Recent developments in genomic science hold out the tantalizing prospect of soon being able to treat and prevent a wide variety of medical conditions through gene therapy. In time, it may be possible to use similar techniques not simply to combat disease but also to enhance, or improve on, normal human functioning.

Recent developments in genomic science hold out the tantalizing prospect of soon being able to treat and prevent a wide variety of medical conditions through gene therapy. In time, it may be possible to use similar techniques not simply to combat disease but also to enhance, or improve on, normal human functioning.

Tom Beauchamp and James Childress have always maintained that their four principles approach (otherwise known as principlism) is a globally applicable framework for biomedical ethics. This claim is grounded in their belief that the principles of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice form part of a 'common morality', or collection of very general norms to which everyone who is committed to morality subscribes. The difficulty, however, has always been how to demonstrate, at least in the absence of a full-blooded (...) analysis of the concept of morality, whether the four principles are foundational, and so globally applicable, in this way. In the recently published sixth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics, an imaginative and non-question-begging empirical method of determining the common morality's norms is suggested. In this paper, I outline this method, before arguing that it is difficult to see how it might be thought to achieve its purpose. (shrink)

Recent developments in genomic science hold out the tantalizing prospect of soon being able to treat and prevent a wide variety of medical conditions through gene therapy. In time, it may be possible to use similar techniques not simply to combat disease but also to enhance, or improve on, normal human functioning.

This chapter aims to show that prospective parents are not bound in their reproductive decision making by a principle of procreative beneficence. That is, they have no obligation (as Julian Savulescu, the principle’s originator, famously thinks they have) to choose the possible child, from a range of possible children they might have, who is likely to lead the best life. I will summarise and clarify the content of previous papers of mine, in which I argue that since the sorts of (...) considerations that underlie the principle of procreative beneficence do not constitute reasons when viewed from a perspective that it is fitting and appropriate for a prospective parent to take up, there can be no requirement for prospective parents to be moved by those considerations. (shrink)

In recent decades, scientists have begun to identify the brain processes and neurochemicals associated with the different stages of love, including the all-important stage of attachment. Experimental findings—readily seized upon by those bioethicists who want to urge that we sometimes have good reason pharmaceutically to enhance flagging relationships—are presented as demonstrating that attachment is regulated and strengthened by the neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin. I shall argue, however, that often what the experimental data in fact show is only that exogenous administration (...) of such chemicals can control and intensify the trappings of attachment, not attachment itself. That this is sometimes overlooked by both scientists and ethicists, is due to attachment being miscategorised as a set of feelings or a drive, rather than as a disposition to think about, feel toward, and behave toward its object in certain distinctive ways. (shrink)

The claim that the answers we give to many of the central questions in genethics will depend crucially upon the particular rationality we adopt in addressing them is central to Matti Häyry’s thorough and admirably fair-minded book, Rationality and the Genetic Challenge. That claim implies, of course, that there exists a plurality of rationalities, or discrete styles of reasoning, that can be deployed when considering concrete moral problems. This, indeed, is Häyry’s position. Although he believes that there are certain features (...) definitive of any type of thinking that can accurately be labeled rational, he maintains that nothing about that set of features compels us to conclude that there is a single rationality. What is more, and significantly for the way in which Häyry’s book develops, there is no Archimedean point from which we are licensed to pronounce one flavor of rational deliberation to be intrinsically superior to any other or to be justified to the exclusion of all others. To this belief that “there are many divergent rationalities, all of which can be simultaneously valid,” we can perhaps give the name “the Doctrine of the Plurality of Rationalities” or, for short, “DPR.”. (shrink)

This book outlines and circumvents two serious problems that appear to attach to Kant’s moral philosophy, or more precisely to the model of rational agency that underlies that moral philosophy: the problem of experiential incongruence and the problem of misdirected moral attention. The book’s central contention is that both these problems can be sidestepped. In order to demonstrate this, it argues for an entirely novel reading of Kant’s views on action and moral motivation. In addressing the two main problems in (...) Kant’s moral philosophy, the book explains how the first problem arises because the central elements of Kant’s theory of action seem not to square with our lived experience of agency, and moral agency in particular. For example, the idea that moral deliberation invariably takes the form of testing personal policies against the Categorical Imperative seems at odds with the phenomenology of such reasoning, as does the claim that all our actions proceed from explicitly adopted general policies, or maxims. It then goes on to discuss the second problem showing how it is a result of Kant’s apparent claim that when an agent acts from duty, her reason for doing so is that her maxim is lawlike. This seems to put the moral agent’s attention in the wrong place: on the nature of her own maxims, rather than on the world of other people and morally salient situations. The book shows how its proposed novel reading of Kant’s views ultimately paints an unfamiliar but appealing picture of the Kantian good-willed agent as much more embedded in and engaged with the world than has traditionally been supposed. (shrink)

In 2003, the United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published a report entitled Sex Selection: Options for Regulation. The report outlined the findings of a 2-year review of available sex selection techniques and recommended that the United Kingdom ought not to permit any regulated technique to be used other than for medical reasons. In so doing, it reflected the widespread opinion—repeatedly expressed in the public consultations that formed the cornerstone of the HFEA's review—that there is something ethically unacceptable, or (...) at least ethically suspect, about sex selection for nonmedical, or “social,” reasons. (shrink)

In my paper “Parental Love and the Ethics of Sex Selection,” published in the previous issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, I set out to determine whether a plausible argument could be constructed in support of a common intuition about the ethics of sex selection. The intuition in question is that sex selection for nonmedical reasons is incompatible with a proper parental love: that is, with the sort of love that a parent ought to have for her child (...) or, equivalently, with the sort of love that someone accurately describable as a good parent will have for her child. I concluded that there is a prima facie compelling argument that fits the bill, though I did little more than introduce and set that argument out. In the current paper, my aim will be to subject it to closer scrutiny, by considering a number of possible objections to it. I will start by asking why the argument should be thought to apply only to sex selection for nonmedical reasons and not to cases in which selection is employed in order to prevent the birth of children with serious sex-linked genetic conditions. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant famously makes the following startling claim, which we can call the transcendental ideality thesis concerning the nature of space, or, for ease of reference in what follows, simply “TI”: Der Raum stellt gar keine Eigenschaft irgend einiger Dinge an sich, oder sie in ihrem Verhältniß auf einander vor, d.i. keine Bestimmung derselben, die an Gegenständen selbst haftete, und welche bliebe, wenn man auch von allen subjectiven Bedingungen der Anschauung abstrahirte.

This paper argues against Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficence. It maintains that prospective parents have no obligation at all to choose the child, out of a range of possible children, who is likely to lead the best life. This is because a standpoint that the author labels "the internal perspective" is a perfectly appropriate one for parents to adopt when thinking about their own future children. It is only policy makers who are obliged to take up an opposing standpoint--"the (...) external perspective"--and to be motivated by the sorts of "better for" judgements that that perspective delivers. (shrink)

Readers of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics need hardly be told that each year a huge amount of very valuable work in bioethics is carried out in the academic's study and the university seminar room and appears in the pages of specialist, restricted-readership journals. However, if it is to be as effective, relevant, and influential as it deserves to be, there arguably comes a point when this work needs to leave the confines of the academy and engage the wider (...) public. This perhaps happens less often than it should. (shrink)

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into force in England and Wales in 2007. Its primary purpose is to provide “a statutory framework to empower and protect people who may lack capacity to make some decisions for themselves.” Examples of such people are those with dementia, learning disabilities, mental health problems, and so on. The Act also gives those who currently have capacity a legal framework within which they can make arrangements for a time when they may come to lack (...) it. Toward this end, it allows for them to make advance decisions or to appoint proxy decision makers with lasting powers of attorney. (shrink)

It goes almost without saying that there are no academic bioethical debates that are unique to the United Kingdom. The debates in which U.K. bioethicists become involved take place in international journals and in books with a worldwide readership. The contributions of those from these shores are frequently made in response to work by academics from the United States, Australia, Scandinavia, and a whole host of other countries.

From 2002 to 2003, the United Kingdom's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority carried out a review of the available methods of sex selection, the central aims of which were, in the words of the subsequent report.

Bioethicists currently working in the United Kingdom demonstrate—as indeed do the very best of their colleagues internationally—an eagerness to engage in two extremely different but complementary approaches to their subject. First, they readily become involved in discussions of concrete bioethical issues that are of great concern to the medical profession, legislators, and the wider U.K. public. Second, perhaps because they recognize the importance of the “first-order” questions that exercise the public imagination, they show themselves commendably willing to turn their critical (...) gaze onto the very methods and frameworks they use to address those questions. The first approach we can properly call “bioethical,” whereas we might term the second approach “metabioethical.”. (shrink)

Rebecca Bennett, in a recent paper dismissing Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficence, advances both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis holds that the principle's theoretical foundation – the notion of impersonal harm or non-person-affecting wrong – is indefensible. Therefore, there can be no obligations of the sort that the principle asserts. The positive thesis, on the other hand, attempts to plug an explanatory gap that arises once the principle has been rejected. That is, it holds that (...) the intuitions of those who adhere to the principle are not genuine moral intuitions, but instead simply give voice to mere (non-moral) preferences. This paper, while agreeing that Savulescu's principle does not express a genuine moral obligation, takes issue with both of Bennett's theses. It is suggested that the argument for the negative thesis is either weak or question-begging, while there is insufficient reason to suppose the positive thesis true. (shrink)

Rebecca Bennett, in a recent paper dismissing Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficence, advances both a negative and a positive thesis. The negative thesis holds that the principle's theoretical foundation – the notion of impersonal harm or non‐person‐affecting wrong – is indefensible. Therefore, there can be no obligations of the sort that the principle asserts. The positive thesis, on the other hand, attempts to plug an explanatory gap that arises once the principle has been rejected. That is, it holds that (...) the intuitions of those who adhere to the principle are not genuine moral intuitions, but instead simply give voice to mere (non‐moral) preferences.This paper, while agreeing that Savulescu's principle does not express a genuine moral obligation, takes issue with both of Bennett's theses. It is suggested that the argument for the negative thesis is either weak or question‐begging, while there is insufficient reason to suppose the positive thesis true. (shrink)

Recent research in neurochemistry has shown there to be a number of chemical compounds that are implicated in the patterns of lust, attraction, and attachment that undergird romantic love. For example, there is evidence that the phenomenon of attachment is associated with the action of oxytocin and vasopressin. There is therefore some reason to suppose that patterns of lust, attraction, and attachment could be regulated via manipulation of these substances in the brain: in other words, by their use as 'love (...) drugs'. A growing bioethical literature asks searching questions about this prospect, and especially about the use of such drugs to enhance or reignite attachment in flagging relationships. This Element examines some of the central arguments on the topic, and sounds a note of caution. It urges that there are reasons to think the states of attachment produced or facilitated by the use of such drugs would not be desirable. (shrink)

Tom Beauchamp and James Childress are confident that their four principles—respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—are globally applicable to the sorts of issues that arise in biomedical ethics, in part because those principles form part of the common morality (a set of general norms to which all morally committed persons subscribe). Inevitably, however, the question arises of how the principlist ought to respond when presented with apparent counter-examples to this thesis. I examine a number of strategies the principlist might (...) adopt in order to retain common morality theory in the face of supposed counter-examples. I conclude that only a strategy that takes a non-realist view of the common morality’s principles is viable. Unfortunately, such a view is likely not to appeal to the principlist. (shrink)

In my paper “Parental Love and the Ethics of Sex Selection,” published in the previous issue of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, I set out to determine whether a plausible argument could be constructed in support of a common intuition about the ethics of sex selection. The intuition in question is that sex selection for nonmedical reasons is incompatible with a proper parental love: that is, with the sort of love that a parent ought to have for her child (...) or, equivalently, with the sort of love that someone accurately describable as a good parent will have for her child. I concluded that there is a prima facie compelling argument that fits the bill, though I did little more than introduce and set that argument out. In the current paper, my aim will be to subject it to closer scrutiny, by considering a number of possible objections to it. I will start by asking why the argument should be thought to apply only to sex selection for nonmedical reasons and not to cases in which selection is employed in order to prevent the birth of children with serious sex-linked genetic conditions. (shrink)

This book explores the many connections that bioethical thinking has with social reality. Bioethics, if it is to be effective, must engage with and address the actualities of modern life: policies, regulations, markets, opinions, and technological advances. In these original contributions fifteen notable scholars working in the North West of England take on this challenge. The series Values in Bioethics makes available original philosophical books in all areas of bioethics, including medical and nursing ethics, health care ethics, research ethics, environmental (...) ethics, and global bioethics. (shrink)

This book deals with the international assessment and regulation of biomedical research. In its chapters, some of the leading figures in today’s bioethics address questions centred on global development, scientific advances, and vulnerability. The series _Values In Bioethics_ makes available original philosophical books in all areas of bioethics, including medical and nursing ethics, health care ethics, research ethics, environmental ethics, and global bioethics.

This open access book offers insights into the development of the ground-breaking Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings (GCC) and the San Code of Research Ethics. Using a new, intuitive moral framework predicated on fairness, respect, care and honesty, both codes target ethics dumping – the export of unethical research practices from a high-income setting to a lower- or middle-income setting. The book is a rich resource of information and argument for any research stakeholder who opposes double (...) standards in research. It will be indispensable for applicants to European Union framework programmes, as the GCC is now a mandatory reference document for EU funding. (shrink)

Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion.

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Friendships have important influences on children's well-being and future adjustment, and interpersonal forgiveness has been suggested as a crucial means for children to maintain friendships. However, existing measures of preadolescent children's forgiveness are restricted by developmental limitations to reporting emotional responses via questionnaire and inconsistent interpretations of the term “forgive.” This paper describes development and testing of concurrent and discriminant validity of a pictorial measure of children's emotional forgiveness, the Children's Forgiveness Card Set. In Study 1, 148 Australian children aged (...) 8–13 years responded to a hypothetical transgression in which apology was manipulated and completed the CFCS and extant measures of forgiveness and socially desirable responding. Following an exploratory factor analysis to clarify the structure of the CFCS, the CFCS correlated moderately with other forgiveness measures and did not correlate with socially desirable responding. Apology predicted CFCS responding among older children. In Study 2 an exploratory factor analysis broadly replicated the structure of the CFCS among a sample of N = 198 North American children aged 5–14 years. We also fitted an exploratory bi-factor model to the Study 2 data which clarified which cards best measured general forgiveness, or positive or hostile aspects of responding to transgressions. Apology once again predicted the CFCS, this time regardless of age. The CFCS appears a potentially valid measure of children's emotional forgiveness. Potential applications and differences between explicit and latent forgiveness in children are discussed. (shrink)

Julian Savulescu has given clear expression to a principle—that of “procreative beneficence”—which underlies the thought of many contemporary writers on bioethics. The principle of procreative beneficence holds that parents or single reproducers are at least prima facie obliged to select the child, out of a range of possible children they might have, who will be likely to lead the best life. My aim in this paper is to argue that prospective parents, just by dint of their being prospective parents, are (...) in fact not obliged to act on PPB. That is, there is something about their filling the role of prospective parents that exempts them from selecting the child with the best life. I urge that it is more realistic to view prospective parents as bound by a principle of acceptable outlook, which holds that they ought not to select children whose lives will contain an unacceptable amount of suffering. (shrink)

then essentially characterized the hypotheses that mechanical scientists can successfully decide in the limit in terms of arithmetic complexity. These ideas were developed still further by Peter Kugel [4]. In this paper, I extend this approach to obtain characterizations of identification in the limit, identification with bounded mind-changes, and identification in the short run, both for computers and for ideal agents with unbounded computational abilities. The characterization of identification with n mind-changes entails, as a corollary, an exact arithmetic characterization (...) of Putnam's n-trial predicates, which closes a gap of a factor of two in Putnam's original characterization [12]. (shrink)

Photo by Jonathan Ford on Unsplash ABSTRACT Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events. Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. This paper analyzes the idea of expanding a duty to rescue to climate migration. We address who should have (...) the duty and to whom the duty should extend. The paper discusses ways to define and apply the duty to rescue as well as its limitations, arguing that it may take the form of an ethical duty to prepare. INTRODUCTION Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. Examples of circumstances range from person-to-person intimate rescue to saving those in poverty, even in distant parts of the world.[1] Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events.[2] Circumstances like being thrust from homes under the threat of fire, mudslide, and flooding vary greatly from long-term changes like land becoming too arid for crops or temperatures increasing annually gradually pushing up the number of heat-related deaths, with the area slowly becoming uninhabitable. Imminence in fleeing affects resettling and need for rescue with important implications for how the duty to rescue might apply. This paper reevaluates the ethical framing of the duty to rescue and, while it is arguably a stretch, applies it to climate migration. Climate migration has become common and is expected to increase due to rises in sea level, increases in weather events that make areas uninhabitable, and changes to land that preclude farming or other necessary land uses. We argue that a duty to rescue may help highlight who has moral obligations to whom. Because the problem is so large in scope, we suggest a change in the ethical limits to humans' duty to rescue other humans who are in distress. We imagine an expansion or extension of the duty to rescue to meet some of the basic needs created by climate migration. Yet how it should expand, and how much depend on ethical framing and practical limitations. l. Expanding the Geographical Boundaries Two commonly recognized emergencies, Hurricane Katrina in the case of weather events and the current COVID-19 pandemic, provide a historical and current backdrop to evaluate ethical obligations as more disasters displace people. A significant reassessment of the ethical scope of an obligation to rescue in the case of weather events will be limited by the ability to render aid to those in distress in the case of a planet-wide weather catastrophe. The problems may overwhelm the ability to rescue or the reasonableness of attempting rescue. The extent of the moral obligation borne by humans to other humans in the case of a weather event has been largely defined by its locality and limited geographic influence. Whether we are imagining the scope of ethical obligation in the case of hurricane, flood, tornado, drought, or wildfire events, the perceived ethical obligation is significantly defined by the limited impact of these weather events on people outside the zone of the weather event's direct impact, yet close to that zone. A hurricane affecting New Orleans will not have immediate impact on the residents of California or even those on the northeast coast of the United States until a later time. Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest do not impair the ability of those in the rest of the country to come forward with assistance. But as climate migration crosses international borders, and climate events occur simultaneously in many regions, a more expansive duty to rescue may provide the ethical impulse to help those who live afar or migrate long distances. In this respect, the need for help in the event of widespread climate migration due to global warming is more like a pandemic than a weather event. Its broad impact area diminishes the capability of nearly the entire balance of the human population to help due to those populations' awareness that they will, in short order, have the same need for the same resources, from the same cause. Those living near current flood zones may find their historically safe havens are also a flood zone. Those previously best positioned to rescue may find themselves also needing to relocate. Thus, we may observe the need for new rescuers. ll. The Rule of Rescue The Rule of Rescue as defined by Al Jonsen describes the moral impetus or knee jerk reaction to save identifiable people facing death.[3] A duty to rescue has since been expanded beyond imminent death and beyond the near and identifiable. But there are limitations. For example, by most accounts, the ethical duty tends not to require extreme bodily risk or financial depletion. In comparing Good Samaritans to humanitarians, Scott M. James argues the duty to rescue arises from unique dependence, but the ethical obligation to help strangers through humanitarian aid is of a different nature.[4] The wrongness of failing to help is arguably more egregious when one is in a unique position to help. Like in the tragedy of the commons, where there is no unique positioning, when the global community is called upon to help, each individual in it may feel less obliged to do so. Climate migration falls in between—it requires helping strangers, yet it may move forward without anyone seeing themselves as uniquely positioned to help until those strangers become part of communities, at which time, there may be more moral justification to help a community member in need. Generally, arguments about Good Samaritans hinge on extraordinary acts, praiseworthy because they are acts of compassion, not obligation. Now all US states have Good Samaritan laws[5] which protect helpers from liability for help gone wrong or for a failure to succeed once engaged in an act of rescue. Extraordinary help as a moral good is thus somewhat encouraged through legal protection, but not imposed. Conversely, jobs like firefighting, search and rescue, and emergency medical care tend to oblige employees to take on risks that would be extraordinary if undertaken by the average bystander, yet they are rendered ordinary rescue as part of the job. Three states, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Vermont have a broad duty to rescue, adding legal considerations to an otherwise moral conundrum. The laws do not require bystanders to take on risk for the sake of rescuing strangers.[6] The moral duty will require looking beyond law, but it is unclear how the moral duty to rescue should be distributed in the case of climate migration. A bare minimum would prevent taking advantage of newcomers, paying sub-minimum wage, and discriminating against them. Yet such a minimum is hardly rescue. lll. An Ethical Rather than Legal Duty The difficulty in defining the duty to rescue as a legal obligation is that it is difficult to determine the extent of risk a rescuer ought to be required to take. The nature of this ethical duty is also arguably tied to the experiences of both the rescuer and the rescued. There are subjective aspects like what someone perceives as a danger that make it difficult to write enforceable laws requiring rescue. It is one thing to expect a rescuer to step into several inches of relatively warm water to lift a person lying face down in a pond and enable them to breathe. It is something altogether different to expect that rescuer to dive into frigid water and attempt to extricate someone trapped in a submerged automobile. As the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart observed, it is always easier to define application of the core intention of any rule, whether law or ethical norm. It is more difficult to create legal certainty about how the law applies to what he described as “penumbra circumstances”. In the case of a hurricane, it is easier to define what surplus resources are available in areas geographically remote from the impact of the storm and demand, as a moral obligation, that those nearby but outside the area provide assistance. It is more difficult to obligate people, organizations, or governments to supply a quantity of medication or some number of ventilators to an adjacent community when they expect to imminently need them for their own community. In the early stages of climate migration, the ethics of extreme weather event assistance, a common application of the duty to rescue, will be useful and appropriate. The rising sea levels first experienced by island nations in the South Pacific[7] will not render those living in other coastal communities, those with greater available “high ground”, unable to supply resources to those in need. But when sea level rise and climate change affect more communities simultaneously, albeit in varying degree, the task of defining what response is ethically obligatory becomes increasingly complicated. Pinpointing the obligations of those communities which are resource rich to those communities which are resource deprived, and of those partly affected to those more severely affected may become necessary. The limitations of the traditional duty to rescue could expand to meet the needs. lV. Contribution to the Problem Many argue that the duty to rescue may depend on any appropriate claim of those needing rescue. One issue is whether preferential claims among those who can identify the source of the harm should call for a greater duty or whether everyone in need should be approached as like candidates for rescue, shaping the duty as equal across those on the receiving end. As climate change does have human-made causes, there are strong arguments to impose a greater ethical duty on any entity that caused the climate-related problems leading to the mass exodus. While the global north is often implicated in pollution that causes migration, industries like energy, transportation, and agriculture are tied to climate change and associated with significant greenhouse gas emissions.[8] Practices like directing agriculture to less sustainable single crop growth generally made land less farmable. Yet it is difficult to place blame and identify specific causal relationships as most migration is due to many factors. A movement toward greater accountability can be reframed as a greater duty to rescue, a duty to engage in the extraordinary. The fossil fuel industry, for example, should have a larger obligation than the average person. Similarly, some may argue anyone unjustly enriching themselves while contributing to climate change or people who over-consume have an elevated duty to rescue.[9] Climate change lawsuits demonstrate an eagerness to hold governments and corporations accountable, despite difficulty proving causation. V. The Most Vulnerable One ethical dimension of climate migration that remains unexplored is how a duty to rescue applies to vulnerable populations who stand to be left behind or unable to migrate without assistance. Researchers from the Global North working across the Global South are increasingly observing the phenomenon of ethics dumping, where the research ethics of some countries are imposed on research subjects in other countries.[10] In that vein, rescuers should be careful not to impose unwelcome cultural standards or exploit people who are in the process of migrating. There is a gap in discussions reflecting voices that have been left out. The duty to rescue is incomplete without an attempt to understand the ethical experiences of those being rescued. The actual people affected by climate migration who are the least likely to have the means to migrate, or to do so without extreme hardship, should have a voice informing the global community including those in a position to carry out rescue. People who have the means and are young and healthy may easily make decisions to avoid the catastrophic consequences that climate migration brings. However, what about those who are left behind? For example, especially recognizing cultural differences, the homeless community, disabled community, refugees, the elderly community, and women[11] and children may suffer differently and call for more attention. In some parts of the world, human rights are severely constrained. An ethical duty to rescue, with many considerations and variables, may be more justified in the case of those most in need. As climate migration continues and increases significantly, it may be reasonable to ask the local and global community to focus on those least well positioned to migrate successfully. In this context, the use of phenomenology to understand the lived experiences of those migrating, sometimes termed “ethical experiences”, may help flesh out how a duty to rescue takes shape. The discussion of duty and obligation requires an articulation of the ethical experiences (how the local community in need of rescue views the proposed rescue). Then, the obligation to interpret the duty as ‘one shall not’ or ‘one must’ can be focused on the migrants’ needs rather than the rescuers’ feelings of obligation.[12] A revised theory of the duty to rescue taking into account the asymmetrical experiences of communities involved could ensure that the needs of people whose living situations, gender, ethnicity, age, or race impact their ability to even begin the migration process are considered. In this discussion, the rescuing is directed toward communities /collectives of persons migrating, whether at once or across a period of time. Often, the climate migrant may not be in a state to articulate the nature of this event when it happens, given its subjective proximity. Yet, when communities are given the space and opportunity to articulate their shared values, the ethical action of rescue derives its meaningfulness from the community rather than the rescuers. In other words, allowing climate migrants to explain their feelings can add complexity to what some see as a binary receiver-giver (of rescue) dynamic. This is necessary because the concept of vulnerable populations is fraught with problematic assumptions. There have been various definitions and criteria to determine what would constitute vulnerable populations.[13] For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change[14] identifies and assesses vulnerable populations. These criteria may be helpful. However, they do not provide the full picture. Rather than identifying categorical criteria of vulnerable populations, engaging with people who are experiencing climate migration and listening to their current experiences and concerns helps determine need. Knowing what people need may prevent the kneejerk reaction to label people who are quite resilient yet have appropriate needs “vulnerable”. Proceeding with caution is important because the duty to rescue has hierarchical underpinnings of "us" and "them." Often when people swoop in to save, there are good and bad consequences of the intervention. We should proceed with caution because often the helper misses the actual needs of those in need. The only way to combat this would be to make sure that people are empowered to inform those agencies that are able to help. In addition to more practical approaches, large scale oral histories could allow those who have migrated already to share their experiences. It would be important to capture the lived experiences of people who are already experiencing the consequences of climate migration or of other migration like that due to political or economic extreme events. These experiences could shape our analysis of whether people in fact wish for rescue. If so, further conversations can determine best actions as well as give important insight into what resources might be necessary to empower people now and in the future. Vl. A Duty to Rescue as a Duty to Prepare If we view Good Samaritans as going above and beyond, then a duty to rescue, something ethically compelled, must bring rescue out of the framework of charity and place it in the context of humanity and obligations. Such a view would also support expanding the geographical reach of the otherwise more proximate duty. The duty may be stronger and take shape in a more workable way if it applies to preparing places expecting to see an influx of people due to climate migration and to helping those most in need. The duty may arise out of expectations of what type of community the place welcoming those migrating due to climate should be—does it want to offer good housing, schooling, and medical care as well as economic opportunity to new people? And if so, at what cost, or with which risks? If the newcomers are viewed as community members rather than strangers, a model of acceptance may lead to better preparation. Some considerations like whether the actions will reasonably help the persons in need of rescue[15] will shape the application of a duty to rescue in the context of climate migration. Similarly, ensuring that people have the chance to articulate their values may help communities support the newcomers. New relationships should not be defined as migrant and rescuer. Voluntariness in participation and not forcing any action deemed rescue would help ensure the human rights of those migrating. In the United States, President Biden issued an executive order addressing impending climate migration steeped in a duty to prepare by making plans for resettlement and to address the impact of climate migration.[16] Vll. At What Risk? As we investigate the ethical obligations to meet even basic needs, we must also ask what level of risk is ethically compelled. There is an extraordinary need to integrate newcomers successfully, but it is difficult to stretch an ethical duty to rescue to require all the prerequisites for successful climate migration. Even defining success would create deep ethical arguments. As observed in almost all migrations, extraordinary charitable acts may be the key to success, while an ethical duty to rescue must try to require the important government and community-based basics and ensuring respect for human rights. That is, the migrating people should be rescued from circumstances that contradict basic human rights. Rather than comparing communities to bystanders, mere places where people will arrive and need to hash out how to find housing, jobs, education, and opportunity, a duty of preparation may be the key to rescue those disenfranchised by migration. There are cultural, personal, physical, psycho-social, and geopolitical issues surrounding how to best help those needing to permanently relocate. Ethics arguments will certainly range from “do nothing”, which may fail people, to “do everything”, which could waste taxpayer money in futile over-preparation while failing to actually help. Communities must avoid planning exclusively for one scenario only to have it not take place. Striking the balance, a duty to rescue as it could apply to climate migration should set goals of societal integration, and providing the basics like education, housing, food, health care, and job opportunity, the precursors to flourishing. Recommending the extraordinary, morally preferred but perhaps not compulsory, when charitable actors are participating, or when wrongdoers are compensating, may be more workable than seeing the duty to rescue as compelling people or local governments to take on significant financial and personal risk for newcomers. While humanitarian ethics supports helping everyone, it is likely that people who resettle in advance of a need to flee will find themselves with more choices and opportunities. Help is warranted for those with more dire needs. Preparing for them may do just that. Vlll. Rescue Prior to Migration and Rescue in the Process of Resettlement The duty to enable the migration in the first-place hints to the inadequacy of a duty to prepare. The traditional duty to rescue perhaps steps in if rescue looks like those geographically just out of harm's way rescuing those in danger. That resembles the traditional moral requirement, or duty to rescue according to the Rule of Rescue. Humanitarian aid typically provided by many institutions makes sense and is in place, although financial support for additional humanitarian aid is always needed. Despite having moved to purportedly more capable communities, migrant communities may be able to develop more egalitarian orders of living. Rather than continually being identified as having been rescued, it is important to make sure people keep or make social ties during and after migration. Immigrants often face social isolation.[17] Small shifts in gestural language also have the potential to welcome people and show they are valued. For instance, some migrants may not like questions like “Where are you from?” and “What brings you here?” as they emphasize differences over fitting in. CONCLUSION The ethical duty to rescue should be expanded to better match those in need of relocation with a welcome environment and the resources needed to achieve success and fully integrate socially and culturally. Expanding a dialogue that includes the voices of people who have recently migrated whether due to violence, poverty, or climate, could properly frame the extent of the duty. If we are to apply the duty of rescue to climate migration, rescuers should avoid labeling people vulnerable, dependent, or needy, although there is reason to focus on those whose needs are the most dire. A soft duty to rescue people during the course of climate migration can come in the form of preparation. People will need help finding housing, education, access to food, and employment. Ultimately, to help them help themselves may be the best goal. While the obligations should be borne differently by people, whether due to a special responsibility, or a special relationship that creates a clearer duty, the global community must prepare for its role in rescuing those displaced by climate events. By helping those displaced at the start of the climate migration process according to a more commonly held notion of the duty to rescue, and by preparing to incorporate newcomers successfully according to an expanded duty to rescue, effectively a duty to prepare, countries that take on climate refugees may find themselves rewarded by the cultural diversity and workplace talents that people bring. A duty to those at a distance is a reasonable expansion of the duty to rescue. But what one ought to do in the global community varies somewhat from the traditional Rule of Rescue. - [1] Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3): 229-43. [2] Irfan, U. (2022, March 16). Why We Still Don’t Yet Know How Bad Climate Migration Will Get. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2022/3/16/22960468/ipcc-climate-change-migration-migrant-refugee, citing the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022). Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ [3] McKie, J., Richardson, J. (2003) The Rule of Rescue. Social Science & Medicine, 56(12): 2407-2419. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00244-7. [4] James, S.M. (2007). Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24(3):238-254. [5] Overview of Good Samaritan laws. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/good-samaritan-law-states [6] Fifield, J. (2017, Sept. 19). Why It’s Hard to Punish ‘Bad Samaritans’. Stateline Blog, Pew Charitable Trusts, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/09/19/why-its-hard-to-punish -bad-samaritans [7] Cassella, C. (2019). There’s a Climate Threat Facing Pacific Islands That’s More Dire Than Losing Land, Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/pacific-islanders-are-in-a-climate-crisis-as-rising-sea-levels-threaten -water; Hassan, H. R., and Cliff, V. (2019). For Small Island Nations, Climate Change is not a Threat. It’s Already Here, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/island-nations-maldives-climate-change/ [8] For example, Lyons, K. (2019). Australia Coal use is Existential threat to Pacific Islanders, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/australia-coal-use-is-existential-threat-to-pacific-is lands-says-fiji-pm [9] Cripps, E. (2013). Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [10] Schroeder, D., Chatfield, K., Singh, M., Chennells, R., and Herissone-Kelly, P.. Ethics Dumping and the Need for a Global Code of Conduct. In Cham. (Ed.)(2019). Equitable Research Partnerships. SpringerBriefs in Research and Innovation Governance. Springer. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15745-6_1 [11] Giudice L.C., Llamas-Clark E.F., DeNicola N., Pandipati, S., Zlatnik, M.G., Decena, D.C.D., Woodruff, T.J., Conry, J.A. (2021). Climate Change, Women’s Health, and the Role of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Leadership, International J Gynecol Obstet, 155(3), 345-356. 10.1002/ijgo.13958 [12] See Ferrarello, S. and Zapien, N. (2020). Ethical Experience: A Phenomenology, Bloomsbury. (for understanding phenomenological determinants of ethical action). [13] McLeman, R.A., Hunter, L.M., (2010). Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change: insights from analogues. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Change, 1(3): 450-461. [14] Least Developed Countries Expert Group. (2018). Considerations Regarding Vulnerable Groups, Communities and Ecosystems in the Context of the National Adaptation Plans: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [15] Jecker, N.S. 2013. "The Problem with Rescue Medicine." J Med Philos, 38(1):64-81. [16] White House Report. (February 9, 2021), Executive Order (E.O.) 14013, “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.” (calls on the National Security Advisor to prepare a report on climate change and its impact on migration. “This report marks the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling -the-climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/ [17] Torres, J.M., Casey, J.A. (2017) The centrality of social ties to climate migration and mental health. BMC Public Health, 17: 600. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4508-0. (shrink)

Marc Alspector-Kelly claims that Bas van Fraassen’s primary challenge to the scientific realist is for the realist to find a way to justify the use of some mode of inference that takes him from the world of observables to knowledge of the world of unobservables without thereby abandoning empiricism. It is argued that any effort to justify such an “inferential wand” must appeal either to synthetic a priori or synthetic a posteriori knowledge. This disjunction turns into a dilemma for (...) the empirically-minded realist as either disjunct leads to unwanted consequences. In this paper, I split the horns of this dilemma by arguing that the realist can justify one particular such mode of inference – abduction – without committing himself to rationalism. The realist may justify this mode of inference by appealing to the analytic a priori axioms of the probability calculus. I show that Peter Lipton’s tripartite defense of abduction constitutes such a method of justification. (shrink)

Jesus of Nazareth, like Socrates, left nothing behind written by himself. Yet, the records of his teaching indicate a rich interest in dialogic pedagogy, reflected in his use of the parable, primarily an oral genre, as a dialogic provocation. Working at the interface of pedagogy, theology and philosophy, this article explores the parable of the Good Samaritan from the perspective of dialogic pedagogy. It employs an analytical approach termed diacognition, developed from the notions of dialogue, position and cognition, to analyse (...) the moves within the parable and the teaching situation in which it is located. The article explores how Jesus engages the dialogue of and around the parable to position and reposition his interlocutor, provoking a re-cognition of what it means to love one’s neighbour. It concludes by reflecting on the implications of this analysis for the relation of meaning to knowing and doing. (shrink)

The present paper tries to trace the particular contours that the problem of theodicy assumes in the Chinese Buddhist text the Awakening of Faith in the Great Vehicle. It analyses the beginning section of the main body of text – the section, that is, that outlines the major theoretical structure of the work – in terms of a problem that has been of particular concern in western theology. I believe that taking such a tack is especially valuable for highlighting the (...) central Problematik around which the text is organized. The paper will thus use the problem of theodicy as a means of exploring some of the philosophical implications of the Awakening of Faith. (shrink)

American parents greatly value children’s happiness, citing it well above other possible priorities. This commitment to happiness, shared with parents in other Western societies but not elsewhere, is an important feature of popular emotional culture. But the commitment is also the product of modern history, emerging clearly only in the 19th century. This article explains the contrast between more traditional and modern views, and explains the origins but also the evolution of the idea of a happy childhood. Early outcomes, for (...) example, included the novel practice of hosting parties for children’s birthdays, another mid-19th-century innovation that has expanded over time. Explaining the intensification of the happiness commitment also reveals some of the downsides of this aspect of popular emotional culture, for example in measurably complicating reactions to childish unhappiness. The basic goal of the essay is to use this important facet of modern emotional history to evaluate a commitment that many modern parents assume is simply natural. (shrink)

An experimenting society is one in which policy-relevant knowledge is created. It is then critically assessed and communicated in real-life or natural settings, with the aim of discovering new forms of public action to improve the problem-solving capacities of society. This latest volume of the distinguished Policy Studies Review Annual series probes, evaluates, and augments the work of Donald T. Campbell on an experimental societies. A basic assumption of this volume is that Campbell's perspective supplies a useful way to address (...) increasingly complex and seemingly unmanageable problems facing the United States and other postindustrial societies. This volume is also the fourteenth festschrift to be issued by Transaction. The focus is on theoretical as well as practical options for creating an experimenting society. The rationale for this focus is the belief, increasingly -shared in the social science and policy-making communities alike, that researchers are essentially ignorant about how to solve many of the most pressing larger problems of this epoch. This frank recognition of ignorance is a prerequisite of genuine scientific and professional curiosity, without which knowledge gains are next to impossible to achieve, and a'precondition of an experimenting society. Contributors to this original volume include: Steve-Fuller, Duncan MacRae, Jr., Anthony S. Bryk, Robert A. Beauregard, Rita Mae Kelly, Peter Gregware, Burkart Holzner, B. Guy Peters, C. West Churchman, and Ian I. Mitroff. Their multidisciplinary competencies are at once philosophical, methodological, and substantive. They address such questions as: What new or bold policies are available in domains such as education, science, and urban development? In what ways can theoretical knowledge and practical action be fused so as to illuminate or alleviate policy problems? What should be done? Included are excerpts from Campbell's foundational paper "The Experimenting Society," as well as a recent article entitled "Methods for the Experimenting Society," which circulated in unpublished form for many years. An unusual feature of the book is Campbell's responses to those who have addressed his work with candor and intelligence. It will be of interest to policy studies scholars, sociologists, and social scientists. (shrink)

The theme of this book is the crisis of the early modern state in eighteenth-century Britain. The revolt of the North American colonies and the simultaneous demand for wider religious toleration at home challenged the principles of sovereignty and obligation that underpinned arguments about the character of the state. These were expressed in terms of the 'common good', 'necessity', and 'community' - concepts that came to the fore in early modern European political thought and which gave expression to the problem (...) of defining legitimate authority in a period of increasing consciousness of state power. The Americans and their British supporters argued that individuals ought to determine the common good of the community. A new theory of representation and freedom of thought defines the cutting edge of this revolutionary redefinition of the basic relationship between individual and community. (shrink)

This article uses historical analysis of shame to argue for a more active connection between emotions history and the other disciplines that deal with emotion. It assesses the current state of historical work on shame, including the argument for a 19th-century decline; it juxtaposes current social psychological and anthropological work with this argument. Additional data allow more precise consideration of changing patterns of shame, reasons for change, and probable impacts including increasing complexity in individual and social reactions alike. Evaluation includes (...) the unexpected increase in shame discussions in recent decades; the possibility that shame and “modernity” are ultimately incompatible; and some larger problems attached to the decline of shame. (shrink)

This article focuses on the rise of world history and the challenges it poses to curricula that emphasize history in service to national or civilizational identity. The nature and causes of the world history movement are juxtaposed to the continuing or renewed attachment to more nationalist history. Specific clashes around world history, particularly but not exclusively in the United States, have focused on opposing views about history and identity. Compromises continue to results, as well as clear delays in world history (...) interest in many regions and many programs. Yet world history continues to gain ground, fundamentally because, at its best, it provides many of the tools needed for responsible understanding of globalization past and present. (shrink)