This article aims to present that moral particularism is a viable alternative to the dominant ethics of modernity to the present (i.e., Kantian and utilitarian ethics); theories that have been criticized during the last decades, especially, by the requirement of moral impartiality. The agent in these ethics deliberates impartially due to the universalism of moral principles. I will suggest that moral particularism, insofar as it excludes impartiality as a relevant factor in the agents' deliberations, presents reasons to be a plausible (...) ethics. (shrink)

The nature and value of autonomy has long been debated in diverse philosophical traditions, including moral and political philosophy. Although the notion dates back to ancient Greek philosophy, it was during the Age of Enlightenment that autonomy drew much attention. Thus, as may be known, moral philosophers tended to emphasize self-regulation, particularly one’s own will to abide by universal moral laws, as the term “autonomy” originates from the Greek words “self” (auto) and “rule” (nomos). In parallel, modern epistemologists supposedly espoused (...) the idea of intellectual autonomy as self-reliance. In this classical view, an intellectually autonomous explorer of knowledge must not depend on a belief that is obtained from another’s testimony, until one can justify it to oneself. However, accompanying the growing focus on the importance of social dimensions of acquiring knowledge and understanding, recent epistemologists have doubted the classical view and have since reconsidered intellectual autonomy from distinct approaches such as social and virtue epistemology. This paper propounds an interpersonal-epistemic approach to intellectual autonomy. First, it is argued that thinking through questioning both individually and with other epistemic peers is an interpersonal-epistemic practice. Second, it is demonstrated that with particular cognitive features inherent within us, an intellectually autonomous person must think through questioning in necessary situations. This interpersonal account of intellectual autonomy can conceptually enrich intellectual autonomy by considering its relationship with not only responsibility but also with vulnerability. Specifically, regarding responsibility, an intellectually autonomous person must be responsible for his or her own actions throughout questioning processes. Regarding vulnerability, our intellectual autonomy lies in retaining autonomy with vulnerability in the plastic control of the questioning processes. (shrink)

One of the most familiar arguments for expressivist metaethics is the claim that the rival theory, moral realism, cannot provide a satisfying explanation of why moral properties supervene on natural properties. Non-cognitivism, however, has its own problems explaining supervenience. Expressivists try to establish supervenience either by second-order disapproval of type-inconsistent moral evaluations or by pragmatic considerations. But disapproval of inconsistency is merely a contingent attitude that people happen to have; and pragmatic justification does not allow for appraisers to take their (...) own moral attitudes seriously enough. What has been overlooked is a third alternative. The metaethical theory that can best account for supervenience is neither realist nor non-cognitivist but an objectivist version of constructivism. On the constructivist theory, right and wrong are determined by the principles that people would (hypothetically) consent to under ideal conditions. Type-consistency is a required feature of any principles regulating our conduct, if they are to be freely agreed to by ideally rational people. (shrink)

Effective Altruism is a rapidly growing and influential contemporary philosophical movement committed to updating utilitarianism in both theory and practice. The movement focuses on identifying urgent but neglected causes and inspiring supererogatory giving to meet the need. It also tries to build a broader coalition by adopting a more ecumenical approach to ethics which recognizes a wide range of values and moral constraints. These interesting developments distinguish Effective Altruism from the utilitarianism of the past in ways that invite cooperation and (...) warrant a fresh look from Thomists. Nonetheless Effective Altruism’s fundamentally consequentialist and aggregative model for ethics precludes more foundational agreement with Thomistic ethics in ways that limit the extent of practical cooperation. (shrink)

How the diversity of membership of research ethics committees is arrived at has, to date, largely been fairly arbitrary. However, a tool to help determine one's moral preference is now available and it is introduced here as, arguably, having the potential to assist with ensuring a more meaningful diversity amongst an ethics committee's membership. The tool is seen to be easily applied – but, it is argued, may be conceived on at least two false premises. Firstly, despite different theories of (...) ethics, none can be proved to give the ‘right’ answer other than in its own terms. Secondly, if there is an ethical hierarchy, as the model suggests, then ethical diversity must become redundant for the possibility of achieving ethical excellence. (shrink)

This paper discusses varieties of normative phenomena, ranging from morality, to epistemic justification, to the rules of chess. It canvases a number of distinctions among these different normative phenomena. The most significant distinction is between formal and authoritative normativity. The prior is the normativity exhibited by any standard one can meet or fail to meet. The latter is the sort of normativity associated with phenomena like the "all-things-considered" ought. The paper ends with a brief discussion of reasons for skepticism about (...) authoritative normativity. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a type of reply to arguments from evil against God’s existence. The skeptical theist declines to accept a premiss of some such argument, professing ignorance, for example, about whether God is justified in permitting certain evils or about the conditional probability that the world contains as much evil as it does, or evils of a particular sort, on the hypothesis that God exists. Skeptical theists are thus not supposed to be skeptical about theism; rather, they are theists (...) who are skeptical about something else. But that raises the question of exactly what else. In particular, does skepticism with respect to some claims about God and evil lead to a more pervasive skepticism? More precisely, is skeptical theism committed to additional skepticism about God? Is skeptical theism committed to global skepticism, including skepticism about ordinary, commonplace beliefs? Or is skeptical theism at the very least committed to a broader skepticism about matters of morality? This paper takes up these questions. Skeptical theism, Global Skepticism, Moral Skepticism, God’s existence, Problem of Evil. (shrink)

This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

Money isn’t everything, so what is? Many government leaders, social policy theorists, and members of the general public have a ready answer: happiness. This paper examines an opposing view due to Robert Nozick, which centres on his experience-machine thought experiment. Despite the example's influence among philosophers, the argument behind it is riddled with difficulties. Dropping the example allows us to re-version Nozick's argument in a way that makes it far more forceful - and less dependent on people's often divergent intutions (...) about the experience machine. [DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE at oro.open.ac.uk repository, link below]. (shrink)

Abstract I provide an account of the nature of seemings that explains why they are necessary for justification. The account grows out of a picture of cognition that explains what is required for epistemic agency. According to this account, epistemic agency requires (1) possessing the epistemic aims of forming true beliefs and avoiding errors, and (2) having some means of forming beliefs in order to satisfy those aims. I then argue that seeming are motives for belief characterized by their role (...) of providing us with doxastic instructions guided by our epistemic aims. Understanding the nature of seemings allows us to underwrite recent epistemological work by Michael Huemer, and shows why he was right to claim that seemings are the source of all justification. I then look at some objections both to my arguments regarding the connection between seemings and justification, and to Huemer’s related “Principle of Phenomenal Conservatism”. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-21 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9830-2 Authors Matthew Skene, Syracuse University, 8330 E. Quincy Ave., I-307, Denver, CO 80237, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

I am called herewith a collaborator-in-chief, mountain climber, and prophet. They all arise from the writers' largesse, not facts on the ground. But I will embrace them momentarily and then turn to...

The history of the political thought on pleasure is not a cloistered affair in which scholars only engage one another. In political thought, one commonly finds a critical engagement with the wider public and the ruling classes, which are both perceived to be dangerously hedonistic. The effort of many political thinkers is directed towards showing that other political ends are more worthy than pleasure: Plato battles vigorously against Calicles' pleasure seeking in the Gorgias, Augustine argues in The City of God (...) against the human tendency to hedonism in favor of a profound distrust of pleasure, and even Machiavelli claims in The Prince that it is in the prince's best interest to separate his pursuit of pleasure from his pursuit of political power. The thrust of the majority of political thought is to interrupt the popular equation that links pleasure with the good. Instead, political thought has largely followed Plato's lead and has worked to contain hedonism on two fronts. First, pleasure is rigorously separated from ethical and political good: what is good is not identical with what is pleasurable even if the two sometimes overlap. Second, even where the pursuit of pleasure is judged to be coincident with the good, pleasure should only be pursued to the degree it is rational to do so and pursued in the most rational way. Of course, it is not true that all thinkers hold to these two positions on pleasure. Epicureanism and utilitarianism are two major schools of thought that challenge the first precept equating pleasure with the good. Both Epicureanism and utilitarianism argue that the only good is pleasure. However, it is much less frequently that one finds a thinker challenging the second Platonic position that reason must master and guide our pursuit of pleasure—even the Epicureans and utilitarians believe that pleasure is best pursued rationally. However, Foucault has attracted recent attention by challenging the idea that reason should dominate the pursuit of pleasure. (shrink)

The article develops an internalist justification of welfare ethics based on empathy. It takes up Hume’s and Schopenhauer’s internalistic (but not consistently developed) justification approach via empathy, but tries to solve three of their problems: 1. the varying strength of empathy depending on the proximity to the object of empathy, 2. the unclear metaethical foundation, 3. the absence of a quantitative model of empathy strength. 1. As a solution to the first problem, the article proposes to limit the foundation of (...) welfare ethics to certain types of empathy. 2. In response to the second problem, an internalistic metaethical conception of the justification of moral principles is outlined, the result of which is: The moral value of the well-being of persons is identical to the expected extent of (positive and negative) empathy arising from this well-being. 3. The contribution to the solution of the third problem and focus of the article is an empirical model of the (subject’s) expected extent of empathy depending on (an object’s) well-being. According to this model, the extent of empathy is not proportional to the expected empathy, but follows a concave function and is therefore prioritarian. Accordingly, the article provides a sketch of an internalist justification of prioritarianism. (shrink)

Ruth Chang and Joseph Raz have both drawn far-reaching consequences for agency from the phenomenon of incommensurability. After criticizing their arguments, I outline an alternative view: if incommensurability is vagueness, then there are no substantial implications for agency, except perhaps a limited form of naturalistic voluntarism if our reasons are provided by desires.

An encyclopedia entry on hedonistic theories of value and welfare -- the view, roughly, that pleasure is the good.

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)

This chapter explores the prospects for justifying the somewhat widespread, somewhat firmly held sense that there is some moral advantage to untruthfully implicating over lying. I call this the "Difference Intuition." I define lying in terms of asserting, but remain open about what precise definition best captures our ordinary notion. I define implicating as one way of meaning something without asserting it. I narrow down the kind of untruthful implicating that should be compared with lying for purposes of evaluating whether (...) there is a moral difference between them. Just as lying requires a robust form of assertion, so the kind of untruthful implicating to be compared with lying requires a robust form of implicating. Next, I set out various ways of sharpening the Difference Intuition and survey a range of approaches to justifying one class of sharpenings. I finish by sketching an approach to justifying an alternative sharpening of the Difference Intuition, which is inspired by John Stuart Mill's discussion of lying. (shrink)

Narrowly understood, veganism is the practice of excluding all animal products from one’s diet, with the exception of human milk. More broadly, veganism is not only a food ethics, but it encompasses all other areas of life. As defined by the Vegan Society when it became an established charity in the UK in 1979, veganism is best understood as “a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude – as far as is possible and practicable – all forms of (...) exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment”. There are two main moral justifications for veganism, both of which rely on a common assumption: that sentience, i.e., the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, is the necessary and sufficient trait to be morally considerable. In what follows, I present these two justifications and a third one which, although less popular, captures some core intuitions among vegans. I then present a challenge faced by veganism and two arguments that reject it as discriminatory, and briefly conclude. (shrink)

Epistemic consequentialism has been charged with ignoring the epistemic separateness of propositions and with (thereby) allowing trade-offs between propositions. Here, I do two things. First, I investigate the metaphor of the epistemic separateness of propositions. I argue that either (i) the metaphor is meaningfully unpacked in a way that is modeled on the moral separateness of persons, in which case it doesn’t support a ban on trade-offs or (ii) it isn’t meaningfully unpacked, in which case it really doesn’t support a (...) ban on trade-offs. Second, I consider the strategy of arguing against the trade-off permitting conception of epistemic rationality that is central to epistemic consequentialism on the basis of our intuitive verdicts about the permissibility of trade-offs in cases. I argue the execution of this strategy suffers a methodological mistake that, once corrected, vitiates the probative value of those intuitive verdicts. Hence the conclusion: the separateness of propositions provides no support for a ban on trade-offs, and an influential independent argument for such a ban is flawed. (shrink)

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

After describing the disorder of psychopathy, I examine the theories and the evidence concerning the psychopaths’ deficient moral capacities. I first examine whether or not psychopaths can pass tests of moral knowledge. Most of the evidence suggests that they can. If there is a lack of moral understanding, then it has to be due to an incapacity that affects not their declarative knowledge of moral norms, but their deeper understanding of them. I then examine two suggestions: it is their deficient (...) practical reason or their stunted emotions that are at fault. The evidence supports both explanations. I conclude with an overview of the debate concerning whether they are morally or legally responsible for their actions. (shrink)

Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say 'yes', but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say 'no'. This distinction is practically important: additive axiologies support 'arguments from astronomical scale' which suggest (among other things) that it is overwhelmingly important for humanity to avoid premature extinction and ensure the existence of a (...) large future population, while non-additive axiologies need not. We show, however, that when there is a large enough 'background population' unaffected by our choices, a wide range of non-additive axiologies converge in their implications with some additive axiology -- for instance, average utilitarianism converges to critical-level utilitarianism and various egalitarian theories converge to prioritiarianism. We further argue that real-world background populations may be large enough to make these limit results practically significant. This means that arguments from astronomical scale, and other arguments in practical ethics that seem to presuppose additive separability, may be truth-preserving in practice whether or not we accept additive separability as a basic axiological principle. (shrink)

Respect is a cardinal virtue in schools and foundational to our common ethical beliefs, yet its meaning is muddled. For philosophers Kant, Mill, and Rawls, whose influential theories span three centuries, respect includes appreciation of universal human dignity, equality, and autonomy. In their view children, possessors of human dignity, but without perspective and reasoning ability, are entitled only to the most minimal respect. While undeserving of mutual respect they are nonetheless expected to show unilateral respect. Dewey and Piaget, scions of (...) the same liberal tradition, grant children a larger degree of autonomy and equality thereby approximating the full respect conditions reserved for adults in the prior theories. In this article, after reviewing the premises of respect, I attempt to blend the divide - between minimal and full respect - by separating respect-due from respect-earned . While the former, premised on human dignity, should be granted unconditionally to all, the latter is contingent upon qualities that one possesses or acquires over time. Adding the notion of respect-due is a constraint on the prevalent school practice of turning respect into demands for deference. The relevance of this distinction is discussed in terms of student-teacher relationships. (shrink)

While there is a vast philosophical literature exploring the conditions under which it is appropriate to hold individuals morally responsible for their actions, relatively little attention has been paid to the related question of which kinds of individuals merit these responsibility ascriptions. Under normal circumstances, typical adult human beings are held morally responsible for their behaviour but infants and nonhuman animals are not. In this thesis, I aim to account for this difference. That is, I aim to give an analysis (...) of the concept of moral agency. In Chapter One, I begin with a schema of moral agency, under which moral agents are characterised by the possession of certain abilities, enabling certain actions, for which certain responses are warranted. The literature on moral responsibility offers many ways of filling in these details, primarily by specifying the relevant agential abilities in terms of various responsibility conditions. My aim in this chapter is to offer a basic account, under which moral agents are characterised by the simplest possible abilities while still being appropriate targets of the relevant responses, such as praise and blame. I draw on the work of Nomy Arpaly, whose account of moral responsibility identifies the relevant ability as the ability to act out of good or ill will. I offer an analysis of this ability, under which basic moral agency is characterised by the ability to have desires about others’ mental states. In Chapter Two, I consider a range of alternative responsibility conditions offered by other philosophers, each of which appears to be necessary for moral agency. I argue that these conditions are not necessary for a basic account of moral agency. In Chapter Three, I move beyond basic moral agency to offer a more restrictive account that aims to capture other important aspects of our moral lives: the practice of justification and our ability to improve our moral character. I claim these aspects are underpinned by the use of moral reasons to guide our behaviour, and in contrast to moral motivation, this guidance is characterised by the ability to have beliefs about the desirability of actions. In Chapter Four, I aim to answer two questions: at what age do humans become moral agents, and are there any nonhuman animals who are moral agents. I draw on the work of Josef Perner, who offers a three-stage framework of the development of mental representation during childhood. I consider the conceptual coherence of this framework, its applicability to both accounts of moral agency developed in the thesis, and the empirical evidence that bears on the framework. As a result, I tentatively conclude that basic moral agency develops at around 18 months of age and may be present in a few species of nonhuman animal, whereas the more restrictive type of moral agency developed in Chapter Three develops no earlier than around 3.5 years of age and is restricted to human beings. (shrink)

J. Anthony Blair is a prominent international figure in argumentation studies. He is among the originators of informal logic, an author of textbooks on the informal logic approach to argument analysis and evaluation and on critical thinking, and a founder and editor of the journal Informal Logic. Blair is widely recognized among the leaders in the field for contributing formative ideas to the argumentation literature of the last few decades. This selection of key works provides insights into the history of (...) the field of argumentation theory and various related disciplines. It illuminates the central debates and presents core ideas in four main areas: Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, Argument Theory and Logic, Dialectic and Rhetoric. (shrink)

This volume collects selected papers delivered at the 15th Conference of the International Society for Utilitarian Studies, which was held at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in July 2018. It includes papers dealing with the past, present, and future of utilitarianism – the theory that human happiness is the fundamental moral value – as well as on its applications to animal ethics, population ethics, and the future of humanity, among other topics.

The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...) than no paradigm. Therefore, the author considers whether value-based economics with normative approaches such as economics of happiness, capability approach, libertarian paternalism, and the concept of multiple self can be the alternative paradigm for value-free economics. This book is essential reading to everyone interested in the current state of economics as a discipline. (shrink)

Human emotional expressions can communicate the emotional state of the expresser, but they can also communicate appeals to perceivers. For example, sadness expressions such as crying request perceivers to aid and support, and anger expressions such as shouting urge perceivers to back off. Some contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) systems can mimic human emotional expressions in a (more or less) realistic way, and they are progressively being integrated into our daily lives. How should we respond to them? Do we have reasons (...) to reply to the appeals made by AI emotional expressions? In this paper, we examine the conditions under which AI emotional expressions could give us prudential or even moral reasons to change our behavior. We argue that these conditions do not depend on whether the emotional expression is genuine or not, but rather on the presence of features some of which can be implemented in emotive AI given our current level of technological development. We extract recommendations and warnings for the development of emotive AI. (shrink)

Part of a book symposium on Fred Feldman's *Pleasure and the Good Life*.

Truth-telling is often regarded as a challenge in Chinese medical practices given the amount of clinical and ethical controversies it may raise. This study sets to collect and synthesize relevant ethical evidence of the current situation in mainland China, thereby providing corresponding guidance for medical practices. This study looks into the ethical issues on the basis of the philosophy of deontology and utilitarianism and the ethical principles of veracity, autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence. Chinese philosophy, context and culture are also discussed (...) to provide some suggestions for decision-making about disclosure in a medical setting. This study holds that, in order to respect the basic rights to which critically ill patients are entitled, decisions regarding truth-telling and their implementation should be carried out with thorough consideration, which can be achieved by critical thinking, well-developed and effective communication skills, the consideration of cultural context, an understanding of individual differences, and compliance with relevant laws and regulations. (shrink)

Entry of new organizations, including multinational enterprises from emerging markets, raises the ethical question of will they benefit society. The concept of legitimacy answers this question because it is the overall assessment of the appropriateness of organizational ends and means. Moreover, gaining legitimacy enables EMNEs to succeed in new host countries. Past work examined collective level indicators of the legitimacy of MNEs, but recent research recognizes the importance of individuals’ perceptions as the micro-foundation of legitimacy. This study first uses new (...) pragmatism, deontology, and utilitarianism to demonstrate that legitimacy is fundamentally an ethical concept—a perspective that has been overlooked in management research. Second, this study uses a seven-step procedure to develop and validate a measure of individuals’ perceptions of the legitimacy of Chinese EMNEs operating in The Netherlands, a developed country. Six dimensions of legitimacy were identified. The study also finds support for this legitimacy judgment process linking the dimensions: validating knowledge → propriety judgments → generalized judgment. This work provides additional micro-foundations to research on legitimacy and contributes to the ongoing process of construct validation. Future research could use the validated measure in other settings and use specific ethical theories in depth to refine the concept of legitimacy. (shrink)

Do liberals’ and conservatives’ brain processes differ in moral reasoning? This research explains these groups’ dissimilar moral stances when they face ethical transgressions in business. Research that explores the effects of ideological asymmetry on moral reasoning processes through moral foundations has been limited. We hypothesize two different moral reasoning processes and test them in the South Korean culture. Study 1 uses the neuroscientific method of event-related potentials to explore the dissociable neural mechanisms that underlie Korean liberals’ and conservatives’ moral reasoning (...) processes in business ethical transgressions. Liberals’ early frontal negative-going brain waves showed that they are quick to pass negative judgment by intuitively detecting violations of fairness, while conservatives’ temporoparietal positive-going brain waves showed that they have a higher motivation to respect authority. Both liberals’ and conservatives’ ERP components occur within the first second of the decision-making phase, suggesting the rapid and intuitive nature of moral reasoning processes. Study 2 tests a mediating process and confirms that Korean liberals exhibit the moral engagement strategy, through the fairness foundation. These findings from our interdisciplinary research deepen the knowledge of the complexity of human morality in business ethics research. (shrink)

Kant’s moral philosophy usually considers two types of duties: negative duties that prohibit certain actions and positive duties commanding action. With that, Kant insists on deriving all morality from reason alone. Such is the Categorical Imperative that Kant lays at the basis of ethics. Yet while negative duties can be derived from the Categorical Imperative and thus from reason, the paper argues that this is not the case with positive duties. After answering a number of attempts to derive positive duties (...) from the Categorical Imperative, most notably those of Barbara Herman, it sketches an alternative approach to understanding the relationship between the universal moral law and specific moral contents. (shrink)

This paper is a defense of the view that existence is a perfection. Anselm’s First Ontological Argument is referred to throughout. Two major objections are advanced: the ‘perfect island’ objection and the ‘perfect devil’ objection. A rebuttal of both, based on Anselm’s reply to Gaunilo, is tendered, but itself faces a major objection. Two lines of defense against this objection are possible. The first is sympathetically explained but it is argued that it ultimately fails. The second, which focuses on the (...) idea of a perfection and a perfect being, is elaborated and defended against a seemingly powerful objection. It is concluded that there is a reasonable interpretation of the claim that existence is a perfection. (shrink)

'Evidentialism' is the conventional name (given mainly by its opponents) for the view that there is a moral duty to proportion one's beliefs to evidence, proof or other epistemic justifications for belief. This essay defends evidentialism against objections based on the alleged involuntariness of belief, on the claim that evidentialism assumes a doubtful epistemology, that epistemically unsupported beliefs can be beneficial, that there are significant classes of exceptions to the evidentialist principle, and other shabby evasions and alibis (as I take (...) them to be) for disregarding the duty to believe according to the evidence. Evidentialism is also supported by arguments based on both self-regarding and other-regarding considerations. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the values that underpin health care and how these relate more specifically to the values and ethics of palliative care. The paper focuses on the concept of autonomy because autonomy has emerged as a foundational concept in contemporary health care ethics and because this is an opportunity to scratch the surface of this concept in order to reveal something of its complexity, a necessary precaution when applying the concept to the context of palliative care. The (...) paper begins with a theoretical discussion of autonomy exploring an aspect of its contemporary meaning and relevance to health care. The second part of the paper focuses more closely on how the principle of respect for autonomy can be applied in the context of palliative care. In this section an ethical framework is employed to explore a practical application of this principle within a broader context of respect for persons. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should replace the common classification of theories of welfare into the categories of hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories. The tripartite classification is objectionable because it is unduly narrow and it is confusing: it excludes theories of welfare that are worthy of discussion, and it obscures important distinctions. In its place, the paper proposes two independent classifications corresponding to a distinction emphasised by Roger Crisp: a four-category classification of enumerative theories (about which items constitute (...) welfare), and a four-category classification of explanatory theories (about why these items constitute welfare). (shrink)

Behavioral economics focuses mainly on how limitations of the human cognitive apparatus, risk attitudes, and human sociality affect decision making. The former two lead to deviations from rationality standards, the latter to deviations from rational self-interest. Some of these research interests are also shared by evolutionary psychology which, however, explains the observed deviations by features of the human genetic endowment conjectured to have evolved under fierce selection pressure in early human phylogeny. Important as the decision-making theoretical perspective of the two (...) disciplines is, it will be claimed to be too narrow to fully account for what an evolutionary approach has to say about economic behavior. This is particularly true regarding the questions of what choices are made and what causes them, i.e., the motivational aspects of behavior. In the language of economics this points to the agents’ preferences. This article discusses how preferences relate to the human genetic endowment, how they can change over time, and what conclusions have to be drawn from extending the analysis to the motivational side. (shrink)

The claim that the level of well-beingeach enjoys ought to be to some extent afunction of individuals'' talents, efforts,accomplishments, and other meritoriousattributes faces serious challenge from bothegalitarians and libertarians, but also fromskeptics, who point to the poor historicalrecord of attempted merit assays and theubiquity of attribution biases arising fromlimited sweep, misattribution, custom andconvention, and mimicry. Yet merit-principlesare connected with reactive attitudes andinnate expectations, giving them some claim torecognition and there is a widespread beliefthat their use indirectly promotes thewell-being of all. (...) After critically evaluatingarguments for and against assigning a prominentrole to merit in a distributive protocol, it isargued that an entitlement to the ``doubtful andspeculative'''' but not the ``known andpresumptive'''' components of well-being can flowfrom perceived relative merit. However,statistical equality of outcome with respect togroups is mandatory. Semi-meritocracies aredefensible institutions, but existing rewardschemes by and large do not meet the conditionsof social justice. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward an ethical argument for the provision of extensive patient choice by the British National Health Service. I base this argument on traditional liberal rights to freedom of choice, on a welfare right to health care, and on a view of health as values-based. I argue that choice, to be ethically sustainable on this basis, must be values-based and rational. I also consider whether the British taxpayer may be persuadable with regard to the moral acceptability (...) of patient choice, making use of Rawls’ theory of political liberalism in this context. I identify issues that present problems in terms of public acceptance of choice, and also identify a boundary issue with regard to public health choices as against individual choices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Increasingly, global businesses are confronted with the question of complicity in human rights violations committed by abusive host governments. This contribution specifically looks at silent complicity and the way it challenges conventional interpretations of corporate responsibility. Silent complicity implies that corporations have moral obligations that reach beyond the negative realm of doing no harm. Essentially, it implies that corporations have a moral responsibility to help protect human rights by putting pressure on perpetrating host governments involved in human rights abuses. This (...) is a controversial claim, which this contribution proposes to analyze with a view to understanding and determining the underlying conditions that need to be met in order for moral agents to be said to have such responsibilities in the category of the duty to protect human rights. (shrink)

Mill’s Liberty Principle aims to protect ‘social’ freedom, which is traditionally understood as negative freedom. I argue that Mill’s conception of social freedom does not comfortably fit even a moralized conception of negative freedom, and that individuality, an ideal fundamental to On Liberty, is a robustly positive type of freedom. This raises the question of whether protecting social freedom involves an egalitarian, progressive state that ambitiously strives to create the social conditions of individuality. I consider the case for an affirmative (...) answer to that question, then argue that the ideal of individuality itself blocks interventions that some contemporary egalitarian, progressive liberals consider at least consistent with the Liberty Principle. These include autonomy-enhancing paternalism, and outright prohibition of as opposed to time, place, and manner regulation of the expression of some opinions that adversely affect protected minorities. Though not libertarian, the Liberty Principle is not an expression of this type of egalitarian liberalism, as evidenced inter alia by Mill’s emphatic rejection of state control of education, and his categorical case against prohibiting the expression of even the most extreme and insidious opinions. (shrink)

The techniques that some large multinational corporations use to reduce their tax liability have come under increasing public scrutiny in recent years, alongside governmental investigations and international commitments aimed at curbing opportunities for tax avoidance. Although discussion of tax avoidance activities, and their regulatory responses, is often conducted with reference to moral concepts, philosophical analysis of the ethics of multinational tax avoidance remains limited. In particular, the virtue ethics tradition that emphasises the agent and the performance of specific roles has (...) not been considered in detail. This paper examines how the contemporary virtue ethics of Alasdair MacIntyre can be applied to the issue of multinational tax avoidance, and considers the role that accountants play in these activities. It argues, firstly, that MacIntyre’s approach provides a more useful philosophical analysis of the issue and, secondly, that the main parties involved are likely to agree with the main tenets of this approach. The paper also contributes by reconceptualising, using MacIntyre’s scheme, the issue of tax avoidance in relation to Donald Cressey’s ‘fraud triangle’. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue presented a reinterpretation of Aristotelian virtue ethics that is contrasted with the emotivism of modern moral discourse, and provides a moral scheme that can enable a rediscovery and reimagination of a more coherent morality. Since After Virtue’s publication, this scheme has been applied to a variety of activities and occupations, and has been influential in the development of research in accounting ethics. Through a ‘close’ reading of Chaps. 14 and 15 of AV, this paper considers and (...) applies the key concepts of practices, institutions, internal and external goods, the narrative unity of a human life and tradition, and the virtues associated with these concepts. It contributes, firstly, by providing a more accurate and comprehensive application of MacIntyre’s scheme to accounting than that available in the existing literature. Secondly, it identifies areas in which MacIntyre’s scheme supports the existing approach to professional accounting ethics as articulated by the various International Federation of Accountants pronouncements as well as areas in which it provides a critique and challenge to this approach. The application ultimately provides an alternative philosophical perspective through which accounting can be examined and further research into accounting ethics pursued. (shrink)