The current study is conducted to examine the following research questions: -/- - Do perceptions that mitigate climate change risk (e.g., developing technology to help address climate change) reduce stakeholders’ willingness to protect the ocean? - Do perceptions of the costs associated with combating climate change (e.g., the belief that responding to climate change will harm economies and societies that are already actively addressing the issue) reduce stakeholders’ willingness to protect the ocean? -/- The findings from this (...) study are expected to provide insights into how perceptions of climate change mitigation and cost beliefs influence stakeholders’ willingness to protect the ocean. This information can inform targeted strategies for policymakers and conservationists to enhance support for marine protection and build the eco-surplus culture in the face of climate change challenges. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers and psychologists investigate whether people perceive moral judgments to be objectively true or false. Existing research focuses on a single dimension of ‘perceived objectivity’. The present research examines whether multiple dimensions of folk moral objectivity underlie moral judgments. It also examines whether such dimensions relate to perceived objectivity, tolerance, and people’s behavioral intentions to punish norm-violators. Exploratory factor analysis on twenty ethical items revealed three different ways of perceiving moral truth (Independent Truth, Universal Truth, Divine Truth), which each (...) form reliable subscales (Study 1). This three-factor structure was supported by confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2). Each of the dimensions is differently related to perceived objectivity (Study 3). With respect to tolerance, perceived objectivity is a mediator in the relationship between perceiving moral truth as absolute or universal and tolerance (Study 4). With respect to a willingness to harm measure, Independent Truth is negatively related and Universal Truth is positively related, to people’s punitive attitudes toward norm-violators. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

We argue that the ethical case for instituting vaccine benefit programs is justified by 2 widely recognized values: (1) reducing overall harm from COVID-19 and (2) protecting disadvantaged individuals. We then explain why they do not coerce, exploit, wrongfully distort decision-making, corrupt vaccination's moral significance, wrong those who have already been vaccinated, or destroy willingness to become vaccinated. However, their cost impacts and their effects on public perception of vaccines should be evaluated.

Financial sustainability of protected areas is one of the main challenges of management. Financial self-sufficiency is an important element in improving conservation effort in these areas. This study seeks to review best practices in recreational fee systems in different countries and to find a relevant entry fee for a wildlife sanctuary in Malaysia. The revenue of the National Elephant Conservation Center (NECC) in Kuala Gandah, Malaysia, comes from several sources, including the national government, but all these budgetary sources are strained (...) by tighter public budgets and greater demands. The present study investigates the introduction of visitor entrance fees to supplement an otherwise inadequate budget for supporting the operational costs of the sanctuary. Factor analysis and a double-bounded contingent valuation method were combined to estimate tourists' willingness to pay (WTP) the proposed entrance fee. Factor analysis showed that respondents' motivation to support the NECC with user fees is conditioned by their direct experiences with elephants, their satisfaction with NECC's educational programs and services, and other experiences it gives to users. The WTP model considered respondents' four motivation factors with their sociodemographic characteristics. Since NECC visitors arrive from both within and outside the country, this study suggests to center managers a two-tier fee structure (residents vs. nonresidents of Malaysia), based upon mean WTP estimates. This study further suggests that revenue from such an entrance fee for NECC could support the Center's management and development costs. © 2015 Elsevier B. (shrink)

Vaccination complacency occurs when perceived risks of vaccine-preventable diseases are sufficiently low so that vaccination is no longer perceived as a necessary precaution. Disease outbreaks can once again increase perceptions of risk, thereby decrease vaccine complacency, and in turn decrease vaccine hesitancy. It is not well understood, however, how change in perceived risk translates into change in vaccine hesitancy. -/- We advance the concept of vaccine propensity, which relates a change in willingness to vaccinate with a change in perceived (...) risk of infection—holding fixed other considerations such as vaccine confidence and convenience. (shrink)

A long-standing puzzle for moral philosophers and psychologists alike is the concept of psychopathy, a personality disorder marked by tendencies to defy moral norms despite cognitive knowledge about right and wrong. Previously, discussions of the moral deficits of psychopathy have focused on willingness to harm and cheat others as well as reasoning about rule-based transgressions. Yet recent research in moral psychology has begun to more clearly define the domains of morality, en- compassing issues of harm, fairness, loyalty, (...) authority, and spiritual purity. Clinical descriptions and theories of psychopathy suggest that deficits may exist primarily in the areas of harm and fairness, although quantitative evidence is scarce. Within a broad sample of participants, we found that scores on a measure of psychopathy predicted sharply lower scores on the harm and fairness subscales of a measure of moral concern, but showed no relationship with authority, and very small relationships with ingroup and purity. On a measure of willingness to violate moral standards for money, psychopathy scores predicted greater willingness to violate moral concerns of any type. Results are further explored via potential mediators and analyses of the two factors of psychopathy. (shrink)

Boyer proposes that ownership intuitions depend on tracking cues predictive of agents’ motivations to compete for resources. However, the account may mis-predict people's intuitions about ownership, and it may also be too cognitively costly to be feasible. Even so, alternative accounts could benefit by taking inspiration from how the account handles thorny issues in the psychology of ownership.

In this paper, I develop and evaluate three new objections to the Unpopulated Hell View (UHV). First, I consider whether UHV is false because it presupposes that God makes threats, which a perfect being would not do. Second, I evaluate the argument that UHV is false because it entails that God coerces us and therefore limits our freedom to an objectionable degree. Third, I consider whether UHV is false because it implies that God is willing to damn some individuals to (...) Hell. I conclude that none of these objections defeats UHV. First, even if God’s creation or allowance of Hell constitutes a threat, a perfect God might choose to threaten us when doing so is in our best interest. Second, God’s creation or allowance of Hell is not coercive and does not limit our freedom to an objectionable degree. Third, although damnation in Hell is possible, God is unwilling to actualize it. In light of these findings, I stand by the conclusion from my initial article: UHV merits further consideration as a solution to the Problem of Hell. (shrink)

Community and stakeholder support for marine and coastal ecosystem conservation policies is crucial. However, extant multinational studies on climate change-related factors that constrain stakeholders’ willingness to protect the ocean are limited. Therefore, the dataset from 709 marine stakeholders across 42 countries, part of the MaCoBioS project funded by the European Commission, was analyzed using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) method to fill the knowledge gap. The findings reveal that for individuals who think society is doing too much to address (...) climate change, new technologies can solve climate change. Responses to climate change can damage the country’s economy and might not be productive in supporting actions protecting the ocean. Based on the study results, we recommend policymakers raise awareness among individuals engaged in marine and coastal ecosystems about the crucial role of marine protection in combating climate change, taking into account the limitations of technology in solving climate change problems and the inadequacy of current efforts. The findings also provide insights for enhancing the effectiveness of awareness and knowledge-raising campaigns, conservation programs, and eco-surplus culture-building agenda. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, we explore what are ethical forms of holding service users responsible in mental health care contexts. Hanna Pickard has provided an account of how service users should be held responsible for morally wrong or seriously harmful conduct within contexts of mental health care, called the clinical stance. From a clinical stance one holds a person responsible for harm, but refrains from emotionally blaming the person and only considers the person responsible for this conduct in a (...) detached sense. Her account is based on what are considered best practices in the treatment of people with borderline personality disorder and addiction. We ask if this account generalizes across different diagnostic criteria and different clinical contexts. To begin to answer this question, we compare the clinical stance to an account of what are considered best practices in the treatment of service users at a specialized clinic for people with autism spectrum disorder in the Netherlands. We refer to this alternative account as the nurturing stance and highlight relevant similarities and differences between the clinical stance and the nurturing stance. We conclude with suggestions for further research and theorizing. (shrink)

An adequate theory of rights ought to forbid the harming of animals (human or nonhuman) to promote trivial interests of humans, as is often done in the animal-user industries. But what should the rights view say about situations in which harming some animals is necessary to prevent intolerable injustices to other animals? I develop an account of respectful treatment on which, under certain conditions, it’s justified to intentionally harm some individuals to prevent serious harm to others. This can (...) be compatible with recognizing the inherent value of the ones who are harmed. My theory has important implications for contemporary moral issues in nonhuman animal ethics, such as the development of cultured meat and animal research. (shrink)

“– No utility compares to that of escaping an illicit dream, alive and better off, still intact!” -/- —In “The Philosophy of Awakening”; The Kingfisher Story Collection [1].

Recent research shows – somewhat astonishingly – that people are willing to ascribe moral blame to AI-driven systems when they cause harm [1]–[4]. In this paper, we explore the moral- psychological underpinnings of these findings. Our hypothesis was that the reason why people ascribe moral blame to AI systems is that they consider them capable of entertaining inculpating mental states (what is called mens rea in the law). To explore this hypothesis, we created a scenario in which an AI (...) system runs a risk of poisoning people by using a novel type of fertilizer. Manipulating the computational (or quasi-cognitive) abilities of the AI system in a between-subjects design, we tested whether people’s willingness to ascribe knowledge of a substantial risk of harm (i.e., recklessness) and blame to the AI system. Furthermore, we investigated whether the ascription of recklessness and blame to the AI system would influence the perceived blameworthiness of the system’s user (or owner). In an experiment with 347 participants, we found (i) that people are willing to ascribe blame to AI systems in contexts of recklessness, (ii) that blame ascriptions depend strongly on the willingness to attribute recklessness and (iii) that the latter, in turn, depends on the perceived “cognitive” capacities of the system. Furthermore, our results suggest (iv) that the higher the computational sophistication of the AI system, the more blame is shifted from the human user to the AI system. (shrink)

Philosophical defenses of parents’ rights typically appeal to the interests of parents, the interests of children, or some combination of these. Here I propose that at least in the case of biological, non-adoptive parents, these rights have a different normative basis: namely, these rights should be accorded to biological parents because of the compensatory duties such parents owe their children by virtue of having brought them into existence. Inspried by Seana Shiffrin, I argue that procreation inevitably encumbers the wills of (...) children in otherwise morally objectionable ways. Such subjection generates duties to compensate children, even if the child’s life is on balance a benefit to her. The right to procreate is thus conditioned on prospective parent’s willingness to compensate for the harms of procreation. And because parents bear such compensatory duties, they must be accorded permissions (i.e., rights) to fulfill these duties. These rights include familiar exclusionary rights to promote children’s welfare, etc. Moreover, because subjecting children to harms or the risks thereof violates their autonomy, parental duties (and rights) include the provision of education and other goods that enable their subsequent autonomy as adults. Grounding parental rights in compensatory procreative duties avoids problems associated with appeals to the interests of children (e.g., that these interests do not seem to generate exclusive parental rights) or to the interests of parents (e.g., that these interests do not appear strong enough to permit the creation of a new, vulnerable human individual). (shrink)

Joan McGregor argues that “colleges and universities should adopt as part of their core mission the development of skills of civil discourse” rather than engaging in the practice of restricting controversial speakers from making presentations on campuses. I agree with McGregor concerning the need for increased civil discourse. However, this does not mean universities should welcome speakers to publicly present any material they wish without restriction or oversight. In this paper, I make three main arguments: (i) Colleges and universities have (...) a duty to protect members of the campus community from the harm and exclusion resulting from hateful or harmful speech, in the same way that they must protect them from sexual assaults and concussions. (ii) In the vast majority of cases, this duty can be fulfilled by holding speakers to standards of discourse that prevail in academic debate, and insisting on a number of procedural requirements. (iii) We should be wary of conservative arguments framed in terms of free speech, because they can be deployed to undermine important functions of the university in a democratic society, namely, to teach students how to be discerning citizens, and to protect thinkers willing to be critical of the government and the ruling classes. (shrink)

This book explores the nature of moral responsibilities of affluent individuals in the developed world, addressing global poverty and arguments that philosophers have offered for having these responsibilities. The first type of argument grounds responsibilities in the ability to avert serious suffering by taking on some cost. The second argument seeks to ground responsibilities in the fact that the affluent are contributing to such poverty. The authors criticise many of the claims advanced by those who seek to ground stringent responsibilities (...) to the poor by invoking these two types of arguments. It does not follow from this that the affluent are meeting responsibilities to the poor. The book argues that while people are not ordinarily required to make large sacrifices in assisting others in severe need, they are required to incur moderate costs to do so. If the affluent fail consistently to meet standards, this fact can substantially increase the costs they are required to bear in order to address it. (shrink)

Because spaying/neutering animals involves the harming of some animals in order to prevent harm to others, some ethicists, like David Boonin, argue that the philosophy of animal rights is committed to the view that spaying/neutering animals violates the respect principle and that Trap Neuter Release programs are thus impermissible. In response, I demonstrate that the philosophy of animal rights holds that, under certain conditions, it is justified, and sometimes even obligatory, to cause harm to some animals in order (...) to prevent greater harm to others. As I will argue, causing lesser harm to some animals in order to prevent greater harm to others, as TNR programs do, is compatible with the recognition of the inherent value of the ones who are harmed. Indeed, we can, and do, spay/neuter cats while acknowledging that they have value in their own right. (shrink)

Danaher (2016) has argued that increasing robotization can lead to retribution gaps: Situation in which the normative fact that nobody can be justly held responsible for a harmful outcome stands in conflict with our retributivist moral dispositions. In this paper, we report a cross-cultural empirical study based on Sparrow’s (2007) famous example of an autonomous weapon system committing a war crime, which was conducted with participants from the US, Japan and Germany. We find that (i) people manifest a considerable (...) class='Hi'>willingness to hold autonomous systems morally responsible, (ii) partially exculpate human agents when interacting with such systems, and that more generally (iii) the possibility of normative responsibility gaps is indeed at odds with people’s pronounced retributivist inclinations. We discuss what these results mean for potential implications of the retribution gap and other positions in the responsibility gap literature. (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)

If death is a harm then it is a harm that cannot be experienced. The proponent of death's harm must therefore provide an answer to Epicurus, when he says that ‘death, is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not present, and when death is present, then we are not’. In this paper I respond to the two main ways philosophers have attempted to answer Epicurus, regarding the subject of death's harm: either directly or (...) via analogy. The direct way argues that there is a truth-maker (or difference-maker) for death's harm, namely in virtue of the intrinsic value the subject's life would have had if they had not died. The analogy argues that there are cases analogous to death, where the subject is harmed although they experience no pain as a result. I argue that both accounts beg the question against the Epicurean: the first by presupposing that one can be harmed while experiencing no displeasure as a result and the second by conflating a de re with a de dicto reading of death's harm. Thus, I argue, until better arguments are provided, one is best to agree with Epicurus and those who follow him that death is not a harm. (shrink)

See "What's Wrong with Factory Farming?" (2015) for an updated treatment of these issues.

Nicholas Agar argues, that enhancement technologies could be used to create post-persons—beings of higher moral status than ordinary persons—and that it would be wrong to create such beings.1 I am sympathetic to the first claim. However, I wish to take issue with the second.Agar's second claim is grounded on the prediction that the creation of post-persons would, with at least moderate probability, harm those who remain mere persons. The harm that Agar has in mind here is a kind (...) of meta-harm: the harm of being made more susceptible to being permissibly harmed—more liable to harm. Agar suggests that, if post-persons existed, mere persons could frequently be permissibly sacrificed in order to provide benefits to the post-persons. For instance, perhaps they could be permissibly used in lethal medical experiments designed to develop medical treatments for post-persons. By contrast, he suggests that mere persons typically cannot be permissibly sacrificed to provide benefits to other mere persons. He thus claims that mere persons would be more liable to sacrifice if post-persons existed than they are in the absence of post-persons. The creation of post-persons would make them worse off in at least this one respect.Agar then argues that, since this meta-harm imposed on mere persons would not be compensated, it would be wrong to create post-persons. It is here that I believe his argument begins to go awry. According to the concept of compensation that Agar deploys , a harm imposed on X is compensated just in …. (shrink)

Many of us agree that we ought not to wrong future people, but there remains disagreement about which of our actions can wrong them. Can we wrong individuals whose lives are worth living by taking actions that result in their very existence? The problem of justifying an answer to this question has come to be known as the non-identity problem.[1] While the literature contains an array of strategies for solving the problem,[2] in this paper I will take what I call (...) the harm-based approach, and I will defend an account of harming—which I call the existence account of harming—that can vindicate this approach. -/- Roughly put, the harm-based approach holds that, by acting in ways that result in the existence of individuals whose lives are worth living, we can harm and thereby wrong those individuals. An initially plausible way to try to justify this approach is to endorse the non-comparative account of harming, which holds that an event harms an individual just in case it causes her to be in a bad state, such that the state’s badness does not derive from a comparison between that state and some alternative state that the individual would or could have been in. However, many philosophers argue that the non-comparative account of harming is inadequate,[3] and one might be tempted to infer from this that any harm-based approach to the non-identity problem will fail. My proposal, which I call the existence account of harming, will show that this inference is faulty: we can vindicate the harm-based approach without relying on the non-comparative account of harming. (shrink)

In this article, I firstly discuss the person-affecting view of harm, distinguishing between the liability and the structural models of responsibility, and also explaining why it is unsatisfactory, from a moral point of view, to interpret a given harm as a loss with respect to a diachronic baseline. Then, I take sweatshops as an example and I entertain two further issues that are related to the assessment of harm and that are necessary for operationalising a comprehensive model (...) of responsibility, that takes into account both liability and structural injustice. The first one is how to interpret harm when it is coexistent with a diachronic benefit and/or the parties involved in the social structures leading to harm seek to unload their responsibility by hiding behind a cooperative deadlock. The second one is how far along the chain of actions leading to harm can structural responsibility be extended. (shrink)

Let us call the deliberate modification of an individual’s genome to improve it or its progeny intentional genetic enhancement. Governments are almost certain to require that any proposed intentional genetic enhancement of a human (IGEH) be tested first on (what researchers call) animal “models.” Intentional genetic enhancement of animals (IGEA), then, is an ambiguous concept because it could mean one of two very different things: an enhancement made for the sake of the animal’s own welfare, or an enhancement made for (...) the sake of satisfying a human desire. In either case, experimental procedures are likely to entail substantial risks to the experimental animals. What rules should govern IGEA? I criticize the abolitionist conclusions of animal rightists—that no IGEA should be permitted—and I criticize the permissive conclusions of speciesists—that all IGEA should be permitted. Both views are unsatisfying. I suggest instead that current animal welfare law provides a defensible platform on which to begin building ethically justifiable policy in this area. (shrink)

Early in the history of liberalism, its most important proponents were concerned with freedom of religion. As polities and individuals now accept a dizzying array of religions, this has receded to the background for most theorists. It nonetheless remains a concern. Freedom of speech is a similar concern and very much in the foreground for theorists looking at the current state of academia. In this essay, I argue that inappropriate limits to freedom of religion and inappropriate limits to freedom of (...) speech—especially in the form of de-platforming on college campuses—both have, as one of their effects, what I call harms of silence. This means we ought not have those limits, so should seek to change them where they exist. (shrink)

Many proponents of the Harm Principle seem to implicitly assume that the principle is compatible with permitting the free exchange of goods and services, even if such exchanges generate so-called market harms. I argue that, as a result, proponents of the Harm Principle face a dilemma: either the Harm Principle’s domain cannot include a large number of non-market harm cases or market harms must be treated on par with non-market harms. I then go on to discuss (...) three alternative arguments defending the status of market harms as exceptions to the Harm Principle and discuss why these arguments also fail. (shrink)

Discussions of the non-identity problem presuppose a widely shared intuition that actions or policies that change who comes into existence don't, thereby, become morally unproblematic. We hypothesize that this intuition isn’t generally shared by the public, which could have widespread implications concerning how to generate support for large-scale, identity-affecting policies relating to matters like climate change. To test this, we ran a version of the well-known dictator game designed to mimic the public's behavior over identity-affecting choices. We found the public (...) does seem to behave more selfishly when making identity-affecting choices, which should be concerning. We further hypothesized that one possible mechanism is the notion of harm the public uses in their decision-making and find that substantial portions of the population seem to each employ distinct notions of harm in their normative thinking. These findings raise puzzling features about the public’s normative thinking that call out for further empirical examination. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge claims "that, by shaping and enforcing the social conditions that foreseeably and avoidably cause the monumental suffering of global poverty, we are harming the global poor ... or, to put it more descriptively, we are active participants in the largest, though not the gravest, crime against humanity ever committed." In other words, he claims that by upholding certain international arrangements we are violating our strong negative duties not to harm, and not just some positive duties to help. (...) I shall argue that even if Pogge were correct in claiming that certain rich states or at least the rich states collectively violate certain negative duties towards the poor and harm the poor, he is far too hasty in concluding that "we," the citizens of those states, are thus harming the global poor or violating our negative duties towards them. In fact, his conclusion can be shown to be wrong not least of all in the light of some of his own assumptions about collective responsibility, the enforceability of human rights, and terrorism. In addition, I will also argue that his view that we share responsibility for the acts of our political "representatives," who allegedly act "on our behalf," is unwarranted. (shrink)

In a recent discussion, Walter Glannon discusses a number of ways we might try to minimize harm to patients who experience intraoperative awareness. In this response I direct attention to a possibility that deserves further attention. It might be that a kind of psychological intervention – namely, informing patients of the possibility of intraoperative awareness and of what to expect in such a case – would constitute a unique way to respect patient autonomy, as well as minimize the (...) class='Hi'>harm that typically follows intraoperative awareness events. (shrink)

In this article I analyse those that I consider the most powerful counterarguments that have been advanced against the non-identity objection to the idea of intergenerational harm, according to which an action cannot cause harm to a given agent if her biological identity does actually depend—in a partial but still determinant way—on the performance of this action. In doing this, I firstly go through the deontological criticisms to the person-affecting view of harm, before moving on to sufficientarian (...) and communitarian accounts of intergenerational harm. My argument is that neither of these theories manage to defuse the non-identity objection. Yet, I conclude by observing that a possible way out of the non-identity paradox might consist in developing an ethical account of intergenerational negative justice that focuses on the functional value of the natural and social structures in which humans develop their lives, rather than on their instrumental or intrinsic value. (shrink)

Most theorists working on moral obligations to refugees conceive of western states as innocent bystanders with duties to aid refugees if they can do so at little cost to themselves. This paper challenges this dominant theoretical framing of global displacement by highlighting for the first time certain practices of western states in response to refugee flows such as border violence, detention, encampment and containment which may make us question whether states who engage in such practices are indeed innocent. This paper (...) provides the first normative analysis of these practices by seeking to classify them as either doing or allowing harm and invoking the fundamental moral imperative central to core common moral commitments - not to harm innocent people - to suggest that certain western states are not merely failing to aid refugees and allowing harm to come to them, but are instead responding to their calls for aid by harming them. (shrink)

How do we know that what has happened to us is a microaggression? I claim in this chapter that our understanding about how we perceive microaggression is grounded in the cultivation and critical reflection about experiences of people who occupy marginalized social locations. My aim is to explore the nature of epistemic harms of microaggression in order to highlight how they diminish the microaggressed’s ability to generate and participate in making knowledge claims. I differentiate between the primary (direct) harm (...) of microaggressive acts, and the secondary epistemic harms that occur in the aftermath of the microaggression, particularly when the microaggressed attempts to convey their experience to others. I conclude with an analysis of the two secondary harms in hopes that it helps us explore a possible avenue of resistance to the epistemic harms of microaggression. (shrink)

Central cases of moral blame suggest that blame presupposes that its target deserves to feel guilty, and that if one is blameworthy to some degree, one deserves to feel guilt to a corresponding degree. This, some think, is what explains why being blameworthy for something presupposes having had a strong kind of control over it: only given such control is the suffering involved in feeling guilt deserved. This chapter argues that all this is wrong. As evidenced by a wider range (...) of cases, blame doesn’t presuppose that the target deserves to feel guilt and doesn’t necessarily aim at the target’s suffering in recognition of what they have done. On the constructive side, the chapter offers an explanation of why, in many cases of moral blameworthiness, the agent nevertheless does deserve to feel guilt. The explanation leans on a general account of moral and non-moral blame and blameworthiness and a version of the popular idea that moral blame targets agents’ objectionable quality of will. Given the latter idea, the morally blameworthy have harmed the standing of some person or value, giving rise to obligations to give correspondingly less relative weight to their own standing, and so, sometimes, to their own suffering. (shrink)

Although science is our most reliable producer of knowledge, it can also be used to create ignorance, unjustified doubt, and misinformation. In doing so, agnotological practices result not only in epistemic harms but also in social ones. A way to prevent or minimise such harms is to impede these ignorance-producing practices. In this paper, I explore various challenges to such a proposal. I first argue that reliably identifying agnotological practices in a way that permits the prevention of relevant harms is (...) more difficult than it might appear. I focus on an identifying criterion that many find apt for the task: bad faith motives. I then consider an objection—that reliable criteria are unnecessary to successfully address the concerns raised by agnotological strategies—and I show that it fails. I conclude by exploring other ways of conceptualising the problems attributed to agnotological practices. In particular, I challenge the focus on misinformation as the main problem of concern. (shrink)

We thank the commentators for their interesting and helpful feedback on our previously published target article (Svoboda and Irvine, 2014). One of our objectives in that article was to identify areas of uncertainty that would need to be addressed in crafting a just SRM compensation system. The commentators have indicated some possible ways of reducing such uncertainty. Although we cannot respond to all their points due to limitations of space, we wish to address here the more pressing criticisms the commentators (...) have offered. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the claim, endorsed by a number of authors, that contributing to a collective harm is the ground for special responsibilities to the victims of that harm. Contributors should, between them, cover the costs of the harms they have inflicted, at least if those harms would otherwise be rights-violating. I raise some doubts about the generality of this principle before moving on to sketch a framework for thinking about liability for the costs of harms (...) in general. This framework uses a contractualist framework to build an account of how to think about liability for costs on the basis of the presumably attractive thought that individual agents should have as much control over their liabilities as is compatible with others having like control. I then use that framework to suggest that liability on the basis of contribution should be restricted to cases where the contributors could have avoided their contribution relatively costlessly, where meeting the liability is not crippling for them, and where such a liability would not have chilling effects, either on them or on third parties. This account of the grounds for contributory liability also has the advantage of avoiding a number of awkward questions about what counts as a contribution by shifting the issue away from often unanswerable questions about the precise causal genesis of some harm or other. Instead, control over conduct which plausibly has some relation to the harm because crucial. On the basis of this account, I then investigate whether a number of uses of the contributory principle. I argue that contributory liability is not appropriate for cases of collective harms committed by coordinated groups in the way that, for example, Iris Marion Young and Thomas Pogge have suggested and that further investigation of how members of such groups may be liable will be needed. (shrink)

We have argued that the counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) violates the plausible adequacy condition that an act that would harm an agent cannot leave her much better off than an alternative act that would benefit her. In a recent paper in this journal, however, Neil Feit objects that our argument presupposes questionable counterfactual backtracking. He also argues that CCA proponents can justifiably reject the condition by invoking so-called plural harm and benefit. In this (...) reply, we argue that Feit’s lines of criticism are both unsuccessful. (shrink)

It is typically wrong to act in a way that foreseeably makes some impending harm worse. Sometimes it is permissible to do so, however, if one also offsets the harm increasing action by doing something that decreases the badness of the same harm by at least as much. This chapter argues that the standard deontological constraint against doing harm is not compatible with the permissibility of harm increases that have been offset. Offsetting neither prevents one's (...) other actions from doing harm nor ensures that the harm those actions do is made permissible by any of the constraint's familiar provisos. To make sense of offsetting, the old constraint against doing harm should be replaced with a new constraint against making unoffset harm increases. The chapter discusses how to formulate the new constraint so that it can handle both the offsetting cases that the old constraint gets wrong as as well as the non-offsetting cases that the old constraint gets right. Adopting this constraint against unoffset harm increases may have important implications both for theoretical questions about the sources of deontological constraints as well as for practical questions, such as whether buying carbon offsets can make emitting carbon dioxide permissible. (shrink)

The dignity approach to racist hate speech regulation maintains that hate speech ought to be regulated because it impugns targets’ dignity and poses a threat to their equal treatment. This approach faces the significant causal challenges of showing that hate speech has the power to erode its targets’ dignity and that regulations can successfully protect that dignity. My aim is to show how a friend of the dignity approach can resolve these challenges. To do so, I borrow insights from the (...) critical legal studies (CLS) approach to hate speech. Specifically, I argue that hate speech can erode its targets’ dignity 1) by constituting an act of discrimination, and 2) by enacting norms that call for treating targeted groups as inferior. Yet while I maintain that the CLS approach offers valuable resources for shoring up the dignity approach, I reject the CLS approach in favor of the dignity approach. (shrink)

The exposure of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to risks in the context of epidemics is significant. While traditional medical ethics offers the thought that these dangers may limit the extent to which a duty to care is applicable in such situations, it has less to say about what we might owe to medical professionals who are disadvantaged in these contexts. Luck egalitarianism, a responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice, appears to fare particularly badly in that regard. If we want (...) to maintain that medical professionals are responsible for their decisions to help, cure and care for the vulnerable, luck egalitarianism seems to imply that their claim of justice to medical attention in case of infection is weak or non-existent. The article demonstrates how a recent interpretation of luck egalitarianism offers a solution to this problem. Redefining luck egalitarianism as concerned with responsibility for creating disadvantages, rather than for incurring disadvantage as such, makes it possible to maintain that medical professionals are responsible for their choices and that those infected because of their choice to help fight epidemics have a full claim of justice to medical attention. (shrink)

Skeptics of the moral case against industrial farming often assert that harm to animals in industrial systems is limited to isolated instances of abuse that do not reflect standard practice and thus do not merit criticism of the industry at large. I argue that even if skeptics are correct that abuse is the exception rather than the rule, they must still answer for two additional varieties of serious harm to animals that are pervasive in industrial systems: procedural (...) class='Hi'>harm and institutional oppression. That procedural and institutional harms create conditions under which abuse is virtually inevitable only increases the skeptic's burden. (shrink)

A powerful argument against the counterfactual comparative account of harm is that it cannot distinguish harming from failing to benefit. In reply to this problem, I suggest a new account of harm. The account is a counterfactual comparative one, but it counts as harms only those events that make a person occupy his level of well-being at the world at which the event occurs. This account distinguishes harming from failing to benefit in a way that accommodates our intuitions (...) about the standard problem cases. In laying the groundwork for this account, I also demonstrate that rival accounts of harm are able to distinguish harming from failing to benefit only if, and because, they also appeal to the distinction between making upshots happen and allowing upshots to happen. One important implication of my discussion is that preserving the moral asymmetry between harming and failing to benefit requires a commitment to the existence of a metaphysical and moral distinction between making and allowing. (shrink)

Given the close relatedness of local issues, water scarcity, and sustainability, this research sought to investigate the factors affecting residents’ willingness to reuse direct and indirect potable water in the arid region. Utilizing the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF), an analysis was undertaken with a sample of 1,831 water consumers in the City of Albuquerque, the most populous city in New Mexico, United States. The primary analysis revealed positive associations between local concerns about drought or water scarcity and population growth (...) with residents' willingness to reuse direct and indirect potable water. Conversely, concerns about water quality and water bills were found to be negatively associated with the willingness to utilize directly and indirectly recycled water for drinking. In light of these findings, the study explores the potential of fostering an eco-surplus culture by cultivating a sense of environmental responsibility and acknowledging the relationship between local issues and environmental conditions. Simultaneously, the study proposes collaboration between the government and residents to promote water reuse programs to conserve water resources effectively. (shrink)

An influential view in the ethics of self-defence is that causal responsibility for an unjust threat is a necessary requirement for liability to defensive harm. In this article, I argue against this view by providing intuitive counterexamples and by revealing weaknesses in the arguments offered in its favour. In response, adherents of the causal view have advanced the idea that although causally inefficacious agents are not liable to defensive harm, the fact that they may deserve harm can (...) justify harming them in the course of defending oneself. I argue that this strategy is ad hoc and leads to more problems than it solves. Once we allow normative facts outside our account of liability to affect a person's moral protection against harm, the lieability verdicts cannot tell us whether there is a relevant moral asymmetry between the victim and the target of defence. In conclusion, the causal view is wrong and causal responsibility for an unjust threat is not a necessary requirement for liability to defensive harm. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent contributions to the hate speech literature – by Steven Heyman and Jeremy Waldron – which seek a justification for the legal restriction of hate speech in an account of the way that hate speech infringes against people’s dignity. These analyses look beyond the first-order hurts and disadvantages suffered by the immediate targets of hate speech, and consider the prospect of hate speech sustaining complex social structures whose wide-scale operations lower the social status of members of (...) targeted groups. In Heyman’s and Waldron’s accounts we find plausible insights into the nature of identity-based social hierarchies, and the harms that redound to subordinated people under the operations of such hierarchies. I argue, however, that both analyses are unsuccessful as justifications for the restriction of hate speech, because they do not ultimately provide reason to think that hate speech is responsible for creating or sustaining identity-based social hierarchies. (shrink)