We can enjoy and suffer many kinds of human goods and evils. The goods include not only experiences and enjoyments but also the having and exercise of various talents and abilities, the receipt of recognitions and rewards, successes, employments, opportunities. The evils include not only pains and frustrations but also defects such as ugliness, disabilities such as paralysis or retardation, lack of standard opportunities such as unemployment, financial loss, failure, disgrace. It is tempting to say that wherever a person has (...) a good he has an advantage and when he suffers an evil he is, in that respect, disadvantaged. However this usage can make it look as if all human goods and evils are subject matter for distributive justice. In fact that is not the conventional view. (shrink)

The use of intention in ethics has been the subject of intense debate for many years, but no consensus has emerged over whether intention is morally relevant, or even how it should be understood. In this paper I wish to make a thorough, though by no means exhaustive, examination of the concept and the concepts around it, some to be seen as near-synonyms, and some as contrasting ideas. My interest is in the ethical use of the concept, though my own (...) analysis of it will be indebted to discussions in the philosophy of action. The most famous ethical use, which will not, however, be my direct focus here, is the ‘principle of double effect,’ which states that an agent may cause or allow something bad as long as, first, no evil is intended as an end or a means; and, second, that the foreseen bad is not out of proportion with the anticipated good. It is important to note the principle’s testimony to the plausibility of prohibitions expressed in terms of intentions, and, alongside these, a general prohibition on doing inordinate harms even without intention. (shrink)

The use of intention in ethics has been the subject of intense debate for many years, but no consensus has emerged over whether intention is morally relevant, or even how it should be understood. In this paper I wish to make a thorough, though by no means exhaustive, examination of the concept and the concepts around it, some to be seen as near-synonyms, and some as contrasting ideas. My interest is in the ethical use of the concept, though my own (...) analysis of it will be indebted to discussions in the philosophy of action. The most famous ethical use, which will not, however, be my direct focus here, is the ‘principle of double effect,’ which states that an agent may cause or allow something bad as long as, first, no evil is intended as an end or a means; and, second, that the foreseen bad is not out of proportion with the anticipated good. It is important to note the principle's testimony to the plausibility of prohibitions expressed in terms of intentions (indicated by the first condition), and, alongside these, a general prohibition on doing inordinate harms even without intention (indicated by the second condition). (shrink)

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A puzzle has been presented in the recent past in Northern Ireland: what is the correct description of the person who dies as a result of a hungerstrike? For many the simple answer is that such a person commits suicide, in that his is surely a case of ‘self-inflicted death’. Where then is the puzzle? It is that a number of people do not see such deaths as suicides. I am not here referring to political propagandists or paramilitaries, for whom (...) the correct description of such deaths is ‘murder by Mrs Thatcher’ or ‘killed by British intransigence’. I am rather thinking of some theologians who, despite being opposed to the hunger-strike and indeed publicly condemning the whole campaign, refused to describe what the hunger-strikers did as suicide. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a great deal of philosophical discussion about the alleged moral right to die. If there is such a moral right, then it would seem to imply a moral duty on others to not interfere with the exercise of the right. And this might have important implications for public policy insofar as public policy ought to track what is morally right.

There are many conflicting attitudes to technological progress: some people are fearful that robots will soon take over, even perhaps making ethical decisions for us, whilst others enthusiastically embrace a future largely run for us by them. Still others insist that we cannot predict the long term outcome of present technological developments. In this paper I shall be concerned with the impact of the new technology on medicine, and with one particularly agonizing ethical dilemma to which it has already given (...) rise. (shrink)

Counterfactuals about what a patient would consent to, if he were able to consent, are often cited as justifications, or partial justifications, for acts of euthanasia. In virtue of this fact, they deserve special scrutiny by moral philosophers. ;In Chapter I, I examine terminology that is essential to further understanding the relationship between euthanasia and counterfactual consent. I propose a definition of 'euthanasia', an analysis of 'consent', and I present a brief description of counterfactuals. ;In Chapter II, I consider two (...) questions. The first is, "When it is appropriate to invoke counterfactual consent in an attempt to justify an act of euthanasia?" By making use of an improved version of the voluntary, nonvoluntary, and involuntary distinction among acts of euthanasia, I am able to determine when it is appropriate to cite counterfactuals about consent in an attempt to justify an act of euthanasia. The second is, "to what end is counterfactual consent used?" I contend that counterfactual consent does morally justify some acts of euthanasia, and defend an argument for this claim. Finally, I look at the role of counterfactual consent as a possible legal justification for acts of euthanasia. ;In Chapter III, I use possible world semantics to analyze counterfactual consent. Traditional counterfactuals are determined to be true if in the closest world at which their antecedent is true, their consequent is also true. Counterfactuals about consent have a less straightforward reading. I consider and reject several possible ways of reading counterfactuals about consent, before settling on the correct reading of counterfactuals about consent. ;In Chapter IV, I consider evidence for the truth of claims about counterfactual consent. I consider and reject the claim that no counterfactual is either true or false. I examine both Living Wills and the practice of surrogacy, neither of which offers sufficient evidence for the truth of claims about counterfactual consent. ;In Chapter V, I contrast counterfactual consent with actual consent. I review and refute the arguments for the claim that actual consent is preferable to counterfactual consent. I conclude by presenting a principle about the relationship between actual and counterfactual consent. (shrink)