In this article, we present an ethics framework for health practice in humanitarian and development work: the ethics of engaged presence. The ethics of engaged presence framework aims to articulate in a systematic fashion approaches and orientations that support the engagement of expatriate health care professionals in ways that align with diverse obligations and responsibilities, and promote respectful and effective action and relationships. Drawn from a range of sources, the framework provides a vocabulary and narrative structure for examining the (...) moral dimensions of providing development or humanitarian health assistance to individuals and communities, and working with and alongside local and international actors. The elements also help minimize or avoid certain miscalculations and harms. Emphasis is placed on the shared humanity of those who provide and those who receive assistance, acknowledgement of limits and risks related to the contributions of expatriate health care professionals, and the importance of providing skillful and relevant assistance. These elements articulate a moral posture for expatriate health care professionals that contributes to orienting the practice of clinicians in ways that reflect respect, humility, and solidarity. Health care professionals whose understanding and actions are consistent with the ethics of engaged presence will be oriented toward introspection and reflective practice and toward developing, sustaining and promoting collaborative partnerships. (shrink)

In this article, we present an ethics framework for health practice in humanitarian and development work: the ethics of engaged presence. The ethics of engaged presence framework aims to articulate in a systematic fashion approaches and orientations that support the engagement of expatriate health care professionals in ways that align with diverse obligations and responsibilities, and promote respectful and effective action and relationships. Drawn from a range of sources, the framework provides a vocabulary and narrative structure for examining the (...) moral dimensions of providing development or humanitarian health assistance to individuals and communities, and working with and alongside local and international actors. The elements also help minimize or avoid certain miscalculations and harms. Emphasis is placed on the shared humanity of those who provide and those who receive assistance, acknowledgement of limits and risks related to the contributions of expatriate health care professionals, and the importance of providing skillful and relevant assistance. These elements articulate a moral posture for expatriate health care professionals that contributes to orienting the practice of clinicians in ways that reflect respect, humility, and solidarity. Health care professionals whose understanding and actions are consistent with the ethics of engaged presence will be oriented toward introspection and reflective practice and toward developing, sustaining and promoting collaborative partnerships. (shrink)

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for (...) veganism, this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Taking On Your Natural Human Role by Killing Non‐Human Animals Discover Nature by Killing Non‐Human Animals The Paradox of Ethical Hunting Hunting and Environmentalism Notes.

I examine how co-parents should handle differing commitments about how to raise their child. Via thought experiment and the examination of our practices and affective reactions, I argue for a thesis about the locus of parental authority: that parental authority is invested in full in each individual parent, meaning that that the command of one parent is sufficient to bind the child to act in obedience. If this full-authority thesis is true, then for co-parents to command different things would be (...) for them to contest one another’s authority. The only course that respects the authority of both parents is for co-parents to agree to command the same thing. Further, what is commanded must not result from a ‘capitulation’ by one co-parent, rather, it should result from a compromise. Parental authority involves a duty to deliberate about which commands it is best to give the child. If a command results from a capitulation, one parent will rightly think of themselves as not having fulfilled their parental duty. Parental compromises are not best understood as bargains or conflicts, but by the metaphor of gifts given by each parent out of respect for the other’s authority. (shrink)

Human beings with diminished decision-making capacities are usually thought to require greater protections from the potential harms of research than fully autonomous persons. Animal subjects of research receive lesser protections than any human beings regardless of decision-making capacity. Paradoxically, however, it is precisely animals’ lack of some characteristic human capacities that is commonly invoked to justify using them for human purposes. In other words, for humans lesser capacities correspond to greater protections but for animals the opposite is true. Without explicit (...) justification, it is not clear why or whether this should be the case. Ethics regulations guiding human subject research include principles such as respect for persons—and related duties—that are required as a matter of justice while regulations guiding animal subject research attend only to highly circumscribed considerations of welfare. Further, the regulations guiding research on animals discount any consideration of animal welfare relative to comparable human welfare. This paper explores two of the most promising justifications for these differences␣between the two sets of regulations. The first potential justification points to lesser moral status for animals on the basis of their lesser capacities. The second potential justification relies on a claim about the permissibility of moral partiality as␣found in common morality. While neither potential justification is sufficient to justify the regulatory difference as it stands, there is possible common ground between supporters of some regulatory difference and those rejecting the current difference. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 273-295 [Access article in PDF] Billy Budd:Melville's Dilemma Lester H. Hunt I THE CHAIN OF EVENTS NARRATED in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)—how Billy is falsely accused of plotting mutiny by his Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, how Billy accidentally kills Claggart and, finally, is executed at the urging of the Captain of the Ship, Edward Fairfax Vere, despite Vere's personal conviction that (...) Billy does not deserve to be killed—is simple enough. The text itself, nonetheless, is troublesomely complex. It is a very difficult work to interpret with both honesty and confidence. Melville unflinchingly represents to us the moral horror of what Captain Vere does to Billy, and yet he also depicts Vere himself with a respect that borders on admiration. The attentive reader experiences a painful cognitive dissonance that can only be soothed by a coherent interpretation, and perhaps by a bit of philosophy.Given the way in which the text of Billy Budd emerged—it was assembled by scholars, long after Melville's death, from a confusing collection of manuscript pages he had left behind when he died—it may well be an unfinished work. It is possible that ill health and death overtook Melville before he had a chance to iron out the inconsistencies that inevitably arise as a book is written, and it is therefore also possible that some of our sense of dissonance is produced by this brute fact. 1 Whether or not this is the case, this book is, according to the view I will present here, at least very close to being coherent. The point of view it represents is actually quite appropriate to an unfinished work, and little damaged by textual indeterminateness. Billy Budd is about the inescapably dilemmatic nature of certain choices. It alleges the impossibility of resolving them in any comfortable way. Melville beckons us to [End Page 273] look through the window of Billy Budd into an abyss of undecidability, and perhaps a text that contains some chaos within itself will better serve as such a window than one that does not.The best way to begin trying to understand how we should take this work is to begin at its very beginning. The very beginning of a story is of course its title, and the title of this story, or more exactly its subtitle, tells quite literally what sort of story it is. It is an "inside" narrative. Of course, this immediately raises the question of what an inside narrative is. Inside what? Are we supposed to contrast it with an outside narrative? And what sort of story would that be?Melville does not leave us entirely without an answer to this question. Billy Budd does contain another story, one that contrasts so sharply with the main narrative that it might well be described as its opposite: it is virtually an inverted version of the book's plot. In an "authorized weekly publication" quoted at some length at the end of the book, the events of Melville's tale are briefly recounted. In this version of the story, apparently the only officially sanctioned one, Billy Budd is depicted as the ringleader of a genuine mutiny, who "vindictively stabbed" Claggart for exposing him. Claggart is motivated only by a "strong patriotic impulse" and Billy Budd by "extreme depravity."This account, Melville tells, us was written "for the most part" sincerely enough, "though the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached the writer served to deflect and in part falsify them" (1432.27-30). 2 It could be called an "outside" narrative in virtue of the fact that its author was not there and consequently was not in a position to know what actually happened. The most direct way to give literal meaning to the "inside" status of Melville's main narrative is simply to observe that it gives a view from inside the ship, from inside the Bellipotent. It represents things that were known by people who were there, and precisely because they were there.This... (shrink)

Theoretical and empirical research in bioethics frequently focuses on ethical dilemmas or problems. This paper draws on anthropological and phenomenological sources to develop an alternative framework for bioethical enquiry that allows examination of a broader range of how the moral is experienced in the everyday lives of individuals and groups. Our account of moral experience is subjective and hermeneutic. We define moral experience as “Encompassing a person's sense that values that he or she deem important are being realised (...) or thwarted in everyday life. This includes a person's interpretations of a lived encounter, or a set of lived encounters, that fall on spectrums of right-wrong, good-bad or just-unjust”. In our conceptualisation, moral experience is not limited to situations that are heavily freighted with ethically-troubling ramifications or are sources of debate and disagreement. Important aspects of moral experience are played out in mundane and everyday settings. Moral experience provides a research framework, the scope of which extends beyond the evaluation of ethical dilemmas, processes of moral justification and decision-making, and moral distress. This broad research focus is consistent with views expressed by commentators within and beyond bioethics who have called for deeper and more sustained attention in bioethics scholarship to a wider set of concerns, experiences and issues that better captures what is ethically at stake for individuals and communities. In this paper we present our conceptualisation of moral experience, articulate its epistemological and ontological foundations and discuss opportunities for empirical bioethics research using this framework. (shrink)

The moral economy of American medicine has been transformed by contentious innovations in organization, administration, regulation, and finance. In many settings old fee-for-service incentives and disincentives have been replaced by those of ``managed care,'' while in other settings they have been diluted or distorted. In the everyday care of patients, old and new may alternate or interact. These innovations may also be having secondary effects on participation in life-sciences research and the development and employment of new technologies, discouraging collective support (...) for preliminary investigation and delaying adoption of improved goods and services until cost-reducing potential has already been realized. This motivational complexity, particularly in its moral dimensions, is hard to address using standard assumptions and methods. I argue for different assumptions, based on the clinical behavior of individual patients rather than the market behavior of aggregated consumers, and I describe a different method, based on an old idea in political economy. I then present a new way to explain the core obligations of clinicians, researchers, and planners and to interpret the policy problems they must now share. (shrink)

Conscientious objection in health care is a form of compromise whereby health care practitioners can refuse to take part in safe, legal, and beneficial medical procedures to which they have a moral opposition (for instance abortion). Arguments in defense of conscientious objection in medicine are usually based on the value of respect for the moral integrity of practitioners. I will show that philosophical arguments in defense of conscientious objection based on respect for such moral integrity are extremely weak and, if (...) taken seriously, lead to consequences that we would not (and should not) accept. I then propose that the best philosophical argument that defenders of conscientious objection in medicine can consistently deploy is one that appeals to (some form of) either moral relativism or subjectivism. I suggest that, unless either moral relativism or subjectivism is a valid theory—which is exactly what many defenders of conscientious objection (as well as many others) do not think—the role of moral integrity and conscientious objection in health care should be significantly downplayed and left out of the range of ethically relevant considerations. (shrink)

Western civilization has probably reached an impasse, expressed as a crisis on all fronts: economic, technological, environmental and political. This is experienced on the cultural level as a moral crisis or an ethical deficit. Somehow, the means we have always assumed as being adequate to the task of achieving human welfare, health and peace, are failing us. Have we lost sight of the primacy of human ends? Governments still push for economic growth and technological advances, but many are (...) now asking: economic growth for what, technology for what? Health care and nursing are caught up in the same inversion of human priorities. Professionals, such as nurses and midwives, need to take on social responsibilities and a collective civic voice, and play their part in a moral regeneration of society. This involves carrying civic rights and duties into the workplace. (shrink)

Health care providers (HCPs) are routinely placed into morally challenging situations that have the potential to cause moral distress. This is especially true for HCPs working in the military, whether they are on deployment outside their typical contexts of practice such as in disaster relief (e.g., Haiti and the Ebola missions in West Africa), or in more typically military settings such as peace keeping or armed conflicts (e.g., Afghanistan, Syria). Moral distress refers to “painful feelings and/or psychological disequilibrium” (Nilsson, (...) Sjöberg, Kallenberg, & Larsson, 2011, p. 50) that occur when an individual is aware of a morally appropriate action in a moral dilemma but obstruction prevents them from carrying it out, or when in a situation where they must choose between upholding equally treasured but conflicting moral values. Similarly, moral distress can occur when faced with a ‘tragic choice’ where all available courses of action require something of moral significance to be given up, such as surgical triage in a mass casualty event (Hunt, Sinding, & Schwartz, 2012). In the literature, moral distress has been connected to negative psychological effects and even stress related mental health issues including compassion fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Owen & Wanzer, 2014; Gustafsson, Eriksson, Strandberg, & Norberg, 2010; Litz, et al., 2009). (shrink)

The pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 has led to unprecedented changes to society, causing unique problems that call for extraordinary solutions. We consider one such extraordinary proposal: ‘safer infection sites’ that would offer individuals the opportunity to be intentionally infected with SARS-CoV-2, isolate, and receive medical care until they are no longer infectious. Safer infection could have value for various groups of workers and students. Health professionals place themselves at risk of infection daily and extend this risk to their family members and (...) community. Similarly, other essential workers who face workplace exposure must continue their work, even if have high-risk household members and live in fear of infecting. When schools are kept closed because of the fear that they will be sites of significant transmission, children and their families are harmed in multiple ways and college students who are living on campus, whether or not they are attending classes in person, are contributing to high rates of transmission and experiencing high rates of exposure. We consider whether offering safer infection sites to these groups could be ethically defensible and identify the empirical unknowns that would need to resolve before reaching definitive conclusions. This article is not an endorsement of intentional infection with the coronavirus, but rather is meant to spark conversation on the ethics of out-of-the-box proposals. Perhaps most meaningfully, our paper explores the value of control and peace of mind for those among us most impacted by the pandemic: those essential workers risking the most to keep us safe. (shrink)

Policing in many parts of the world—the United States in particular—has embraced an archetypal model: a conception of the police based on the tenets of individuated archetypes, such as the heroic police “warrior” or “guardian.” Such policing has in part motivated moves to (1) a reallocative model: reallocating societal resources such that the police are no longer needed in society (defunding and abolishing) because reform strategies cannot fix the way societal problems become manifest in (archetypal) policing; and (2) an algorithmic (...) model: subsuming policing into technocratic judgements encoded in algorithms through strategies such as predictive policing (mitigating archetypal bias). This paper begins by considering the normative basis of the relationship between political community and policing. It then examines the justification of reallocative and algorithmic models in light of the relationship between political community and police. Given commitments to the depth and distribution of security—and proscriptions against dehumanizing strategies—the paper concludes that a nonideal-theory priority rule promoting respect for personhood (manifest in community and dignity-promoting policing strategies) is a necessary condition for the justification of the above models. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Co-parents who differ in their ideal child rearing policies should compromise, argues Marcus William Hunt. Josh Milburn and Carlo Alvaro dispute this when it comes to veganism. Milburn argues that veganism is a matter of justice and that to compromise over justice is (typically) impermissible. I suggest that compromise over justice is often permissible, and that compromise over justice may be required by justice itself. Alvaro offers aesthetic, gustatory, and virtue-based arguments for ethical veganism, showing that veganism (...) involves sensibilities and virtues, and argues that veganism involves a belief. Alvaro takes this to show that parental compromise is impermissible. I suggest that Alvaro’s arguments are implausible and that the shaping of a child’s sensibilities and virtues is an apt matter for parental compromise. (shrink)

Kenneth Goodpaster has criticized ethicists like Feinberg and Frankena for too narrowly circumscribing the range of moral considerability, urging instead that “nothing short of the condition of being alive” is a satisfactory criterion. Goodpaster overlooks at least one crucial objection: that his own “condition of being alive” may aIso be too narrow a criterion of moral considerability, since “being in existence” is at least as plausible and nonarbitrary a criterion as is Goodpaster’s. I show that each of (...) the arguments that Goodpaster musters in support of his criterion can be used equally weIl to bolster “being in existence” as a test of moral considerability. Moreover, I argue that “being in existence” appears to be a stronger criterion overall, since it is broader. Until or unless a fuller justification is forthcoming of “being alive” as a satisfactory criterion of moral considerability-a justification which must demonstrate that “mere things,” included under the condition of “being in existence,” do not deserve moral consideration--Goodpaster’sthesis is confronted with a serious problem. (shrink)

Disaster research has grown in scope and frequency. Research in the wake of disasters and during humanitarian crises – particularly in resource-poor settings – is likely to raise profound and unique ethical challenges for local communities, crisis responders, researchers, and research ethics committees. Given the ethical challenges, many have questioned how best to provide research ethics review and oversight. We contribute to the conversation concerning how best to ensure appropriate ethical oversight in disaster research and argue that (...) ethical disaster research requires of researchers and RECs a particular sort of ongoing, critical engagement which may not be warranted in less exceptional research. We present two cases that typify the concerns disaster researchers and RECs may confront, and elaborate upon what this ongoing engagement might look like – how it might be conceptualized and utilized – using the concept of real-time responsiveness. The central aim of RTR, understood here as both an ethical ideal and practice, is to lessen the potential for research conducted in the wake of disasters to create, perpetuate, or exacerbate vulnerabilities and contribute to injustices suffered by disaster-affected populations. Well cultivated and deployed, we believe that RTR may enhance the moral capacities of researchers and REC members, and RECs as institutions where moral agency is nurtured and sustained. (shrink)

This paper connects the question of the rationality of voting to the question of what it is morally permissible for elected representatives to do. In particular, the paper argues that it is rational to vote to increase the strength of the manifest normative mandate of one's favored candidate. I argue that, due to norms of political legitimacy, how representatives ought to act while in office is tied to how much support they have from their constituents, where a representative’s (...) “support” is a function of the percentage of adults living in the political jurisdiction who voted for her. In a representative system, whether a particular law or policy is legitimate is in part a function of how much support the particular representative government has, rather than simply being a function of the governmental structure or the normative content of the law or policy. Representatives with more support can permissibly act more like trustees (doing what they think is best) and less like delegates (doing what their constituents presently prefer). I argue that this fact provides a reason for individuals to vote, even given the incredibly small chance an individual voter has of casting a pivotal vote. (shrink)

Interventions designed to promote perspective taking are increasingly prevalent in educational settings, and are also being considered for applications in other domains. Thus far, these perspective-taking interventions (PTIs) have largely escaped philosophical attention, however they are sometimes prima facie morally problematic in at least two respects: they are neither transparent nor easy to resist. Nontransparent or hard-to-resist PTIs call for a moral defense and our primary aim in this paper is to provide such a defense. We offer two (...) arguments for the view that an exemplar PTI is morally permissible even though it is plausibly neither transparent nor easy to resist. The first argument appeals to an analogy between PTIs and permissible deceptive research practices. The second appeals to the way in which PTIs draw participants’ attention to their reasons for action. We also respond to the objection that, by imposing a particular conception of the good, PTIs violate liberal neutrality. (shrink)

When a woman or girl finds herself pregnant, is it morally permissible for her to end that pregnancy? One dominant tradition says “no”; its close cousin says “rarely” - exceptions may be made where the burdens on the individual girl or woman are exceptionally dire, or, for some, when the pregnancy results from rape. On both views, though, there is an enormous presumption against aborting, for abortion involves the destruction of something we have no right to destroy. Those (...) who reject this claim, it is said, do so by denying the dignity of early human life - and imperiling their own. I think these views are deeply flawed. They are, I believe, based on a problematic conception of how we should value early human life; more than that, they are based on a profoundly misleading view of gestation and a deontically crude picture of morality. I believe that early abortion is fully permissible, widely decent, and, indeed, can be honorable. This is not, though, because I regard burgeoning human life as “mere tissue”: on the contrary, I think it has a value worthy of special respect. It is, rather, because I believe that the right way to value early human life, and the right way to value what is involved in and at stake with its development, lead to a view that regards abortion as both morally sober and morally permissible. Abortion at later stages of pregnancy becomes, for reasons I shall outline, multiply more complicated; but it is early abortions - say, abortions in the first half of pregnancy - that are most at stake for women. (shrink)

This article takes issue with procedural reductionism, which is the inclination to reduce all matters of judgement and responsibility to the following of some procedure or rule. Two scenarios provide content for a discussion of professional discretion in the context of accountability. The author shows that in professional life there will always be situations that stand beyond the rules of procedures and require the unique judgement of the professional at the time. While this judgement may be determined by the facts (...) available in a situation of uncertainty, it cannot be reduced to the facts (including facts about rules and procedures). The moral judgement will still have an essential indeterminancy about it. (shrink)

Although some have argued that COVID-19 vaccine patents are morally justified, a broader argument on the morality of breaching contracts is necessary. This article explores the ethics of breaching unfair contracts and argues that it is morally justified to breach contracts with pharmaceutical companies concerning vaccine patents. I offer two arguments to support this view. Firstly, contracts may be breachable in some situations. The ones I point out are that contracts can be broken when the costs of not (...) violating vaccine patents are too high or when the process for agreement is not fair, or when an urgent ethical issue needs to be addressed and it is possible to compensate the other party for their loss. Secondly, I argue that because the contracts with the pharmaceutical companies do not treat people as ends in themselves, there is no moral obligation to respect them. (shrink)

This article addresses the general ethical issues of accessing online personal data for research purposes. The authors discuss the practical aspects of online research with a specific case study that illustrates the ethical challenges encountered when accessing data from Kooth, an online youth web-counselling service. This paper firstly highlights the relevance of a process-based approach to ethics when accessing highly sensitive data and then discusses the ethical considerations and potential challenges regarding the accessing of public data from (...) Digital Mental Health services. It presents solutions that aim to protect young DMH service users as well as the DMH providers and researchers mining such data. Special consideration is given to service users’ expectations of what their data might be used for, as well as their perceptions of whether the data they post is public, private or open. We provide recommendations for planning and designing online research that includes vulnerable young people as research participants in an ethical manner. We emphasise the distinction between public, private and open data, which is crucial to comprehend the ethical challenges in accessing DMH data. Among our key recommendations, we foreground the need to consider a collaborative approach with the DMH providers while respecting service users’ control over personal data, and we propose the implementation of digital solutions embedded within the platform for explicit opt-out/opt-in recruitment strategies and ‘read more’ options. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The technological revolution has created enormous opportunities for the provision of affordable, accessible, and flexible mental healthcare. Yet it also creates complexities and ethical challenges. While some of these challenges may be similar to face-to-face care, their nuance in the online milieu is different, as relationships, identities and boundaries in this setting are fluid, and there is an absence of physical presence. In this paper we consider the specific ethical complexities involved in the provision of a social (...) networking intervention for depression and problematic alcohol use involving providers and peers. We present a case in which clinicians encountered a participant who repeatedly expressed suicidal thoughts in this online forum, and reflect on how this situation was managed. In analyzing this case, we use relational ethics—which proposes that interpersonal relationships are the fulcrum for ethical decision-making and action—together with actor-network theory—which highlights the power of technology to transform and mediate social and ethical relationships. Our analysis demonstrates the need to move beyond human-centric approaches, to recognize the role of both human and non-human actors in shaping moral decisions and behavior in the provision of e-mental healthcare. (shrink)

Daniel Callahan has argued that economic and social benefits would result from a policy of withholding medical treatments which prolong life in persons over a certain age. He claims 'the real goal of medicine' is to conquer death and prolong life with the use of technology, regardless of the age and quality of life of the patient, and this has been responsible for the escalation of health care expenditure. Callahan's proposal is based on economic rationalism but there is little evidence (...) to suggest that substantial economic savings could be achieved. Moreover, his argument raises serious moral objections. A policy of withholding treatments from members of a social group involves elements of compulsion and discrimination, both of which would intrude on the doctor-patient relationship, undermine the autonomy of elderly patients, and invoke the slippery slope towards involuntary forms of euthanasia. Life-death decisions should be based on more than the one criterion of age, and take account of more relevant factors such as the patient's usual state of well-being, her/his expressed wishes, informed consent and the type of illness. Any move to the implementation and enforcement of the policy Callahan recommends would be rejected by health professionals and the public. (shrink)

This article addresses the general ethical issues of accessing online personal data for research purposes. The authors discuss the practical aspects of online research with a specific case study that illustrates the ethical challenges encountered when accessing data from Kooth, an online youth web-counselling service. This paper firstly highlights the relevance of a process-based approach to ethics when accessing highly sensitive data and then discusses the ethical considerations and potential challenges regarding the accessing of public data from (...) Digital Mental Health services. It presents solutions that aim to protect young DMH service users as well as the DMH providers and researchers mining such data. Special consideration is given to service users’ expectations of what their data might be used for, as well as their perceptions of whether the data they post is public, private or open. We provide recommendations for planning and designing online research in an ethical manner that includes vulnerable young people as research participants. We emphasise the distinction between public, private and open data, which is crucial to comprehend the ethical challenges in accessing DMH data. Among our key recommendations, we foreground the need to consider a collaborative approach with the DMH providers while respecting service users’ control over personal data, and we propose the implementation of digital solutions embedded within the platform for explicit opt-out/opt-in recruitment strategies and ‘read more’ options. (shrink)

The Gamer’s Dilemma refers to the philosophical challenge of justifying the intuitive difference people seem to see between the moral permissibility of enacting virtual murder and the moral impermissibility of enacting virtual child molestation in video games (Luck Ethics and Information Technology, 1:31, 2009). Recently, Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 has argued that the Gamer’s Dilemma is actually an instance of a more general “paradox”, which he calls the “paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly”, and he proposes a graveness (...) resolution to this paradox. In response, we argue for four key claims. First, we accept Luck’s expansion of the Gamer’s Dilemma to be applicable to a wider set of media, but give a novel recasting of this in terms of the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Second, we develop a novel criticism of Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 graveness resolution to this broader paradox. Third, we argue that the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far helps to expose an implicit moralism in the Gamer’s Dilemma literature when compared to relevant nearby literatures about other forms of media. Fourth, we consider a range of non-moral, cultural and media conventions that plausibly help to dissolve the intuitive moral gap between non-sexual and sexual violence that is central to this paradox. (shrink)

The paper begins with a description of a grey seal performing conspecific infanticide. The paper then gives an account of “nobleness” and “brutishness.” Roughly, a behavioural-disposition is noble/brutish if it is one that would be a moral virtue/vice if the possessor of the behavioural-disposition were a moral agent. The paper then advances two pairs of axiological claims. The first pair of claims is that nobleness is good and that brutishness is bad. The second pair of claims is about an axiological (...) interaction between nobleness/brutishness and well-being. That any non-human animal lacks well-being is bad. Yet, it is worse that a noble non-human animal lacks well-being, and not so bad that a brutish non-human animal lacks well-being. Lastly, the paper discusses some potential moral implications of these axiological claims, for instance that factory farming is especially wrong because it causes noble non-human animals to lack well-being. (shrink)

Cooperative relations steeped in honesty and good faith are a necessity for any viable society. This is especially relevant to the police institution because the police are entrusted to promote justice and security. Despite the necessity of societal honesty and good faith, the police institution has embraced deception, dishonesty, and bad faith as tools of the trade for providing security. In fact, it seems that providing security is impossible without using deception and dishonesty during interrogations, undercover operations, pretextual detentions, and (...) other common scenarios. This presents a paradox related to the erosion of public faith in the police institution and the weakening of the police's legitimacy. -/- The book seeks to solve this puzzle by showing that many of our assumptions about policing and security are unjustified. Specifically, they are unjustified in the way many of our assumptions about security were unjustified after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when state institutions embraced a variety of brutal rules and tactics in pursuit of perceived security enhancements. The police are likewise unjustified in their pursuit of many supposed security enhancements that rely on proactive deception, dishonesty, and bad faith. -/- There are compelling reasons to think that the police's widespread use of proactive deception and dishonesty is inconsistent with fundamental norms of political morality regarding fraud and the rule of law. Although there are times and places for such tactics in policing, those times and places should be much more limited than current practices suggest. (shrink)

This article takes issue with procedural reductionism, which is the inclination to reduce all matters of judgement and responsibility to the following of some procedure or rule. Two scenarios provide content for a discussion of professional discretion in the context of accountability. The author shows that in professional life there will always be situations that stand beyond the rules of procedures and require the unique judgement of the professional at the time. While this judgement may be determined by the facts (...) available in a situation of uncertainty, it cannot be reduced to the facts (including facts about rules and procedures). The moral judgement will still have an essential indeterminancy about it. (shrink)

I sometimes entertain my non-academic friends by telling them that, at the end of each course I teach, before I compute my students’ grades, I pause nervously while I wait to be graded by my students. This process can be described less paradoxically, but surely no more truthfully, as follows. In my department, and as far as I know all the departments at my university, each course ends with students anonymously filling out forms in which they evaluate the teacher and (...) the course. The form includes several questions in which the student is asked to rate the teacher in various respects (such as clarity and organization, availability outside the classroom, and so forth) along a numbered scale (in our case, from one to five); they are also asked one very general question in which they are told to rate the instructor’s overall effectiveness. They are also invited to write comments on these matters. Mean scores (in effect, grades) are calculated for each question and published by the university. In addition, these student evaluations of teaching (often called SETs for short) are used each year by the committee that decides merit pay increases for faculty. When the faculty member is being considered for advancement to tenure or promotion to the rank of Full Professor, these evaluation forms are supplemented by faculty evaluation of teaching, in which faculty members visit the candidate’s classes and report on her or his effectiveness as a teacher. Except for these two once-in-a-lifetime events, the student evaluation forms are the only way in which we judge the quality of teaching. In other words, teaching is for the most part evaluated by students and not by faculty. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic of our current understanding of nature. I show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophycan be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a highly paradoxical (...) project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I show that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Abortion is one of the great moral debates of the epoch. Is there a rational method by which the debate can be resolved? Can bioethics' promise of such a method be fulfilled? Surely, a strictly rational approach can establish solid grounds for our beliefs once and for all. We would then be justified in deeming as unreasonable anyone who does not accept the perfectly rational conclusions. I present two scenarios to show that there can be no such philosophically grounded method (...) and therefore no such facts to which everyone must agree. This does not mean that it is in fact impossible for people to reach agreement. It simply means that there is no incontrovertibly rational means by which they must do so. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic of our current understanding of nature. I show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophycan be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a highly paradoxical (...) project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I show that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Although controversy concerning the morality of hunting is generally focused on sport hunting, sport hunting itself is not a morally distinctive kind of hunting. The understanding of hunting in general needs to be supplemented with reference to the goods which hunting seeks. Attempts to draw a moral distinction between sport and subsistence hunting are inadequate and historically suspect. Likewise, trying to establish sport hunting as morally distinctive by emphasizing its similarities (...) to other sports also fails. Nevertheless, there are standards accepted by hunters that support ethical judgments about hunting. Ethical hunting requires reentry into a community of nonhuman beings governed by ecology and evolution, not human constructs, the development of virtues such as tenacity, courage, moderation, and discipline, and the achievement of a heightened respect for the biotic community in which the hunt takes place. By means of such standards, we may yet be able to determine what good hunting is even though we are unable to determine whether sport hunting is good. (shrink)

The use of drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles, UVAs) in humanitarian action has emerged rapidly in the last decade and continues to expand. These so-called ‘humanitarian drones’ represent the first wave of robotics applied in the humanitarian and development contexts, providing critical information through mapping of crisis-affected areas and timely delivery of aid supplies to populations in need. Alongside these emergent uses of drones in the aid sector, debates have arisen about potential risks and challenges, presenting diverse perspectives on the (...) ethical, legal, and social implications of humanitarian drones. Guided by the methodology introduced by Arksey and O’Malley, this scoping review offers an assessment of the ethical considerations discussed in the academic and gray literature based on a screening of 1,188 articles, from which we selected and analyzed 47 articles. In particular, we used a hybrid approach of qualitative content analysis, along with quantitative landscape mapping, to inductively develop a typology of ethical considerations associated with humanitarian drones. The results yielded 11 key areas of concern: (1) minimizing harm, (2) maximizing welfare, (3) substantive justice, (4) procedural justice, (5) respect for individuals, (6) respect for communities, (7) regulatory gaps, (8) regulatory dysfunction, (9) perceptions of humanitarian aid and organizations, (10) relations between humanitarian organizations and industry, and (11) the identity of humanitarian aid providers and organizations. Our findings illuminate topics that have been the focus of extensive attention (such as minimizing risks of harm and protecting privacy), traces the evolution of this discussion over time (i.e., an initial focus on mapping drones and the distinction of humanitarian from military use, toward the ethics of cargo drones carrying healthcare supplies and samples), and points to areas that have received less consideration (e.g., whether sustainability and shared benefits will be compromised if private companies’ interest in humanitarian drones wanes once new markets open up). The review can thus help to situate and guide further analysis of drone use in humanitarian settings. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche’s philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche’s philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic for our current understanding of nature. I will show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophy can be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche’s critique of morality, environmental ethics is a (...) highly paradoxical project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with reality. I argue that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Gene drive technologies (GDTs) have been proposed as a potential new way to alleviate the burden of malaria, yet have also raised ethical questions. A central ethical question regarding GDTs relates to whether it is morally permissible to intentionally modify or eradicate mosquitoes in this way and how the inherent worth of humans and non-human organisms should be factored into determining this. Existing analyses of this matter have thus far generally relied on anthropocentric and zoocentric perspectives (...) and rejected an individualist biocentric outlook in which all living organisms are taken to matter morally for their own sake. In this paper, we reconsider the implications of taking a biocentric approach and highlight nuances that may not be evident at first glance. First, we shortly discuss biocentric perspectives in general, and then outline Paul Taylor’s biocentric theory of respect for nature. Second, we explore how conflicting claims towards different organisms should be prioritised from this perspective and subsequently apply this to the context of malaria control using GDTs. Our ethical analysis shows that this context invokes the principle of self-defence, which could override the pro tanto concerns that a biocentrist would have against modifying malaria mosquitoes in this way if certain conditions are met. At the same time, the case study of GDTs underlines the relevance of previously posed questions and criticism regarding the internal consistency of Taylor’s egalitarian biocentrism. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic inquiry into the significance of Nietzsche's philosophy to environmental ethics. Nietzsche's philosophy of nature is, I believe, relevant today because it makes explicit a fundamental ambiguity that is also characteristic of our current understanding of nature. I show how the current debate between traditional environmental ethics and postmodern environmental philosophy can be interpreted as a symptom of this ambiguity. I argue that, in light of Nietzsche's critique of morality, environmental ethics is a highly (...) paradoxical project. According to Nietzsche, each moral interpretation of nature implies a conceptual seizure of power over nature. On the other hand, Nietzsche argues, the concept of nature is indispensable in ethics because we have to interpret nature in order to have a meaningful relation with real ity. I show that awareness of this paradox opens a way for a form of respect for nature as radical otherness. (shrink)

Many people presume that you can permissibly support the good features of a symbol, person, activity, or work of art while simultaneously denouncing its bad features. This chapter refines and assesses this commonsense (but undertheorized) moral justification for supporting problematic people, projects, and political symbols, and proposes an analogue of the Doctrine of Double Effect called the Doctrine of Double Endorsement (DDN). DDN proposes that when certain conditions are met, it is morally permissible to directly endorse some object (...) in virtue of its positive properties while standing against its negative properties, even though it would be morally impermissible to directly endorse those negative properties themselves. These conditions include separability (the good and bad features must not be inextricably linked), proportionality (the positive value of the good features must be significantly greater than the negative value of the bad features), and constrained choice (there must not be other things that the agent could endorse instead that share the same positive features but are not saddled with the negative ones). The chapter applies these constraints to a number of practical issues, including (among others) voting for morally troubling candidates, supporting Confederate monuments, and consuming sexist art. (shrink)

For good reasons we often think about ethics and strategy as two opposing categories. But as surfaces in which we see social practices reflected, as abstract planes in which social consciousness resides and which subjectivities reinvent, they share some deep and perhaps uncomfortable similarities. In this paper, we question whether they are irreconcilable categories and, through a discussion of the paradoxes of strategy and the antinomies of ethics, we examine their fraught relationship in current economic responses to the crisis. First, (...) we outline the discursive topographies of strategy and ethics in respect to their abstract relations, and examine their integument in business ethics and strategy in context. Then, we show how there cannot be a simple coexistence of these two categories in organisational practice: one must in fact be subordinate to the other, although this subordination can produce the persistence of the other, even in its negation. Finally, we conclude that the asymmetrical nature of ethics and strategy entails that whereas ethics can immanently give rise to strategy, strategic questions on their own can only produce anti-systemic ethical responses. (shrink)

Grounded in what Alan Wertheimer terms the nonworseness claim, it is thought by some philosophers that what will be referred to herein as better-than-permissible acts —acts that, if undertaken, would make another or others better off than they would be were an alternative but morally permissible act to be undertaken—are necessarily morally permissible. What, other than a bout of irrationality, it may be thought, would lead one to hold that an act (such as outsourcing production (...) to a sweatshop in a developing country) that produces more benefits for others than an act that is itself morally permissible (such as not doing business in the developing country at all) with respect to those same others, is not morally permissible? In this article, I argue that each of the two groups of philosophers that are most likely to accept the nonworseness claim—consequentialists and non-consequentialists—have reason to reject it, and thereby also have reason to reject the belief that better-than-permissible acts are necessarily morally permissible. (shrink)

I argue that hunting is not a sport, but a neo-traditional cultural trophic practice consistent with ecological ethics, including a meliorist concern for animal rights or welfare. Death by hunter is on average less painful than death in wild nature. Hunting achieves goods, including trophic responsibility, ecological expertise and a unique experience of animal inter-dependence. Hunting must then be not only permissible but morally good wherever: a) preservation of ecosystems or species requires hunting as (...) a wildlife management tool; and/or b) its animal deaths per unit of nutrition is lower than that caused by farming practices. Both conditions obtain at least some of the time. (shrink)

In his paper, ‘What moral work can Nussbaum’s account of human dignity do in the context of dementia care?’, Soofi seeks to modify Nussbaum’s conception of dignity to deal with four key objections that arise when appeals to dignity are made in the context of dementia care. We will not discuss the first of these, the redundancy of dignity talk, since this issue has already been much discussed in the literature. Instead, we will focus on the remaining three issues raised, (...) that of the exclusion of persons with advanced dementia from having dignity, unjustified speciesism as a ground of human dignity, and the unclear practical implications that follow from having dignity. (shrink)

How can one establish if a corporate code of ethics is ethical in terms of its content? One important first step might be the establishment of core universal moral values by which corporate codes of ethics can be ethically constructed and evaluated. Following a review of normative research on corporate codes of ethics, a set of universal moral values is generated by considering three sources: (1) corporate codes of ethics; (2) global codes of ethics; and (3) the business ethics (...) literature. Based on the convergence of the three sources of standards, six universal moral values for corporate codes of ethics are proposed including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring; and (6) citizenship. Relying on the proposed set of universal moral values, implications are discussed as to what the content of corporate codes of ethics should consist of. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)

The adversary professions--law, business, and government, among others--typically claim a moral permission to violate persons in ways that, if not for the professional role, would be morally wrong. Lawyers advance bad ends and deceive, business managers exploit and despoil, public officials enforce unjust laws, and doctors keep confidences that, if disclosed, would prevent harm. Ethics for Adversaries is a philosophical inquiry into arguments that are offered to defend seemingly wrongful actions performed by those who occupy what Montaigne called "necessary (...) offices."Applbaum begins by examining the career of Charles-Henri Sanson, who is appointed executioner of Paris by Louis XVI and serves the punitive needs of the ancien régime for decades. Come the French Revolution, the King's Executioner becomes the king's executioner, and he ministers with professional detachment to each defeated political faction throughout the Terror and its aftermath. By exploring one extraordinary role and the arguments that can be offered in its defense, Applbaum raises unsettling doubts about arguments in defense of less sanguinary professions and their practices.To justify harmful acts, adversaries appeal to arguments about the rules of the game, fair play, consent, the social construction of actions and actors, good outcomes in equilibrium, and the legitimate authority of institutions. Applbaum concludes that these arguments are weaker than supposed and do not morally justify much of the violation that professionals and public officials inflict. Institutions and the roles they create ordinarily cannot mint moral permissions to do what otherwise would be morally prohibited. (shrink)

Can choosing to sale one’s kidney be morally permissible? “No”, Kant would answer. Humanity, whether in one’s own person or that of any other, must never be treated merely as a means, but always at the same time as an end, is Kant’s instruction. He thought that organ sale violates this imperative. Lectures on Ethics shows that “... a man is not entitled to sell his limbs for money…. If a man does that, he turns himself into a (...) thing, and then anyone may treat him as they please, because he has thrown his person away....” This paper explains Kant’s reasons against commerce in organs, drawing on his views on prostitution, and the moral impermissibility of sexual use within this context, a case which he himself compares to the selling of one’s body part. Can choosing to donate one’s kidney be morally permissible? If we take Kant’s views at face value, it would follow that organ donation is on a par with morality only if it takes place in a context where people have gained rights over each other’s persons. In this context, however, a person has a right to her partner’s kidney should she happen to need it, which can open the path to bodily violation. Moreover, this view severely restricts the permissibility of organ donation. In this paper, I argue that a closer examination of Kant’s views on what is involved in the idea of respecting humanity could reveal that organ donation does not violate the categorical imperative. In fact, it could be said to follow from such an imperative that we actually have a duty to organ donation. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for the permissibility of post-conflict amnesties, although not on prudential grounds. It argues that amnesties of a certain scope, targeted to certain categories of perpetrators, and offered in certain contexts are morally permissible because they are an acknowledgment of the difficulty of attributing criminal responsibility in mass violence contexts. Based on this idea, the paper develops the further claim that deciding which amnesties are permissible and which ones are not should be decided (...) on a case-by-case basis. Against what seems to be an increasingly popular assumption of some international actors, just as "blanket" amnesties are impermissible, so is an absolutist rejection of all types of amnesties. (shrink)

This article explores areas of law loosely within English equity and trusts law that have not conventionally been subject to feminist debate, and within the context of a discussion about feminist method. The particular areas examined are whistleblowing and trustees’ powers of investment, each of which calls for consideration of decision-making processes which have an ethical content. These sites are chosen because they take debate outside the all too familiar locations of woman or ‘the body of woman’, including the (...) family home, where feminist analysis in relation to equity and trusts tends to stray. In exploring these chosen fields, Hobby’s (Feminist Perspectives on Equity and Trusts, Cavendish Publishing, 2001, pp. 219–255) critique of gender dimensions in relation to whistleblowing and Dunn’s (Feminist Perspectives on Equity and Trusts, Cavendish Publishing, 2001, pp. 179–196) account of women trustees’ investment decisions are evaluated and developed. The debate within feminist legal criticism of the possibility of integrating an ‘ethics of care’ and an ‘ethics of rights’ is acknowledged. Whilst acknowledging of the difficulty of adopting an approach that recognises ‘mixed logics’, it is concluded that women (and men) do integrate the ethics of care and the ethics of rights in their decision-making. It is argued that the effort should be made to trace the specific weave in particular circumstances, thereby paying suspicious attention to the values that underlie courts’ analyses of ethical choices. (shrink)

It is now a platitude that sexual objectification is wrong. As is often pointed out, however, some objectification seems morally permissible and even quite appealing—as when lovers are so inflamed by passion that they temporarily fail to attend to the complexity and humanity of their partners. Some, such as Nussbaum, have argued that what renders objectification benign is the right sort of relationship between the participants; symmetry, mutuality, and intimacy render objectification less troubling. On this line of thought, (...) pornography, prostitution, and some kinds of casual sex are inherently morally suspect. I argue against this view: what matters is simply respect for autonomy, and whether the objectification is consensual. Intimacy, I explain, can make objectification more morally worrisome rather than less, and symmetry and mutuality are not relevant. The proper political and social context, however, is crucial, since only in its presence can consent be genuine. I defend the consent account against the objection that there is something paradoxical in consenting to objectification, and I conclude that given the right background conditions, there is nothing wrong with anonymous, one-sided, or just-for-pleasure kinds of sexual objectification. (shrink)