterize their relations with the environment. In this paper we point out the worry that this Bohmian strategy --known as Bohumianism-- saves the letter but not the spirit of the Humean doctrine of supervenience, since it prima facie violates another seemingly important Humean principle, which we call Strong Supervenience and whose denial implies the existence of necessary connections among distinct individuals. We argue that the best defense for Bohumians is to question the fundamental existence of complex physical systems and their states by treating any reference to them as a convenient description of the underlying collection of Bohmian particles. We consider several pros and cons of this strategy. (shrink)

Jeremy R. Garrett claims that the nature and scope of our rescue duties cannot be properly understood and addressed without reference to social context or institutional background conditions. In my comment I focus not on social or institutional but on psychological background conditions that are also necessary for the conceptualization of rescue cases. These additional conditions are of crucial importance since an entire paradigm of “rescue medicine” is founded, as Garret notices, on the powerful and immediate “impulse to rescue” (Garrett (...) 2015). I understand this “impulse” as the preference toward identified victims, and I argue that it may sometimes distort genuine moral judgments in rescue cases. (shrink)

A dogma accepted in many ethical, religious, and legal frameworks is that the reasons behind conscientious objection (CO) in healthcare cannot be evaluated or judged by any institution because conscience is individual and autonomous. This paper shows that this background view is mistaken: the requirement to reveal and explain the reasons for conscientious objection in healthcare is ethically justified and legally desirable. Referring to real healthcare cases and legal regulations, this paper argues that these reasons should be evaluated either ex (...) ante or ex post and defends novel conceptual claims that have not been analyzed in the debates on CO. First, a moral threshold requirement: CO is only justified if the reasons behind a refusal are of a moral nature and meet a certain threshold of moral importance. Second, this paper considers the rarely discussed conceptual similarities between CO in healthcare and the legal regulations concerning military refusals that place the burden of proof on conscientious objectors. This paper concludes that conscientious objection in healthcare can be accommodated only in some cases of destroying or killing human organisms. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to discuss primarily the epistemological theory of reflection as seen by Heinrich Rickert, the main representative of Neo-Kantianism Baden School. The most important arguments put forward by Rickert against taking the cognition as a reflection of the reality are being analysed. Rickert’s standpoint turns out to be moderate. He argues against the transcendental theory of reflection, but does not reject the idea of reflection as a model of cognition and takes the immanent theory of (...) reflection as relatively justified. The paper contains also a discussion of the standpoint of another representative of Baden School, Emil Lask, who has rejected the theory of reflection in favour of the after-image theory. (shrink)

In this short paper I critically analyze Marc Leman’s embodied approach to musical meaning and representation, suggesting that its explanatory value is not sufficient in order to be a good alternative for theories encompassing the concept of representation.

The paper is devoted to an analysis of the epistemology of Johannes Volkelt, its main arguments and the relation of Volkelt's theory of certainty to Kant and other contemporary philosophers, such as Edmund Husserl. Volkelt's problem of scepticism is closely related to the positivist principle, which aimed at limiting all knowledge to our individual sphere of representations. This principle in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason means the unknowableness of the thing in itself. Volkelt seeks for answer to the question about (...) the trans-subjective knowledge. He finds a basis for the certainty in the dispresuppositional theory of the transsubjective minimum. The acceptance of the trans-subjective minimum determines too the possibility of metaphysics. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to refer basic philosophical approaches to the problem of musical meaning and, on the other hand, to describe some examples of the research on musical meaning found in the field of cognitive neuroscience. By looking at those two approaches together it can be seen that there is still no agreement on how musical meaning should be understood, often due to several methodological problems of which the most important seem to be the possibility of inter-theoretical (...) reduction and application of an accurate theory of explanation. I am suggesting that the application of some form of the mechanistic model of explanation might be found useful for clarifying reductionism-antireductionism dispute concerning musical meaning, and more importantly, for providing some answers for the debate in music-as-language controversy. (shrink)

Etycy nie poświęcali dotąd wiele uwagi niepewności, koncentrując się często na skrajnie wyidealizowanych hipotetycznych sytuacjach, w których zarówno kwestie empiryczne (np. stan świata, spektrum możliwych decyzji oraz ich konsekwencje, związki przyczynowe między zdarzeniami), jak i normatywne (np. treść norm, skale wartości) były jasno określone i znane podmiotowi. W poniższym artykule – który jest rezultatem projektu dotyczącego różnych typów decyzji w sytuacjach niepewności związanej z postępem w naukach i technologiach biomedycznych – przedstawię analizę sytuacji niepewności normatywnej, czyli takich, w których podmiot (...) musi podjąć decyzję, nie mając pewności co do tego, jaka norma postępowania jest właściwa, np. dlatego, że ma sprzeczne intuicje normatywne na temat dopuszczalności danej decyzji. Stanowisko, które określa się niekiedy mianem komparatywizmu, głosi, że w tego typu sytuacjach należy uwzględniać nie tylko stopnie przekonań podmiotu w kwestii różnych norm, ale także to, na ile możliwe decyzje warte są podjęcia wedle tych norm. Przedstawię tu analizę kilku przypadków niepewności normatywnej, a także charakterystyczny argument przeciwko dotychczasowym wersjom komparatywizmu, wskazujący, że nie uwzględniają one różnych nastawień do ryzyka w sytuacjach niepewności normatywnej, choć dopuszczają jednocześnie różne nastawienia do ryzyka w sytuacjach niepewności empirycznej. Pokażę też, że zasada ostrożności dotycząca statusu moralnego w upraszczający sposób przedstawia sytuacje niepewności normatywnej. (shrink)

In my previous paper I argued that if in vitro fertilization (IVF) is legal and practiced there is no moral ground to object to legalization of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). My opponent raises an objection that my paper “fails to address the ethical argumentation of one key opponent of IVF – the Catholic Church”. In this reply I show that her/his thesis that embryos created during IVF are in ‘ethical limbo’ and “fall outside the moral universe of Christian ethics” does (...) not undermine my argumentation and masks the serious problem Catholics have with the moral status of early embryos. (shrink)

Wedle Stanowiska Komitetu Bioetyki przy Prezydium PAN nr 2/2012 z dnia 8. czerwca 2012 r. w sprawie preimplantacyjnej diagnostyki genetycznej (PDG) jednym z głównych problemów wiążących się z prawnym uregulowaniem PDG jest nierozstrzygalność sporu na temat statusu moralnego ludzkich zarodków. Stanowisko i zgłoszone do niego zdania odrębne stwierdzają, że ci, którzy uznają, że wczesne zarodki mają pełny status moralny, nie mogą się zgodzić na diagnostykę preimplantacyjną. W artykule pokazuję, że przyjęcie nawet skrajnie konserwatywnego poglądu na status wczesnych embrionów ludzkich, czyli (...) uznanie ich za byty mające pełny status moralny i pełne prawo do życia, nie wystarczy, by skutecznie argumentować przeciw dopuszczalności PDG w sytuacji, w której nie możemy zagwarantować przeżycia wszystkich embrionów. Przedstawiony tu argument opiera się na powszechnie akceptowanej obecnie w etyce medycznej zasadzie poszanowania autonomii oraz odwołuje się do sposobu podejmowania decyzji w sytuacji niepewności charakterystycznego dla klasycznie rozumianej teorii decyzji. (shrink)

I analyze recent discussions about making moral decisions under normative uncertainty. I discuss whether this kind of uncertainty should have practical consequences for decisions and whether there are reliable methods of reasoning that deal with the possibility that we are wrong about some moral issues. I defend a limited use of the decision theory model of reasoning in cases of normative uncertainty.

The paper deals with Gerold Prauss’s critique of cognition taken as reflection of the surrounding reality in the consciousness of the agent. The results of his critique are similar to the standpoint presented earlier by Neo-Kantians. Prauss’s original contribution to the debate on theory of reflection consists in distinction between materialistic and non-materialistic theories of reflection, as well as in his argumentation basing on the notion of clarity.

Własność prywatna nie jest żadnym naturalnym uprawnieniem, ale prawną konwencją zdefiniowaną przez system podatkowy. Stopień ingerencji w rzekomo naturalne prawo własności nie może być podstawą oceniania systemów podatkowych, bo sama własność jest wytworem takich systemów. Podatki nie odbierają nam własności, tylko umożliwiają jej istnienie.

Celem artykułu jest krytyka przyjętego przez niektórych filozofów podziału na normatywność w podstawowym sensie oraz normatywność wymogów wąsko rozumianej racjonalności. Pokazuję, że podział taki nie jest wyczerpujący, ponieważ pomija ważny typ wymogów normatywnych, a mianowicie reagowanie na racje. Z jednej strony tego rodzaju wymogi nie przypominają wymogów normatywnych w podstawowym sensie, a z drugiej — istotnie różnią się od racjonalności rozumianej jako spójność między nastawieniami. Dochodzę do wniosku, że reagowanie na racje należy uznać za trzeci typ wymogów normatywnych.

Celem artykułu jest krytyka kilku popularnych argumentów przeciwko wykorzystywaniu współczesnych osiągnięć biomedycznych do poprawiania ludzkiej kondycji fizycznej lub umysłowej. Na przykładzie prac Habermasa, Sandela, Fukuyamy omówię trzy argumenty tego typu odwołujące się do: 1) autonomii; 2) życia jako daru; 3) naturalnej równowagi. Na koniec pokażę, że sprzeciw względem niektórych propozycji biomedycznego polepszenia kondycji ludzkiej może być wynikiem swoistego błędu poznawczego, który psychologowie określają jako efekt status quo.

The results of empirical research show that people prefer to help identified individuals rather than unidentified ones. This preference has an important influence on many private and public decisions, for example concerning vaccination or the distribution of healthcare resources. The aim of this article is to define the terms: “identified”, “unidentified”, “statistical”, and then to analyze three philosophical arguments concerning the normative implications of this preference: 1) contractualism ex ante ; 2) fair distribution of chances and risks; 3) principles regarding (...) the concentration of good effects and the distribution of bad effects. I will demonstrate that these arguments, which are related to interesting philosophical problems, such as counterfactuals, are not convincing. (shrink)

Książka dotyczy trzech powiązanych z sobą zagadnień: internalizmu racji działania, internalizmu motywacyjnego i tzw. hume’owskiej teorii motywacji. Próbuje odpowiedzieć m.in. na następujące pytania: Czy wolno nam stwierdzić, że ktoś powinien coś zrobić, nawet gdy nie może być motywowany do tego działania? Czy można szczerze akceptować jakiś osąd moralny i nie być motywowanym do postępowania zgodnie z jego zaleceniami? Czy normy moralne służą tak naprawdę realizacji egoistycznych pragnień, czy może są fikcją wpajaną przez instytucje społeczne? Autor pokazuje, jak wiele współcześnie dyskutowanych (...) problemów metaetycznych można rozwiązać, sięgając do filozofii Davida Hume’a. Choć koncentruje się na najnowszych dyskusjach z dziedziny metaetyki, to zagadnienia omawiane w książce stanowią kontynuację klasycznych debat filozoficznych na temat takich pojęć jak wartość, dobro, obowiązek, racjonalność, relatywizm czy słabość woli. (shrink)

W artykule wykażę, że szeroko rozpowszechnione poglądy na temat norm, które obowiązują żółnierzy na wojnie, pozostają w sprzeczności z moralnością ogólną. Etyka wojny dopuszcza działania, które w zwyczajnych sytuacjach nie tylko są uznawane za moralnie niedopuszczalne, ale wydają się czynami godnymi najwyższego moralnego potępienia. Zwracam uwagę na dwie wybrane rozbieżności między etyką ogólną a etyką wojny, tj. na problem związany z istnieniem asymetrii pomiędzy atakującymi i atakowanymi oraz na kwestię tego, kto jest właściwym celem moralnie usprawiedliwionego aktu przemocy. Odrzucając stanowiska (...) skrajne (realizm w stosunkach międzynarodowych i różne odmiany pacyfizmu), uznaję, że możliwe są dwa rozwiązania problemu tych rozbieśności: albo godzimy się na status quo, czyli mocną niezgodność etyki wojny z etyki ogólną, albo uznajemy, że należy znacząco przeformułować tradycyjną etykę wojny, a być może także obowiązujące normy prawa międzynarodowego. (shrink)

In the article I analyze the theory of consciousness understood as a asymmetric binary relation. This concept was formulated by Paul Natorp in Allgemeine Psychologie nach kritischer Methode and by Heinrich Rickert in Der Gegenstand der in Erkenntnis. According to this theory, consciousness is neither the act nor the action or the condition, but a clear relationship of subject to the object. Consciousness in this perspective is the relation of asymmetric and differential. This means that the subject cannot be recognized (...) as an object and vice versa. Only the object can be conscious by the subject.Key words NATORP, CONSCIOUSNESS, RELATION. (shrink)

Celem niniejszego artykułu jest obrona internalizmu racji do działania. Zaczynam od omówienia internalizmu w wersji przedstawionej przez Bernarda Williamsa i przedstawiam główny argument na rzecz tego stanowiska. Następnie sprawdzam, czy ten rodzaj internalizmu prowadzi do relatywizmu. Twierdzę, że stanowisko to prowadzi do ograniczonego relatywizmu, ponieważ stwierdzenia dotyczące racji do działania nie są zrelatywizowane do wiedzy podmiotu działającego. Zwracam też uwagę na rozmaite ograniczenia relatywizacji subiektywnych układów motywacyjnych.

The purpose of this paper is the analysis of both legal and ethical ways of justifying targeted killings. I compare two legal models: the law enforcement model vs the rules of armed conflicts; and two ethical ones: retribution vs the right of self-defence. I argue that, if the targeted killing is to be either legally or ethically justified, it would be so due to fulfilling of some criteria common for all acceptable forms of killing, and not because terrorist activity is (...) somehow distinguished and gives special privileges to a state that fights it. The practical implication of my analysis is that one of the most spectacular targeted killings, which was the targeting and killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, was not justified, because it was only supposed to be a retribution for the September 11th terrorist attacks. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize Ethan Jerzak’s view that ‘want’ has only one sense, the mixed expected utility sense. First, I show that his appeals to ‘really’-locutions fail to explain away the counterintuitive predictions of his view. Second, I present a class of cases, which I call “principled indifference” cases, that pose difficulties for any expected utility lexical entry for ‘want’. I argue that in order to account for these cases, one needs to concede that ‘want’ has a sense, according (...) to which wanting is a matter of subjectively preferring p-alternatives to not-p-alternatives. Finally, I introduce some considerations for and against the view that ‘want’ also has another sense, which is roughly synonymous with ‘need’. (shrink)

„Skoro powszechnie przyjmuje się, że sumienie jest suwerenne, to nie wiadomo, po co lekarz miałby uzasadniać pisemnie swój światopogląd” – napisała Naczelna Izba Lekarska w skardze do Trybunału Konstytucyjnego. Trybunał tę część skargi oddalił w wyroku z 7 października 2015 r., ale stwierdził, że „Celem prowadzenia dokumentacji medycznej nie jest (…) utrwalanie na piśmie poglądów filozoficzno-prawnych lekarza”. Uznał też, że uzasadnienie „powinno mieć charakter medyczny, a nie służyć wyjaśnieniu światopoglądu lekarza, czy też wskazaniu zasady moralnej leżącej u podstaw jego zachowania”. (...) Podobną interpretację akceptuje wielu polskich prawników, twierdząc, że skoro sumienie czy światopogląd lekarza są „indywidualne”, „autonomiczne”, „suwerenne”, to merytoryczne powody odmowy wykonania świadczenia medycznego nie mogą podlegać jakiejkolwiek ocenie i kontroli. (shrink)

According to the New Angle, any explanation of the Knobe effect must be gradable and asymmetric. It has been argued that only Hindriks’ approach meets both criteria. First, we argue that Holton’s hypothesis also meets the criteria. Second, we show that the authors are not justified in taking the criteria to be empirically justified. We have failed to replicate the asymmetry result in two experiments. Moreover, gradability can be objective or epistemic. We show that the New Angle presupposes objective gradability. (...) In our experiments, the patterns of responses to questions about epistemic and objective gradability are the same, irrespective of whether the feature is objectively gradable (e.g., blameworthiness) or not (e.g., intentionality). Our results thus question the extent to which the New Angle is empirically grounded. Moreover, they raise doubt whether the answers to questions about epistemic and objective gradability can be taken at face value at all. (shrink)

I argue that the scope of rational framing effects may be broader than Bermúdez assumes. Even in many “canonical experiments,” the explanation of the judgment reversals or shifts may refer to reasons, including moral ones. Referring to the Asian disease paradigm (ADP), I describe how non-consequentialist reasons related to fairness and the distinction between doing and allowing may help explain and justify the typical pattern of choices in the cases like ADP.

Przemocy jest coraz mniej – zarówno w czasie pokoju, jak i podczas wojen. Na przykładzie trzech konfliktów zbrojnych z ostatnich lat zastanawiam się, czy decydenci powinni prowadzić działania zbrojne w taki sposób, by zminimalizować całkowitą liczbę ofiar. Pokazuję, że ani obowiązujące obecnie normy prawa międzynarodowego, ani osądy moralne na temat dopuszczalności stosowania przemocy nie wymagają od decydentów ograniczania całkowitej liczby ofiar konfliktów zbrojnych w każdym przypadku.

In my essay I consider the imaginary case of a future mother who refuses to undergo genetic alteration on her germline although she knows that her, as yet unconceived, child will have a serious genetic disorder. I analyze the good and bad points of two branches of arguments directed against her decision, consequentialist and rights-based. Then I discuss whether accepting one line of these arguments or the other makes a difference in moral assessment. I conclude that, although from the preanalytical (...) perspective we strongly oppose the refusal of genetic treatment in my imaginary case, it is probably impossible to construct one coherent theory which embraces all possible moral dilemmas triggered by our actions which affect the number and the identity of future people. (shrink)

Many psychologists have tried to reveal the formation and processing of moral judgments by using a variety of empirical methods: behavioral data, tests of statistical significance, and brain imaging. Meanwhile, some scholars maintain that the new empirical findings of the ways we make moral judgments question the trustworthiness and authority of many intuitive ethical responses. The aim of this special issue is to encourage scholars to rethink how, if at all, it is possible to draw any normative conclusions by discovering (...) the psychological processes underlying moral judgments. (shrink)

MacKay and Robinson (2016) claim that some legal procedures that regulate organ donations (VAC, opt-in, opt-out) bypass people's rational capacities and thus are “potentially morally worse than MAC”, which only employs a very mild form of coercion. We provide a critique of their argumentation and defend the opposite thesis: MAC is potentially morally worse than the three other options.

Traditional views concerning musical meaning, in the field of philosophy, quite often oscillate around the discussion of whether music can transfer meaning (and if so if it happens by a means similar to language). Philosophers have provided a wide range of views – according to some, music has no meaning whatsoever, or if there is any meaning involved, it is only of a formal/structural significance. According to the opposing views, music can contain meaning similarly to language and what is more, (...) sometimes it can be even richer than language, as in music we are – arguably – able to encode “emotional meanings”. In recent years, several approaches – also speculative – to the old philosophical question have been proposed by evolutionary psychologists, one of the most controversial views being that of Stephen Pinker’s famous metaphor for music as “auditory cheesecake”. This anti-adaptationist view has been challenged f. ex. by Geoffrey Miller or Ian Cross. In this chapter, I enlist some main philosophical views on the titular problem and investigate some evolutionary-paradigm-based propositions for its solution, to examine whether – both from explanatory and methodological standpoints – the philosophy of music could gain something from recent developments in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

The subject of the paper is a polemic between Leonard Nelson and Ernst Cassirer mainly concerning the understanding of the critical method in philosophy. Nelson refutes the accusation of psychologism and attacks the core of the philosophy of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism. In response to those allegations, Cassirer feels obliged to defend the position of his masters and performs this task brilliantly. The present paper considers similarities and differences in the positions of both sides in this debate. I try (...) to evaluate the arguments of both sides and argue that they took basically the same positions, while the existing discrepancies did not justify such an intense polemic. If the disputing sides had approached the discussion in a less emotional way, it could have led to substantive and interesting conclusions. (shrink)

The article by MacKay and Saylor (2020) claims that the principle of fair subject selection yields conflicting imperatives (e.g. in the case of pregnant women) and should be understood as “a bundle of four distinct sub-principles” (i.e. fair inclusion, burden sharing, opportunity, distribution of third-party risks), each having conflicting normative recommendations (MacKay and Saylor 2020). The authors also offer guidance as to how we should navigate between subprinciples that may conflict with each other. The problem is a crucial one since (...) fair subject selection is one of the principles regulating clinical research that produces generalizable knowledge with the potential of improving people’s health. Therefore, there may be cases where the way in which participants are selected directly influences the generalizability (or its lack) of the clinically relevant knowledge and its value (if any) to different groups. In my commentary article, written from the philosophical perspective, I notice a number of interrelated problems which I believe have not been discussed thoroughly in the target article: (1) the precise way in which health care priority setting should influence the content of health research priority setting and fair inclusion principles; (2) the distinction between group and individual benefits and burdens from clinical research; (3) the reference class problem in medical research. (shrink)

W tekście omawiam tę część internetowej dyskusji, przeprowadzonej w listopadzie 2012 r. na stronie Polskiego Towarzystwa Bioetycznego, która dotyczyła niepewności na temat moralnego statusu embrionów ludzkich. W trakcie dyskusji PTB na temat Stanowiska Komitetu Bioetyki przy Prezydium PAN w sprawie preimplantacyjnej diagnostyki genetycznej (PDG) pojawił się następujący argument: skoro spór o moralny status embrionu jest nierozstrzygalny, to powinniśmy opowiedzieć się przeciwko moralnej dopuszczalności wykonywania PDG na embrionach, a także przeciwko prawnej dopuszczalności tego rodzaju diagnostyki. W tekście omawiam tezy Stanowiska i (...) zdań odrębnych, które wywołały tę część dyskusji, a potem koncentruję się na następujących problemach: (I) dopuszczalność stosowania narzędzi teorii decyzji w debatach etycznych; (II) procedura podejmowania decyzji przez ciała doradcze w sytuacji niepewności moralnej; (III) znaczenie osiągnięć nauk biologicznych przy ustaleniu statusu moralnego embrionu; (IV) możliwość kompromisu w sytuacji pluralizmu wartości; (V) znaczenie statusu moralnego embrionów dla oceny moralnej i prawnej dopuszczalności PDG. (shrink)

Semantic contextualism is often used in order to offer solutions for problems in other branches of philosophy, including epistemology. One of such attempts is epistemic contextualism, according to which the semantic value of the word “knows” changes with the context of its utterance. The aim of this paper is to critically investigate Keith DeRose’s contextualism to see up to what extent does it provide a valid anti-sceptical strategy. I argue that while it can be seen as a good rival for (...) global and Ungerian scepticism, it does not lead to the refutation of other variants of classical scepticism. (shrink)