Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment (Nozick's scenario) is widely used as the basis for a ?knockdown? argument against all internalist mental state theories of well-being. Recently, however, it has been convincingly argued that Nozick's scenario should not be used in this way because it elicits judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. These arguments all include alternate experience machine thought experiments, but these scenarios also elicit judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. In (...) this paper, several experiments are conducted in order to create and test a relatively bias-free experience machine scenario. It is argued that if an experience machine thought experiment is used to evaluate internalist mental state theories of well-being, then this relatively bias-free scenario should be used over any of the existing scenarios. Unlike the existing experience machine scenarios, when this new scenario is used to assess internalist mental state theories of well-being, it does not provide strong evidence to refute or endorse them. (shrink)

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

Contemporary debates about sexual ethics are dominated by a consent-oriented approach—consensualism. This position well explains the immorality of such acts as rape, pedophilia, bestiality and necrophilia. However, consensualism faces difficulties when it comes to adultery or HIV transmission. This article analyzes such unacquired moral obligations not to engage in consensual sex. A new natural law approach is proposed to explain and justify these obligations. This position places central importance in the evaluation of sexual acts on whether they are aimed at (...) achieving some common good and whether they harm some other good. As will be shown, the new natural law overcomes the difficulties of consensualism and grounds unacquired obligations in sexual ethics. And if this approach is combined with a pluralistic view of the goods that are realized in sex, then the new natural law does not allow the conservative conclusions about sexual morality inherent in the old natural law theory. (shrink)

The concepts of right action and virtuous motivation are clearly connected, in that we expect people with virtuous motives to at least often act rightly. Two well-known views explain this connection by defining one of the concepts in terms of the other. Instrumentalists about virtue identify virtuous motives as those that lead to right acts; virtue-ethicists identify right acts as those that are or would be done from virtuous motives. This paper outlines a rival explanation, based on the “higher-level” account (...) of virtue defended in the author’s Virtue, Vice, and Value and by earlier philosophers such as Rashdall, Moore, and Ross. On this account rightness and virtue go together because each is defined by a (different) relation to some other, more basic moral concept. Their frequent coincidence is therefore like a correlation between A and B based not on either’s causing the other but on their being joint effects of a single common cause C. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

One form of scepticism about the possibility ofmoral theorydoes not deny that there is something describable as ‘the conduct of life’, but it argues that there is no special ethical account to be given of this since conduct has no identifiablymoraldimension. Here I explore the possibility that the problem of identifying distinctively moral aspects of action is explained by the thesis that the moral is ubiquitous; thateveryhuman actionis– not ‘may be’ – morally significant. To say, however, that morality is all (...) pervasive is not to say anything about howdemandingmoral considerations may be. Reasons for action ultimately relate to promoting or protecting the human good, and their relative strength and urgency derives from the manner, extent and immediacy of their bearing upon this end and not from belonging to some logically distinct category. (shrink)

This paper argues for the superiority of natural law theory over consent -based approaches to sexual morality. I begin by criticizing the “consenting adults” sexual ethic that is dominant in contemporary Western culture. I then argue that natural law theory provides a better account of sexual morality. In particular, I will defend the “perverted faculty argument”, according to which it is immoral to use one’s bodily faculties contrary to their proper end.

The “new natural lawyers” (NNLs) are a prolific group of philosophers, theologians, and political theorists that includes John Finnis, Robert George, Patrick Lee, Gerard Bradley, and Germain Grisez, among others. These thinkers have devoted themselves to developing and defending a traditional sexual ethic according to which homosexual sexual acts are immoral per se and marriage ought to remain an exclusively heterosexual institution. The sterility objection holds that the NNLs are guilty of making an arbitrary and irrational distinction between same-sex couples (...) and sterile heterosexual couples. The NNLs believe that it is a necessary condition for two people’s being morally and legally entitled to get married that they be able to perform sexual acts that are “suited to procreating.” But sterile heterosexual couples are incapable of performing such acts. Therefore, it should follow from the NNLs’ own premises that sterile heterosexual couples are not entitled to marry. But the NNLs do not draw this conclusion. Instead, they maintain that sterile heterosexuals can marry while denying that the same is true of same-sex couples. The sterility objection claims the NNLs are being inconsistent in treating the two kinds of couples differently. Although the sterility objection has been endorsed by recent critics, I don’t think it has yet been adequately defended. The NNLs have responded by arguing that there is a sense in which the sex acts of sterile heterosexual couples are as suited to reproduction as those of fertile heterosexuals. Thus they maintain that the distinction they draw between the two kinds of couple has a rational basis. A successful defense of the sterility objection must show that this response on the part of the NNLs fails. Such is the task I undertake in this paper. I argue that the NNLs’ response fails because acts of penile-vaginal intercourse between sterile heterosexuals lack the actual causal power to produce conception that sexual acts need to be considered truly reproductive, and because their assumption that penile-vaginal intercourse always functions reproductively is bad biology. (shrink)

La democracia en el texto es vista desde una perspectiva integral u onmicomprensiva que complementa la parte instrumental (procedimiento electoral) con la sustancial (goce efectivo de derechos humanos) basado en la concienciación de una real dignidad humana que permita que la persona realice su proyecto de vida, disfrute de sus derechos y funcione efectivamente en la sociedad dentro del Estado democrático constitucional: la interrelación e interdependencia entre democracia, dignidad humana y Estado constitucional de derecho resulta para el autor un norte (...) el cual hay que seguir a cada instante. El libro muestra la importancia de la dogmática actual de la Corte Constitucional colombiana sobre derechos fundamentales, lo cual es un aporte latinoamericano a la estructuración de un constitucionalismo que contribuya con soluciones a favor de la libertad y la justicia en función de la persona humana en un escenario de tensiones evidentes entre la globalización y nacionalismos populistas y patrioteros. En el sentido expresado en el punto anterior la obra del profesor Caldera corrobora la relevancia que dicha dogmática le atribuye a la funcionalidad de los DerechosFundamentales con el logro del contenido normativo de la dignidad humana. Así, para Caldera Ynfante y desde su especial interpretación de la democracia cumple con los requisitos dogmáticos entronizados por la Corte Constitucional para ser considerado como un derecho fundamental generador de todos los efectos instrumentales y sustanciales que le son señalados. El texto nos lleva a establecer conceptualmente con un propósito práctico que la democracia integral, es decir, entendida como derecho fundamental es posible asumirla desde la perspectiva de la denominada teoría de la integralidad de los DDHH a partir de la Declaración y Plan de Acción de Viena sobreDDHH de 1993, instrumento del derecho internacional que resulta apical a partir del cual considera como fundamentales todos los Derechos Humanos. En consecuencia para el autor la democracia integral, como derecho fundamental, es posible asumirla desde la perspectiva del Enfoque Basado enDDHH y así puede ser defendida ante cualquier sistema de protección, ora universal o regional. Por otra parte es necesario para el lector reflexionar en torno al sentido de una democracia integral que para el autor es asumida como una meta garantía de losDDHH; es decir, como el derecho fundamental de los derechos fundamentales. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to undermine a basic assumption of theories of well-being, one that I call well-being invariabilism. I argue that much of what makes existing theories of well-being inadequate stems from the invariabilist assumption. After distinguishing and explaining well-being invariabilism and well-being variabilism, I show that the most widely-held theories of well-being—hedonism, desire-satisfaction, and pluralist objective-list theories—presuppose invariabilism and that a large class of the objections to them arise because of it. My aim is to show that (...) abandoning invariabilism and adopting variabilism is a sensible first step for those aiming to formulate more plausible theories of well-being. After considering objections to my argument, I explain what a variabilist theory of well-being would be like and show that well-being variabilism need not be any threat to the project of formulating theories of well-being that deliver general principles concerning well-being enhancement. (shrink)

The standard argument for longtermism assumes that we should care as much about far future people as about our contemporaries. I challenge this assumption. I first consider existing interpretations of ‘temporal discounting’, and argue that such discounting seems either unwarranted or insufficient to block the argument. I then offer two alternative reasons to care less about far future people: caring as much about them as about our contemporaries would make our lives less authentic and less meaningful. If I’m right, this (...) undermines at least the strongest versions of longtermism. Plausibly, we should do much more for the far future than we’re currently doing. Still, we often ought to act for contemporaries’ sakes, even if longtermist actions would expectably do more good. (shrink)

Argues that reasons internalism, suitably understood, explains categorical reasons for us to cooperate with each other. The norms we then cooperate to satisfy can lie at the heart of legal systems, yielding unexpected implications in the philosophy of law.

In philosophical debates on human rights between the East and the West, scholars argue whether rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international documents (in short, “international human rights”) are universal or culturally relative. Some scholars who emphasize the importance of East Asian cultures (such as the Confucian tradition) have different attitudes toward civil and political rights (CP rights) than toward economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC Rights). They argue that at least some international human rights (...) on the list of CP rights are not universal and believe that East Asian cultures can contribute to the moral justification of ESC rights. This chapter introduces a philosophical argument to support a normative account of human rights. This normative account, called “the minimal account of human rights,” is based on the ideas of minimal values, especially essential necessities of dignity. Based on this account, we can explain why international human rights are both universal and justified by East Asian cultures, especially the Confucian tradition. To explain this minimal account and illustrate how it can be applied to debates on international human rights, this chapter focuses on debates on the international human rights to liberty on the list of CP rights and the human rights to health on the list of ESC rights. (shrink)

Following Kelsen’s influential theory of law, the concept of validity has been used in the literature to refer to different properties of law (such as existence, membership, bindingness, and more), and so it is inherently ambiguous. More importantly, Kelsen’s equivalence between the existence and the validity of law prevents us from accounting satisfactorily for relevant aspects of our current legal practices, such as the phenomenon of “unlawful law.” This chapter addresses this ambiguity to argue that the most important function of (...) the concept of validity is constituting the complex ontological paradigm of modern law as an institutional-normative practice. In this sense, validity is an artificial ontological status that supervenes on that of the existence of legal norms, thus allowing law to regulate its own creation and creating the logical space for the occurrence of “unlawful law.” This function, I argue in the last part, is crucial to understanding the relationship between the ontological and epistemic dimensions of the objectivity of law. Given the necessary practice-independence of legal norms it is the epistemic accessibility of their creation that enables the law to fulfill its general action-guiding (and thus coordinating) function. (shrink)

Making a connection between ‘post-modernism’ and post-truth has by now become a standard trope, both within academia and popular discourse, despite post-truth’s only recent emergence as a concept. Such claims are often rather vague and fanciful and lack an altogether credible account of either phenomenon in many cases. This Chapter argues however that within a legal context, there is the emergence of a legal post-truth which is the direct consequence of a concrete form of post-modernity within legal practice and thought. (...) While law may be called upon to engage in judgments of ‘truth’ in numerous interesting ways, it does not itself have any particular form of privileged access to the truth of statements or allegations, even though it is often treated as doing so. However, the most persistent question which law must deal with, and indeed the most persistent question within legal philosophy, relates to a deeper form of inquiry into truth: the question of legal truth. In simple terms this refers to the correctness of any particular proposition of law. Within legal theory, this expands to the larger question of what makes, in general, any legal proposition valid, or true. Reflecting upon legal scholarship through the lens of truth reveals that theories of law can be broken down into two broad and radically distinct categories. On the one hand, there exist empirical accounts of law which fundamentally understand questions of legal truth as social questions whose answers are empirically demonstrable. On the other hand, there are ‘idealist’ accounts of law which view legal content, and hence truth, as existing in some way or other in a manner which transcends social practice and which is autonomous from it. Both of these classical accounts, while radically different, share an interesting paradox: they see truth in law as an objective fact, but one which is fleeting and distant, far from the paradigm of legal certainty upon which the ideology of law is partly based. However, such accounts of legal truth share many other unstated aspects, and are largely based upon ideas which place the separateness and completeness of legal systems at their heart, providing either a unified ideal or a unified empirically observable social practice. However, they are share a common flaw, namely the failure to account for what might be called a post-modern phase of development in law, in which ordinary legal questions now regularly require the complex and non-hierarchical interaction of competing legal systems with different ‘truths’ and different ways of arriving at such truths. Such phenomena are commonly referred to as legal or, at times, constitutional ‘pluralism’. This post-modern turn within law has also produced therefore what we might call a form of post-truth within law. This is particularly significant because it places under great strain both the empirical and ideal accounts of legal truth and require us to re-elaborate an account of what makes a legal proposition true. From certain perspectives, this legal post-truth shares certain important aspects with the cultural phenomenon of post-truth, namely its apparently capricious and deracinated nature. However, it is argued in this Chapter that, in the legal context at least, post-truth allows for the transcendence of the empirical/ideal divide and the revealing of deeper forms of legal truth and our ability to account for them through theory or, put more simply, explanation. Upon greater reflection, legal truth is generated by the very forms of argument, or modes, which allow access to it. Such forms of argument exist also to produce legal truths outside and between legal orders where these appear to conflict or collide. While some legal scholars and others claim that such pressures on structures of knowledge reveal the end of the potential for law to generate truth, it is argued here that, on the contrary, they require a more open and more transparent use of the pure methods and modes of reason which both reveal but also generate legal truth in the first place. This is relevant to post-truth more generally in one specific way, despite the numerous idiosyncrasies of legal truth and knowledge: when assertions of truth within structures of power seem to come to embody the perspectivism and relativism used as methods of deconstruction, the post-modern and deconstructionist projects themselves require radical change: they stay true to their goal of deconstructing structures and discourses of power by applying the classical epistemologies which are rejected by those in power. Just as legal outcomes which are asserted rather than reasoned or justified are most convincingly deconstructed through sober legal modes, so can the post-modernist project find purpose in a world where dominant epistemes seem to have come to embody a simplistic version of post-modernist critiques. (shrink)

The experimental turn in philosophy has reached several sub-fields including ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. This paper is among the first to apply experimental techniques to questions in the philosophy of law. Specifically, we examine Lon Fuller's procedural natural law theory. Fuller famously claimed that legal systems necessarily observe eight principles he called "the inner morality of law." We evaluate Fuller's claim by surveying both ordinary people and legal experts about their intuitions about legal systems. We conclude that, at best, we (...) should be skeptical of Fuller's inner morality of law in light of the experimental data. (shrink)

Purpose of this article is to assess the validity of the Razian conception of the rule of law by subjecting it to the acid test of Michel Troper's 'realist theory of interpretation'. The author argues that, in light of the Wittgensteinian view of rule-following, a serious indeterminacy can be seen as inherent in both this conception of the rule of law and Troper's theory of interpretation.

A comprehensive account of human kindness.

Professor Bryant’s article – which seeks to discover whether aspects of an anticruelty statute can be based directly on a call to virtuous conduct – is a provocative piece of scholarship that harbors a much larger question: Can a general principle mandating full respect for animals be developed out of the moral methodology inhering in virtue ethics? Insights garnered in this rejoinder are meant to stand alongside those in Professor Bryant’s article to lend deep moral grounding to animal-respect as well (...) as provide intimations of the way virtue ethics as a moral methodology might yield determinate answers to moral questions. Toward this end, this paper has several sections. The first section briefly outlines virtue ethics as a moral methodology with particular attention to its highly situated and somewhat ad hoc aspect. The second section explores efforts over the last several decades to rely first on utilitarianism and then on deontological approaches in pursuit of moral grounding for animal respect. The third section explores the particular challenges that utilitarianism or deontology must confront in attempting to provide moral grounding for any relationship between human beings and persons or creatures that are incapable of moral agency. Finally, I turn to the concept of fiduciary duty to see if it might be viewed as a type of virtue ethics – or perhaps an instance of virtue ethics in play. (shrink)

Is prostitution immoral? In this book, Rob Lovering argues that it is not. Offering a careful and thorough critique of the many―twenty, to be exact―arguments for prostitution's immorality, Lovering leaves no claim unchallenged. Drawing on the relevant literature along with his own creative thinking, Lovering offers a clear and reasoned moral defense of the world's oldest profession. Lovering demonstrates convincingly, on both consequentialist and nonconsequentialist grounds, that there is nothing immoral about prostitution between consenting adults. The legal implications of this (...) view are also brought to bear on the current discourse surrounding this controversial topic. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit Sharing is the first in-depth account of the Hoodia bioprospecting case and use of San traditional knowledge, placing it in the global context of indigenous peoples’ rights, consent and benefit-sharing. It is unique as the first interdisciplinary analysis of consent and benefit sharing in which philosophers apply their minds to questions of justice in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), lawyers interrogate the use of intellectual property rights to protect traditional knowledge, environmental scientists analyse implications (...) for national policies, anthropologists grapple with the commodification of knowledge and, uniquely, case experts from Asia, Australia and North America bring their collective expertise and experiences to bear on the San-Hoodia case. -/- While much of the focus is on bioprospecting and natural product development, Indigenous Peoples, Consent and Benefit-Sharing also draws important lessons about informed consent and benefit-sharing from the health sciences and sectors such as mining. Policymakers around the world are under significant pressure to resolve the challenges of implementing the CBD. This book’s analysis and recommendations will help them. -/- ‘It is good to see philosophers engaging with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and doing so by looking in depth at a real situation in which it has been invoked.’ Peter Singer, Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University . (shrink)

This book began as a series of professional development sessions held in 2014 for the faculty and staff at the Broome Campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia. Those sessions were given in response to concerns that included: questions about the identity of a Catholic University, the relationship between the Church and Aboriginal people, the place of social justice in a Catholic university, the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, the constitution of the University’s faculty and staff as well as issues of (...) academic freedom. Those concerns made it clear that members of the University community and key stakeholders needed clarification about the mission and nature of a Catholic university, especially one that has a unique campus such as University of Notre Dame’s Broome campus and which has a mandated mission of outreach to Aboriginal people. Since then, and with the encouragement of colleagues both from the Broome campus and Notre Dame’s other campuses, I have refined those presentations and augmented them with other material in order to present this book, which is a series of essays that focus on the common theme of, “A Catholic University in the Kimberley.” Because each essay is mostly independent, some material may be repeated, though this repetition will occur in different contexts and with different emphases. The intention of this book is to provide a series of research papers that will serve as resources for faculty, students and other stakeholders. It is my intention to help key parties to articulate the intellectual tradition that grounds the University, the relationship between the Church and Aboriginal culture, the nature and constitution of the faculty and to outline the theological and social teaching issues that affect the mission of the University. While some of the material in the book may not be entirely new, it is presented in what I trust is a fresh and new perspective, from the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and from theology, that can answer questions of the “why” and “how” of a Catholic University in the Kimberley. (shrink)

The social sciences, and particularly economics, play an important role in business. This article reviews the account of the interdisciplinary conversation between Catholic Social Teaching and the social sciences (especially economics) over the last century, and describes Benedict XVI’s development of this account in Caritas in Veritate . Over time the popes recognized that the technical approach of economics was a barrier to fruitful collaboration between economics and Catholic Social Teaching, both because the economic approach is reductionist, and because modern (...) social science is skeptical of comprehensive accounts of human nature. Through an appeal to charity in truth, one can deduce from Caritas in Veritate that economists, along with business and management theorists, need to take seriously the project of reflecting on and promoting true human goods in society. To love the person one must reflect on what is truly good for the person; to discover the true good of the person, one must love the person. (shrink)

This essay presents a skeleton of a potential conceptual framework for human flourishing in a free society. Its aim is to present a diagram that illustrates the ways in which its topics relate to one another and why they do. It argues for a plan of conceptualization rather than for the topics themselves. It emphasizes the interconnections among the components of the schema presented. It sees an essential interconnection between objective concepts, arguing that all of the disciplines of human action (...) can be integrated into a paradigm of human flourishing based on the nature of man and the world. (shrink)

Feizi 韓非子 in terms of the concept of shi 勢 (circumstantial advantage, power, or authority). This argument is based on the A Critique of Circumstantial Advantage (Nanshi 難勢) chapter of the Hanfeizi, where Han Feizi advances his own idea of shi after criticizing both Shen Dao and an anonymous Confucian. However, there are other primary sources to contain Shen Dao’s thought, namely, seven incomplete Shenzi 慎子 chapters of the Essentials on Government from the Assemblage of Books (Qunshu zhi yao 群書治要) (...) and other fragments preserved in other Chinese texts. This article examines the Shenzi fragments in order to ask whether Shen Dao stresses the concept of shi. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching takes a rather cautious view toward the value of the ideas of Adam Smith, due to his emphasis on negative political and economic liberty. Detractors of Smith within CST point to what they consider to be deficiencies within his works: an impoverished moral anthropology, a lack of concern for the common good, and markets untethered to human needs. Defenders of Smith within CST tend to emphasize the material benefits that derive from Smithian institutions, such as economic growth, (...) improvements in standards of living, and the new opportunities that arise from cultures focused on innovation. This paper argues that Smith’s ideas have real value for CST. However, this value primarily lies in his moral psychology. While not denying the dangers of business activity for our moral lives, Smith also helps us to understand the possibility of the moral corruption of those who wield political power, thus providing an indirect defense of political and economic liberty that coheres with important Christian ethical notions found in CST. This is the case even though CST does not consistently recognize concerns surrounding the dangers of wielding political power—and thus Smith’s arguments offer real challenges to CST as well. This paper further suggests that these basic insights are relevant regardless of one’s favored institutional arrangements. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the problem of endowing Artificial Intelligence with legal subjectivity, especially with regard to civil law. It is necessary to reject the myth that the criteria of legal subjectivity are sentience and reason. Arguing that AI may have potential legal subjectivity based on an analogy to animals or juristic persons suggests the existence of a single hierarchy or sequence of entities, organized according to their degree of similarity to human beings; also, that the place of an entity (...) in this hierarchy determines the scope of subjectivity attributed to it. Rather, it is participation or presence in social life, whatever the role, that is the true criterion of subjectivity. In addition, it is clear that even if AI is not currently a significant participant in social life, it will be in the nearest future. Despite the potential dangers associated with endowing AI with some kind of subjectivity, such a course is inescapable, and should be considered sooner rather than later. (shrink)

From a left-libertarian perspective, it seems almost impossible for states to acquire political authority. For that reason, left-libertarians like Peter Vallentyne understandably hope that states without political authority could nonetheless implement left-libertarian justice. Vallentyne has argued that one can indeed assess a state’s justness without assessing its political authority. Against Vallentyne, I try to show that states without political authority have to be judged unjust even if they successfully promote justice. The reason is that institutions can be unjust independently from (...) what they achieve or do: they can be ‘intrinsically unjust’. Institutions, I argue, are intrinsically unjust when they have legal liberties and powers without having the corresponding moral liberties and powers. States without political authority are intrinsically unjust in that sense. Hence the issues of a state’s justness and a state’s political authority cannot be dealt with separately. This is a problem not only for left-libertarians but for ‘philosophical anarchism’ more generally. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore how to accommodate non-consequentialist constraints with a broadly value-based conception of reasons for action. It turns out that there are two grades of non-consequentialist constraints. The first grade involves attaching ethical importance to such distinctions as the doing/allowing distinction, and the distinction between intended and unintended consequences that is central to the Doctrine of Double Effect. However, at least within the value-based framework, this first grade is insufficient to explain rights, which ground weighty reasons against (...) infringing those rights that need not be outweighed even when infringing those rights is necessary for preventing a larger number of people from having their rights infringed in the same way. Such rights form a second grade of non-consequentialist constraints: within the value-based framework, this second grade is best explained in terms of the intrinsically relational values and disvalues of interpersonal interactions and relationships. (shrink)

We shall argue that there is adequate moral justification for capital punishment with linkage, that is, with linkage to keeping non-murderers from dying. We present the argument with two aims in mind. The first is to question the conventional wisdom, seldom challenged even by proponents of capital punishment, that being an abolitionist is closely connected to having a civilized respect for human life. This conventional wisdom, we hope to show, is somewhat off the mark. To this end we exhibit structural (...) similarities between so-called lifeboat dilemmas and the public's relationship to a murderer. In a lifeboat dilemma one must choose between saving this life or that, since the lifeboat will not hold both persons. Now if this life were an innocent's and that one a murderer's, a choice to save the latter would not be met with accusations of callousness towards human life. We hope to project everyone's intuitions about this case onto the more baffling case of a society's relationship to the murderers and dying innocents in its midst. (shrink)

I defend normative externalism from the objection that it cannot account for the wrongfulness of moral recklessness. The defence is fairly simple—there is no wrong of moral recklessness. There is an intuitive argument by analogy that there should be a wrong of moral recklessness, and the bulk of the paper consists of a response to this analogy. A central part of my response is that if people were motivated to avoid moral recklessness, they would have to have an unpleasant sort (...) of motivation, what Michael Smith calls “moral fetishism”. (shrink)

The presence of a human being/organism—a living human ‘whole’, with the defining tendency to promote its own welfare—has value in itself, as do the functions which compose it. Life is inseparable from health, since without some degree of healthy functionality the living whole would not exist. The value of life differs both within a single life and between lives. As with any other form of human flourishing, the value of life-and-health must be distinguished from the moral importance of human beings: (...) less fulfilled means not less important morally, but more in need of being fulfilled. That said, to say that life and health has value is not to say exactly what—if anything—that value requires by way of active promotion at a given time. Many factors must be taken into account in making health care decisions, even if the worth of all lives, and the dignity of all human beings, must in every case be acknowledged. (shrink)

Existing accounts of the Rule of Law are inadequate and require fleshing out. The main value of the ideal of rule of law for liberal political theory lies in the notion of predictability, which is essential to individual autonomy. The author examines this connection and argues that conservative theories of rule of law claim too much. Liberal theory equates the rule of law with legality, which is only one of the elements necessary for a just social order.

The article propounds a justification of public health interventionism grounded on personal health as an intermediate human end in the ethical domain, on an interpretation of Aristotle. This goes beyond the position taken by some liberals that health should be understood as a prudential good alone. A second, but independent, argument is advanced in the domain of the political, namely, that population health can be justified as a political value in its own right as a primary social good, following an (...) interpretation of John Rawls’s evolved understanding of such goods in his later works. The article sets the scene for these positions by highlighting how liberal theories focusing on freedom as non-interference, or making the harm principle the basis of legitimate public health interventions, undercut the capacity of the state to actively promote population health. The article points to theoretical resources on legitimacy and liberty—the ‘salient coordinator account’ of authority and freedom as non-domination—that may help avoid this risk. The role of reflective equilibrium incorporating incompletely theorized mid-level principles is emphasized to ensure that interventions are soundly justified. The application of these principles would ensure that interventions do not exceed the proper moral/political boundaries limiting the role of government. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes denied both that opinion provides access to truth and that it ought to be protected from political manipulation. Hobbes knew that his contempt for opinion put him at odds with the classical tradition of political philosophy. What he could not have known was that it also would put him at odds with modern, liberal democracy, which protects opinions—the opinions of the public—that it cannot invest with truth value.

Individual autonomy is a prominent value in Western medicine and medical ethics, and there it is often accepted that the only way to pay proper respect to autonomy is to let the patients themselves determine what is good for them. Adopting this approach has, however, given rise to some unwanted results, thus motivating a quest for an objective conception of health. Unfortunately, the purportedly objective conceptions of health have failed in objectivity, and if a conception of health is not acceptable (...) for all agents, the threat of offending the patients’ autonomy arises. This article sketches an objective conception of health that is able to respect individual autonomy. (shrink)

A moral problem arises when a patient refuses a treatment that would save her life. Should the patient be treated against her will? According to an influential approach to questions of biomedical ethics, certain considerations pertaining to individual autonomy provide a solution to this problem. According to this approach, we should respect the patient’s autonomy and, since she has made an autonomous decision against accepting the treatment, she should not be treated. This article argues against the view that our answer (...) to the question of whether or not the refusing patient ought to be treated should be based on these kinds of considerations pertaining to individual autonomy and maintains that finding a plausible answer to this question presupposes that we resolve questions concerning subjectivity and objectivity of individual wellbeing. (shrink)

The concept of well-being is increasingly gaining acceptance as an object of science, and many different types of well-being measures have been developed. A debate has emerged about which measures are able to capture well-being successfully. An important underlying problem is that there is no unified conceptual framework about the nature of well-being—a hotly debated topic of philosophical discussion. I argue that while there is little agreement about the nature of well-being in philosophy, there is an important agreement on some (...) important principles relevant for its measurement. I argue that well-being science has good reasons to accommodate these principles, but currently fails to do so. (shrink)

Abstract.Although the Hart/Dworkin debate has as much to do with Dworkin's affirmative theory of judicial discretion as with Hart's more comprehensive theory of law, the starting point was of course Dworkin's attempt to demolish the “model of rules,” Hart's alleged analysis of legal systems as collections of conclusive reasons for specified legal consequences. The continuing relevance of this attack for the prospects for any theory of law is the subject of the present essay.

This paper sets out a view of a General Jurisprudence that is needed to underpin the institutionalised discipline of law as it becomes more cosmopolitan in the context of “globalisation”, and considers its implications. Part I restates a position on the mission and nature of the discipline of law and of the role of jurisprudence, as its theoretical part, in contributing to the health of the discipline. Part II clarifies some questions that have been raised about this conception of General (...) Jurisprudence: (i) the implications of “globalisation”; (ii) The meaning of “General Jurisprudence” in this context; (iii) The relationship between Jurisprudence, Legal Philosophy, and social scientific approaches to law; and (iv) The significance of the idea of “non-state law”. Part III illustrates through concrete examples some implications for possible agendas and issues suggested by this model within the areas roughly characterised as analytical, normative, empirical, and critical jurisprudence, including critical analysis of the assumptions and presuppositions typically underpinning mainstream work in fields such ascomparative law, public international law, religious law, and socio-legal studies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between John XXIII and Robert K. Greenleaf’s understanding of leadership. By taking into consideration Greenleaf’s theory of servant-leadership – from conceptualization to model development – and Larry Spears’ influential rubric of ten servant-leadership characteristics, we will show how servant-leadership theory goes in line with that of John XXIII when both are based on a notion of the common good and human dignity.

Albert Camus’ reflection in _The Myth of Sisyphus_ presents the absurd, the intrusion of the meaningless and irrational universe into the order and future focus of modern life. Central to Camus’ reading of Sisyphus and his dammed eternal labour, was time. Camus clearly saw that modernity and modern life was predicated on tensions in time. Moderns perceived, and lived, in the timescale of past-present-future. A commitment to chronology that promised an allusion of meaning within a world of essential meaninglessness. Modern (...) law, the law forged by the structural violence of positivism and sovereignty, shared this commitment to time. However, transitions to the digital are presenting different relationships of law and time. Emergent digital legality manifests a Sisyphean closed loop of repeat, return and enclosure, past and future become a blurred undistinguished present. The modern terror of mundane life that Camus tried to recast, seems intensified and totalised in the digital. However, rather than the possibility of the joy of the absurd, there is something else. Sisyphus, Camus imaged, had weathered to look like his rock, but he never merges with it. But in the unfolding of the digital and its legality, the secure subjectivity that Camus exalted is less then certain. This might not be bad. (shrink)