Sufficientarian libertarianism is a theory of justice that combines libertarianism’s focus on property rights and non-interference with sufficientarianism’s concern for the poor and needy. Persons are conceived as having stringent rights to direct their lives as they see fit, provided that everyone has enough to live a self-guided life. Yet there are different ways to combine libertarianism and sufficientarianism and hence different types of sufficientarian libertarianism. In the article I present and discuss three types, and I argue that the last (...) one overcomes the problems of the other two. The first type combines libertarianism with a sufficiency principle in what is sometimes called the ‘ethics of distribution’. The second incorporates modest welfare rights into a libertarian theory of justice. The third endorses a sufficientarian Lockean proviso for practices of private property within a libertarian theory of justice. I argue that it is superior to the others. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of writers dealingwith questions over parenthood that arisein the context of reproductive technologies andsurrogate motherhood, have appealed to thenotion of ``intentional parenthood''. Basingtheir argument on liberal values such asindividual autonomy, the freedom to entercontracts, the right to privacy, and individualself-fulfilment, they argue that contractuallystated intentions, rather than genetic orgestational relationships, should form thebasis of parental rights. Against this I arguethat parental rights do not derive fromcontractual agreements, but are based in theirobligations towards the child. I (...) then examinethe nature of the obligations that the variousparties have towards the child both pre- andpostnatally. (shrink)

Con frecuencia la teoría política trata a la familia como un hecho incuestionable de la vida social. Sin embargo, y especialmente en el marco del liberalismo político, vale la pena preguntarse por su justificación. En el presente trabajo analizo la teoría de la justicia de John Rawls buscando reconstruir no sólo lo que efectivamente dice sobre esta cuestión sino también el potencial que encierra para propocionar respuestas más contundentes. Rawls parece suscribir una explicación puramente instrumental del valor de la familia, (...) centrada en su utilidad para la reproducción y estabilidad de una sociedad bien ordenada. Sin embargo, como señalaré, aunque Rawls no explora esta alternativa, una aplicación consecuente del “primer principio”, que pauta la distribución de libertades y derechos básicos de los individuos, abre el camino para una justificación normativa más concluyente. (shrink)

The way we use terminology matters. There are words, ordinary and philosophical, that we should do without because they are ill-defined, ambiguous or confused. If we use them we will at best be saying little. At worst, they will make us ask the wrong questions and leave the right ones unasked. In this paper, I argue that ‘deontology’ is such a word. It is defined negatively as non-teleological or non-consequentialist, and therefore does not designate a distinct class of moral theories, (...) let alone a single one. Moreover, the question whether Kantian ethics is ‘deontological’ is likely to obscure what is distinctive and interesting about it. The word ‘deontology’ should be banished from the classroom. It may be best to abandon it altogether. (shrink)

Yael Tamir; Whose Education Is It Anyẃay?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 161–170, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-97.

An objection often is raised against the use of reproductive technology to create "nontraditional families," as in ovum donation for postmenopausal women or postmortem artificial insemination. The objection states that conceiving children in such circumstances is harmful to them because of adverse features of these nontraditional families. A similar objection is raised when parents, through negligence or willful disregard of risks, create children with serious genetic diseases or other developmental handicaps. It is claimed that such reproduction harms the children who (...) are created. In reply to this Harm to the Child Argument, it has been pointed out that the procreative acts that supposedly harm the child are the very acts that create the child. This reply has been developed into an argument that, in most of the types of cases under consideration, creating the child does not harm her. This reply, the No Harm Argument, has been stated in three main ways, and it is one of the most misunderstood arguments in bioethics. This paper examines the main rebuttals that have been made to the No Harm Argument and argues that none of them is successful. (shrink)

A recent New York Times/CBS poll shows that nearly 80 percent of respondents think the American “health care system is headed toward a crisis because of rising costs.” Indeed, the public has become well acquainted with ominous-looking graphs that detail the nation’s health care spending. The increasingly steep slope of the graph showing the percentage of gross domestic product spent on health care invites tongue-in-cheek projections for when health care spending will finally consume it all.High aggregate health care expenditures result (...) from the low prices individuals pay for coverage. On average, patients pay only five cents out-of-pocket for every dollar of hospital charges they generate. The remainder is paid by private or public health insurance. Patients pay slightly more for physicians’ services—nineteen cents on each dollar. For health care of all types, patients pay approximately twenty-four cents on each dollar. With individuals paying what amount to fire sale prices for health care, it should come as no surprise that they purchase a great deal of coverage. (shrink)

There is an increasing call for preventive state interventions in so-called families at risk—that is, interventions before any overt harm has been done by parents to their children or by the children to a third party, in families that are statistically known to be liable to harm children. One of the basic principles of liberal morality, however, is the citizen's right to be free from state intervention so long as no demonstrable harm has been done. On the other hand, Joel (...) Feinberg interprets the harm principle as a harm prevention principle, so that the risk of harm also might be a reason for interference. The question that needs to be asked, therefore, is whether enforced preventive intervention in the cases where families are judged to be at risk can be justified within the limits of liberalism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to direct attention to a challenge—referred to as the threshold challenge —facing a non-absolutist retributivist view on international criminal justice. It is argued, on the one hand, that this challenge constitutes a practically pertinent problem for the retributivist approach to the punishment of mass crimes and, on the other, that it is very hard to imagine any principled way of meeting this challenge.

Is health care “special”? That is, do we have moral reason to treat health care differently from how we treat other sorts of social goods? Intuitively, perhaps, we might think the proper response is “yes.” However, to date, philosophers have often struggled to justify this idea—known as the “specialness thesis about health care” or STHC. In this article, I offer a new justification of STHC, one I take to be immune from objections that have undercut other defenses. Notably, unlike previous (...) utility- and opportunity-based theories, I argue that we can find normative justification for STHC in what I term our special duty to assist those unable to help themselves. It is this duty, I argue, that ultimately gives us reason to treat health care differently from other sorts of goods and to distribute it independently of individuals’ ability to pay. (shrink)

Recent theorizing about the cognitive underpinnings of dilemmatic moral judgment has equated slow, deliberative thinking with the utilitarian disposition and fast, automatic thinking with the deontological disposition. However, evidence for the reflective utilitarian hypothesis—the hypothesized link between utilitarian judgment and individual differences in the capacity for rational reflection has been inconsistent and difficult to interpret in light of several design flaws. In two studies aimed at addressing some of the flaws, we found robust evidence for a reflective minimalist hypothesis—high CRT (...) performers’ tendency to regard utility-optimizing acts as largely a matter of personal prerogative, permissible both to perform and to leave undone. This relationship between CRT and the “minimalist” orientation remained intact after controlling for age, sex, trait affect, social desirability, and educational attainment. No significant association was found between CRT and the strict utilitarian response pattern or CRT and the strict deontological response pattern, nor did we find any significant association between CRT and willingness to act in the utility-optimizing manner. However, we found an inverse association between empathic concern and a willingness to act in the utility-optimizing manner, but there was no comparable association between empathic concern and the deontological judgment pattern. Theoretical, methodological, and normative implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

In the growing philosophical literature on the family and its value, the parents' fiduciary role often serves to explain why the family is valuable from a child-centred perspective. Recently it has been further argued that this fiduciary role also explains the distinctive value the family has for parents. By offering a critique of that argument, the paper advances an alternative parent-centred account of the value of the family. It points out the process in families whereby parents reproduce some of their (...) characteristics in their children and thereby establish a powerful sense of interconnectedness and continuity between their own identity and the child's. The fact that the family provides quite a unique platform for developing this type of interpersonal bond may account for the striking importance ascribed to families. Liberal theory should accommodate this fact when offering an account of legitimate parental authority. (shrink)

Institutionalized practices of collective justification are central for theorizing international fairness. Institutions matter because they play a significant part in the construal of fairness claims through the provision of internal standards for moral assessment. Conceptions of international fairness must spell out how collective justification works by addressing the jurisprudential and institutional issues at stake in the specification of the moral grounds for compliance with international institutions on the one hand and international civil disobedience on the other. Theoretical models of institutions (...) that do not pay attention to collective justification are inadequate on fairness grounds. More specifically, mainstream neoliberal institutionalist accounts of international regimes are deeply problematic when used in the normative evaluation of international institutions, as they offer the wrong benchmark for moral assessment, given their roots in a brand of exchange theory that is blind to the distribution of burdens and benefits from cooperation. (shrink)

For many, it is far from clear where the prerogatives of parents to educate as they deem appropriate end and the interests of their children, immediate or future, begin. In this article I consider the educational interests of children and argue that children have an interest in their own well-being. Following this, I will examine the interests of parents and consider where the limits of paternalism lie. Finally, I will consider the state's interest in the education of children and discuss (...) a familiar view that argues that we have a central obligation to cultivate good citizens. The article will focus on the tensions which inevitably arise from the sometimes conflicting interests between them. (shrink)

Legitimate parental interests need to be distinguished from any putative rights parents qua parents may be said to possess. Parents have no right to insulate their children from conceptions of the good at variance with those of their own. Claims to the right to faith schools, private schools, home-schooling or to withdraw a child from any aspect of the curriculum designed to enhance a child’s capacity for autonomous decision-making, are refuted.

Not every speech act can be a lie. A good definition of lying should be able to draw the right distinctions between speech acts that can be lies and speech acts that under no circumstances are lies. This paper shows that no extant account of lying is able to draw the required distinctions. It argues that a definition of lying based on the notion of ‘assertoric commitment’ can succeed where other accounts have failed. Assertoric commitment is analysed in terms of (...) two normative components: ‘accountability’ and ‘discursive responsibility’. The resulting definition of lying draws all the desired distinctions, providing an intensionally adequate analysis of the concept of lying. (shrink)

Utilitarianism has been able to respond to many of the objections raised against it by undertaking a major revision of its theory. Basically, this consisted of recognising that its early normative propositions were only viable for agents very different from flesh-and-blood humans. They then deduced that, given human limitations, it was most useful for everyone if moral agents did not behave as utilitarians and habitually followed certain rules. Important recent advances in neurotechnology suggest that some of these human limitations can (...) be overcome. In this article, after presenting some possible neuro-enhancements, we seek to answer the questions, first, of whether they should be accepted by a utilitarian ethic and, second, if accepted, to what extent they would invalidate the revision that allowed them to escape the objections. (shrink)

There are questions about how ethics is best taught to undergraduate business students. There has been a proliferation in the number of stand-alone ethics courses for undergraduate students but research on the effectiveness of integrated versus stand-alone mode of delivery is inconclusive. Christensen et al. :347–368, 2007), in a comprehensive review of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability education, investigated how ethics education has changed over the last 20 years, including the issue of integration of these topics into the core (...) course offerings. We use Brenner and Molander’s :57–71, 1977) situational ethics survey instrument to examine the effect of the mode of delivery of business ethics education on undergraduate student responses. We found a significant difference on mode of delivery. Studies have also found interesting results in respect of the effect of cultural differences and gender on the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. While not the primary focus of this study, we also looked at the influence of gender and culture on students’ responses. Our results indicate significant differences in respect of mode of delivery and culture. In contrast to other studies, we found that gender was not significant. We did test for any interactive effects of gender, culture and mode of delivery. However, no significant differences were found. (shrink)

Can schools encourage children to become independent moral decision-makers, maintaining controlled environments suitable to instructing large numbers of children? Two opposing responses are reviewed: one holds that the road to morality is through discipline and obedience, the other through children's experimentation and choice-making. Circumventing these polarities, I look to distinctions within rules that may help in balancing claims of restraint and freedom. Using a pharmacological analogy, one might, in principle, justify ‘pills’ for uncontrollable and/or morally trivial behaviors, but not for (...) intentional behaviors of moral significance where volition matters. However, since we cannot permit children to choose to harm, their agency must be curbed. As a compromise, I suggest that teachers hold extended moral discussions, and involve students in rule-making and sanction-giving. (shrink)

Like several prominent moral philosophers before him, such as St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, Kant held that it is never morally permissible to tell a lie. Although a great deal has been written on why and how he argued for this conclusion, comparatively little has been written on what, precisely, Kant considered a lie to be, and on how he differentiated between being truthful and being candid, between telling a lie and being reticent, and between telling a lie and (...) other forms of linguistic deception. That is to say, very little has been written on the scope of Kant's prohibition against lying. In this article I will argue that the scope of the prohibition against lying is narrower than it is commonly supposed to be. (shrink)

The main body of this paper assesses a leading recent theory of fairness, a theory put forward by John Broome. I discuss Broome's theory partly because of its prominence and partly because I think it points us in the right direction, even if it takes some missteps. In the course of discussing Broome's theory, I aim to cast light on the relation of fairness to consistency, equality, impartiality, desert, rights, and agreements. Indeed, before I start assessing Broome's theory, I discuss (...) two very popular conceptions of fairness that contrast with his. One of these very popular conceptions identifies fairness with the equal and impartial application of rules. The other identifies fairness with all-things-considered moral rightness. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the prospects for a rights-based approach to the morality of pure risk-imposition. In particular, I discuss a practical challenge to proponents of the thesis that we have a right against being imposed a risk of harm. According to an influential criticism, a right against risk-imposition will rule out all ordinary activities. The paper examines two strategies that rights theorists may follow in response to this “Paralysis Problem”. The first strategy introduces a threshold for when a (...) risk-imposition is a rights violation. The second strategy drops the claim that rights are absolute and maintains that all rights infringements generate compensation duties. It is argued that both strategies face significant practical problems of their own and that the Paralysis Problem seems fatal for a right against risk-imposition in the absence of an adequate account of the morally relevant threshold risk. (shrink)

The essay considers what respect demands and what trust demands when one person trusts another. What respect requires in responding to trust is substantial but limited, ranging from the sharply proscriptive to the mildly prescriptive. What trust requires is, in a sense, unlimited, its content depending on the extent to which the person who trusts, and more importantly the person who is trusted, seek to build a relationship characterised by trust and trustworthiness.

Mainstream moral theories deal with situations in which the outcome of each possible action is well-determined and knowable. In order to make ethics relevant for problems of risk and uncertainty, moral theories have to be extended so that they cover actions whose outcomes are not determinable beforehand. One approach to this extension problem is to develop methods for appraising probabilistic combinations of outcomes. This approach is investigated and shown not to solve the problem. An alternative approach is then developed. Its (...) starting-point is that everyone has a prima facie moral right not to be exposed to risk. However, this right can be overridden if the risk-exposure is part of an equitable system for risk-taking that works to the advantage of the individual risk-exposed person. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making research has centered on Rest’s framework that represents a rational, nonaffective model for ethical decision making. However, research in human cognition suggesting a “dual-processing” framework, composed of both rational and affective components, has been relatively ignored in the ethical decision-making literature. Examining dual-processing literature, it seems affect might be an important factor in decision making when a person’s mood is congruent with the task or situational context frame. Given that ethical decisions are serious and complex tasks, it is (...) proposed here that inducing a negative affective state might produce mood congruence, reinforce the salience of emotion for ethical decision makers, and lead to differences in decision processing. Evidence is presented documenting differences in the decisions made by ethical decision makers in a negative affective state as compared to those in either a positive or neutral affective state. (shrink)

British accounts of medical ethics concentrate on confidentiality to the exclusion of wider questions of privacy. This paper argues for consideration of privacy within medical ethics, and illustrates through the television series `Hospital', what may go awry when this wider concept is forgotten.

According to the traditional philosophical definition, you lie if and only if you assert what you believe to be false with the intent to deceive. However, several philosophers (e.g., Carson 2006, Sorensen 2007, Fallis 2009) have pointed out that there are lies that are not intended to deceive and, thus, that the traditional definition fails. In 2009, I suggested an alternative definition: you lie if and only if you say what you believe to be false when you believe that one (...) of Paul Grice's conversational norms (“Do not say what you believe to be false”) is in effect. Faulkner (forthcoming), Stokke (forthcoming), and Pruss (2012) have subsequently argued that my 2009 definition fails as well because it counts some statements that are clearly not lies as being lies. In this paper, I identify some additional counter-examples of this sort. But I argue that my 2009 definition can easily be revised to deal with such counter-examples once we clarify that the relevant norm is really against communicating something false rather than against merely saying it. Nevertheless, I show that even this revised version of my 2009 definition fails because it counts some statements that are lies as not being lies. Lies told by young children – which uncontroversially count as lies on the traditional philosophical definition – suggest that lying (as well as asserting in general) does not require believing that such a norm is in effect. Even so, I claim that, since all liars intend to do something that would violate this norm if it were in effect, there is a successful definition of lying that is at least in the spirit of my 2009 definition. (shrink)

Liberalist thinking argues that moral agents have a right to pursue an ordinary life. It also insists that moral agent can be bystanders. A bystander is involved with morally bad states of affairs in the sense that they are bound by moral duty, but for a non-blameworthy reason. A common view on the morality of commercial life argues that commercial agents cannot and ought not to assume the status of bystander, when confronted with child labor, pollution, or other overwhelmingly big (...) morally bad states of affairs. According to the common view, the agent will get overdemanded. In this paper, the overdemandingness charge is interpreted as a criticism of the liberalist position. According to this charge, bystander status must be given up in the market because otherwise the right to pursue a personal life is crushed. In this paper, we demonstrate that the overdemandingness charge fails. It does not make sense if bystander status is grounded in the duty of beneficence. It would make sense if the status were grounded in the duty of rescue but that duty does not apply in relation to oMBS. The condition of ‘subjective urgency’ is not fulfilled. Hence, liberalist thinking can withstand the charge of overdemandingness and commercial agents cannot assume a right never to acknowledge bystander status. (shrink)

In latter-day discussions on corporate morality, duties of commission are fiercely debated. Moral institutionalists argue that duties of commission—such as a duty of assistance—overstep the boundaries of moral duty owed by economic agents. " Moral institutionalism" is a newly coined term for a familiar position on market morality. It maintains that market morality ought to be restricted, excluding all duties of commission. Neo-Classical thinkers such as Baumol and Homann defend it most eloquently. They underpin their position with concerns that go (...) to the core of liberalism—the dominant western political theory that sustains the ideals of both the free market and the free, rational person. Those authors claim that liberalism calls for a fully differentiated market because it resents the politicization of the market. Fully differentiated markets exclude duties of commission. They also claim that full differentiation of the market closes the troublesome gap between moral motivation and moral virtue. Full differentiation redeems the promise of "easy virtue". In this paper moral institutionalism will be rejected from a Kantian point of view, mostly inspired by Herman's thesis on the invisibility of morality. Liberalism may perhaps ban the politicization of the market; it does not forbid its moralization. The idea of a fully differentiated market must also be rejected because it is either morally over-demanding (to the morally autonomous person) or morally hazardous (to the person with failing moral motivation). Contrary to what the moral institutionalists claim, right action, morally, is actually quite difficult in fully differentiated markets. (shrink)

This paper argues that economic agents, including corporations, have the duty to further justice, not just a duty merely to comply with laws and do their share. The duty to further justice is the requirement to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist in society. The paper is grounded in liberal theory and draws heavily on one liberal theorist, Kant. We show that the duty to further justice must be interpreted as a duty of virtue (...) that is owed. This means that the duty is not enforceable but that violating this duty is still wrong and not merely non-virtuous. Our analysis has consequences for the morality of commercial life. It is often suggested that the morality of the market is a special, restricted morality that is leaner than the morality that agents must acknowledge outside the market. If our analysis is correct, the duty to further justice cannot be exempted from market morality, even if it is agreed that this must be leaner than the morality outside commercial life. Our analysis also has direct consequences for John Ruggie’s view on the responsibilities of businesses. Ruggie has never explicitly acknowledged a duty on the part of business enterprises to further justice. If our analysis is correct, his view is contradictory in that it presupposes the normative validity of free market enterprise yet shrinks from taking into account the conditions of its possibility. (shrink)

Certain methods and weapons are traditionally considered to be?mala in se?, i.e. evil in themselves. Examples are mass rape campaigns and land mines. This article examines different interpretations of the principle that belligerents ought not to use such means. Some interpretations are reductionist in the sense that they see the principle as an instance of other principles regulating conduct in war, namely the principles of discrimination and proportionality. I suggest a horizontal and a vertical dimension of the latter. Resort to (...) violence can then be unjustified if the persons are not liable to be attacked because they bear no responsibility for the relevant threat, the amount of harm is disproportionate compared to what can be achieved by the resort to violent force, or the kind of harm is disproportionate by making individual persons suffer in ways that no one should have to endure. I defend the vertical dimension of proportionality as a key to understanding the principle of mala in se and consider whether it leads to an absolute prohibition against such means. (shrink)

A moral right to health or health care is a special instance of a right to fair equality of opportunity. Nation-states generally have the capabilities to specify the entitlements of such a right and to raise the resources needed to satisfy those entitlements. Can these functions be replicated globally, as a global right to health or health care requires? The suggestion that “better global governance” is needed if such a global right is to be claimed requires that these two central (...) capabilities be present. It is unlikely that nation-states would concede these two functions to a form of global governance, for doing so would seriously compromise the authority that is generally included in sovereignty. This claim is a specification of what is often recognized as the “sovereignty problem.” The argument of this paper is not an “impossibility” claim, but a best guess about whether the necessary conditions for better global governance that supports a global right to health or health care can be achieved. (shrink)

Consider the following argument for school choice, based on an appeal to the virtues of the market: allowing parents some measure of choice over their particular children's education ultimately serves the interests of all children, because creating a market mechanism in state education will produce improvements through the same pressures that lead to greater efficiency and quality when markets are deployed in more familiar contexts. The argument fails, because it is committed to a principle of equal concern, which implies that (...) a market in education is acceptable only if it is right to hold children disadvantaged by their parents' poor market choices substantively responsible for the fact. Since that claim is untenable, the market‐based argument for school choice not only fails, but also turns out to rely on principles which in fact condemn the very policy it was supposed to support. (shrink)

Three studies test eight hypotheses about (1) how judgment differs between people who ascribe greater vs. less moral relevance to choices, (2) how moral judgment is subject to task constraints that shift evaluative focus (to moral rules vs. to consequences), and (3) how differences in the propensity to rely on intuitive reactions affect judgment. In Study 1, judgments were affected by rated agreement with moral rules proscribing harm, whether the dilemma under consideration made moral rules versus consequences of choice salient, (...) and by thinking styles (intuitive vs. deliberative). In Studies 2 and 3, participants evaluated policy decisions to knowingly do harm to a resource to mitigate greater harm or to merely allow the greater harm to happen. When evaluated in isolation, approval for decisions to harm was affected by endorsement of moral rules and by thinking style. When both choices were evaluated simultaneously, total harm -- but not the do/allow distinction -- influenced rated approval. These studies suggest that moral rules play an important, but context-sensitive role in moral cognition, and offer an account of when emotional reactions to perceived moral violations receive less weight than consideration of costs and benefits in moral judgment and decision making. (shrink)

Recently, the idea that all rights are positive and costly has come to prominence in international human rights law. This has been taken to imply that there are no reasons to object to providing economic, social, and cultural rights with the same level of protection than civil and political rights. The present contribution aims to reject this undifferentiated view. It argues that even if it is accepted that all rights are in a sense positive and costly, there are still strong (...) grounds for finding the welfare implications of human rights problematic from the perspective of adjudication. (shrink)

No agreement exists among ethical theories on what cancount as a right moral motivation. This hampers us from knowingwhether an intervention in motivation biology can be considered positivefor human morality. To overcome this difficulty, this paper identifiesminimal requirements for moral enhancement that could be accepted bythe major moral theories. Subsequently four possible scenarios are presentedwhere the most promising neural interventions on moral motivationare implemented, by means of drugs, electromagnetic stimulation ofbrain, or biotechnological brain implants. The ultimate goal of this paperis (...) to evaluate the results of each one of these interventions according totheir capacity to fulfill the identified requirements. (shrink)

There is a tendency to use data from neuroscience, cognitive science and experimental psychology to rail against philosophical ethics. Recently, Joshua Greene has argued that deontological judgments tend to be supported by emotional responses to irrelevant features, whereas consequentialist judgments are more reliable because they tend to be supported by cognitive processes. In this article, I will analyse the evidence used by Greene to suggest a different kind of argument against deontology, which I will call the argument from self-defeating beliefs. (...) The charge of this type of argument amounts to exposing a psychological nature of deontological judgements that is supposedly rejected by deontologists. I will argue that the alleged evidence is poorly understood, mixed and indeterminate, failing to endorse general conclusions about the psychological processes underlying deontological judgements. (shrink)

En este trabajo desarrollo un modelo normativo sobre la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso hacia los sujetos de investigación desde la perspectiva de la justicia social o distributiva, inspirado en la teoría de la justicia de John Rawls. Llamo a esto, el modelo de reciprocidad democrática. La idea original del modelo de reciprocidad democrática es defender que la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso tiene como derecho correlativo el derecho a la salud. Así, dentro del marco rawlsiano, argumento que (...) las razones morales que dan peso a la obligación de continuidad de tratamiento beneficioso son, indirectamente, el principio de igualdad equitativa de oportunidades y, directamente, el derecho de justicia y/o el principio de equidad que se aplican a los miembros de una sociedad entendida como un sistema de cooperación social. (shrink)

Despite the strong criticisms to ethical utilitarianism, this theory has not succumbed and remains one of the most notorious. The main criticisms address to the consequentialist conception of right that underlies the theory. However,it has been such a conception of right that, at the same time, saved utilitarianism. The article set out the features and changes that, according to the author, are the causes to explain the subsistence of utilitarianism.