Raanan Gillon is a noted defender of the four principles approach to healthcare ethics. His general position has always been that these principles are to be considered to be both universal and prima facie in nature. In recent work, however, he has made two claims that seem to present difficulties for this view. His first claim is that one of these four principles, respect for autonomy, has a special position in relation to the others: he (...) holds that it is first among equals. We argue that this claim makes little sense if the principles are to retain their prima facie nature. His second claim is that cultural variation can play an independent normative role in the construction of our moral judgments. This, he argues, enables us to occupy a middle ground between what he sees as the twin pitfalls of moral relativism and moral imperialism. We argue that there is no such middle ground, and while Gillon ultimately seems committed to relativism, it is some form of moral imperialism that will provide the only satisfactory construal of the four principles as prima facie universal moral principles. (shrink)

Sir David Ross introduced prima facie duties, or acts with a tendency to be duties proper. He also spoke of general prima facie principles, wwhich attribute to acts having some feature the tendency to be a duty proper. Like Utilitarians from Mill to Hare, he saw a role for such principles in the epistemology of duty: in the process by means of which, in any given situation, a moral code can help us to find (...) out what we ought to do.After formalizing general prima facie principles as universally quantified conditionals I will show how seeming duties can be detached from them. There will be examples involving lies, burnt offerings and the question of whether to have a napkin on your lap while eating asparagus. They will illustrate the defeasibility of this detachment, how it can lead into dilemmas, and how general prima facie principles are overridden by more specific ones. (shrink)

The pressing problem of prima facie validity must be treated on the basis of a differentiation of types of normative rules. Rules stating principles or purposes are always applied as views determining the decision by weighing (but not by subsumption) so that the problem of prima facie validity does not arise. Neither is there a problem of such a restricted form of validity concerning power‐conferring rules. The author shows that prima facie validity of (...) rules of behaviour must not be treated as a different kind of validity and that the notion of prima facie validity can be explained in a logically satisfactory way on the basis of traditional norm‐logical considerations. (shrink)

THE PROJECT OF THIS PAPER IS TO GIVE AN EXPLICIT DEFINITION OF 'PRIMA FACIE' DUTY EMPLOYING THE NOTION OF DUTY (SIMPLICITER) AS THE ONLY MORAL NOTION. THIS DEFINITION AVOIDS THE CIRCULARITY OF SOME DEFINITIONS WHILE ALSO BEING SUFFICIENTLY GENERAL SO AS NOT TO DEPEND ON THE ADOPTION OF ANY PARTICULAR MORAL VIEWPOINT. THIS PAPER ATTACKS THE VIEW THAT A MORAL PHILOSOPHER (OR AN ANTHROPOLOGIST DESCRIBING A MORAL CODE) CAN ALWAYS IN PRINCIPLE AVOID EMPLOYING THE NOTION OF A ' (...) class='Hi'>PRIMA FACIE' DUTY SIMPLY BY GIVING A CAREFUL STATEMENT OF EACH RULE MAKING EXPLICIT ITS EXCEPTIONS. (shrink)

In modern German ‘Anschauung’ is translated as intuition. But in Kant’s technical philosophical context, it means an intuition derived from previous visualizations of physical processes in the world of perceptions. The nineteenth century chemists’ predilection for Kantian Anschauung led them to develop an intuitive representation of what exists beyond the bounds of the senses. Molecular structure is one of the illuminating outcomes. (Ochiai 2021, pp. 1–51) This mental habit seems to be dominant among chemists even in the twentieth century, as (...) is illustrated by the electronic theory of organic chemistry and the frontier orbital theory as well. The former assumes that (1) bonds are paired electrons shared by bonded atoms—in fact, electrons in molecules are not localized in bonds; (2) the difference of electronegativities between bonded atoms causes electron drifts—expressed by the curly arrow—that result in bond formation or bond cleavage. The latter focuses on the orbitals that make the greatest contribution to the energy of a system undergoing electron delocalization, while the LCAO method says, as is suggested by the word Linear Combination of Atomic Orbitals, molecular orbitals should be constructed from all of the atomic orbitals that have the appropriate symmetry. In other words, every molecular orbital contributes to some extent to the electronic state of a molecule. The curly arrow in the electronic theory and the orbital lobe in the frontier orbital theory illustrate an intuitive character of these theories. Although both theories rely on such simple and qualitative models rather than mathematically rigid quantum mechanical calculations, they are successful in explaining, predicting, and designing chemical reactions. What makes these prima facie intuitive theories so successful? In this study we address this problem from a historical and philosophical as well as scientific point of view. The key to solve this problem is that they are concerned with only bond formation or bond cleavage, in which the localized-bond principle holds. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to try to resolve two key problems in the duty-based approach of W. D. Ross: the source of principles and a process for moving from prima facie to actual duty. I use a naturalistic explanation for the former and a nine-step method for making concrete ethical decisions as they could be applied to journalism. Consistent with Ross's position, the process is complicated, particularly in tougher problems, and it cannot guarantee correct choices. (...) Again consistent with Ross, such complexity and uncertainty speak in the method's favor, given the difficulty—factual, motivational, and organizational—of ethics problems and decision making. (shrink)

This paper argues that ross's theory is an unsatisfactory compromise between moore's ideal utilitarianism and prichard's intuitionism. by including an 'optimific' principle, ross is exposed like moore to such difficulties as having to grant that we never know our duty and that logically we have a duty to pursue our own pleasure. in addition, this paper attributes to moore's influence ross's very inadequate treatment of justice; difficulties in his basic distinction of prima facie versus actual duties; and his (...) unsatisfactory treatments of the deontological/teleological issue. (shrink)

Kieran Oberman argues that there is no such thing, in realistic circumstances, as an optional war, i.e. a war that it is permissible for a state to wage, but not obligatory. Regarding a central kind of war – humanitarian intervention – this is due to what Oberman calls the Cost Principle, which says that states may not impose humanitarian costs on their citizens that those citizens do not have independent humanitarian obligations to meet. Essentially, this means that if the seriousness (...) of a humanitarian crisis is sufficient to justify imposing a certain level of cost, it must be serious enough to ground a genuine obligation to intervene. This paper offers three cases where, even if we accept the Cost Principle, war may be reasonably described as optional. These include the state’s moral relationship to amassing support for voluntary contributions to a war that would otherwise exceed the threshold established by Cost Principle (the Voluntary War); a war where it is uncertain whether costs will exceed the threshold (the Forever War); and two wars whose costs would individually fall below the threshold, but which would collectively fall above it. While none of these examples is conclusive, I conclude that Oberman must defend some further, contestable moral claims to establish that the optional humanitarian war is a myth. The Cost Principle alone does not get us there. (shrink)

A framework for the mind-matter problem in a holistic universe which has no parts is outlined. The conceptual structure of modern quantum theory suggests to use complementary Boolean descriptions as elements for a more comprehensive non-Boolean description of a world without an a priori mind-matter distinction. Such a description in terms of a locally Boolean but globally non-Boolean structure makes allowance for the fact that Boolean descriptions play a privileged role in science. If we accept the insight that there are (...) no ultimate building blocks, the existence of holistic correlations between contextually chosen parts is a natural consequence. The main problem of a genuinely non-Boolean description is to find an appropriate partition of the universe of discourse. If we adopt the idea that all fundamental laws of physics are invariant under time translations, then we can consider a partition of the world into a tenseless and a tensed domain.In the sense of a regulative principle, the material domain is defined as the tenseless domain with its homogeneous time. The tensed domain contains the mental domain with a tensed time characterized by a privileged position, the Now. Since this partition refers to two complementary descriptions which are not given a priori we have to expect correlations between these two domains. In physics it corresponds to Newton 's separation of universal laws of nature and contingent initial conditions Both descriptions have a non-Boolean structure and can be encompassed into a single non-Boolean description. Tensed and tenseless time can be synchronized by holistic correlations. (shrink)

Wolfgang Pauli is well recognized as an outstanding theoretical physicist, famous for his formulation of the two-valuedness of the electron spin, for the exclusion principle, and for his prediction of the neutrino. Less well known is the fact that Pauli spent a lot of time in different avenues of human experience and scholarship, ranging over fields such as the history of ideas, philosophy, religion, alchemy, and Jung's psychology. Pauli's philosophical and particularly his psychological background is not overt in his scientific (...) papers and was unknown even to many specialist scholars until a number of enthralling and perplexing documents of a close interaction between Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung became publicly available in recent years. Both scholars stressed the inseparability of the physical and the psychical and called upon a sense of more openness toward the unconscious. Decades after his death, Pauli's innovative perspective and his vision of a wholeness of psyche and matter are more than ever before of great relevance. (shrink)

Wolfgang Pauli is well recognized as an outstanding theoretical physicist, famous for his formulation of the two-valuedness of the electron spin, for the exclusion principle, and for his prediction of the neutrino. Less well known is the fact that Pauli spent a lot of time in different avenues of human experience and scholarship, ranging over fields such as the history of ideas, philosophy, religion, alchemy and Jung's psychology. Pauli's philosophical and particularly his psychological background is not overt in his scientific (...) papers and was unknown even to many specialist scholars until a number of enthralling and perplexing documents of a close interaction between Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung became publicly available in recent years. Both scholars stressed the inseparability of the physical and the psychical and called upon a sense of more openness toward the unconscious. Decades after his death, Pauli's innovative perspective and his vision of a wholeness of psyche and matter are more than ever before of great relevance. (shrink)

This paper examines whether the modern bioethical principles of respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice proposed by Beauchamp and Childress are existent in, compatible with, or acceptable to the leading Chinese moral philosophy—the ethics of Confucius. The author concludes that the moral values which the four prima facie principles uphold are expressly identifiable in Confucius’ teachings. However, Confucius’ emphasis on the filial piety, family values, the “love of gradation”, altruism of people, and the “role specified (...) relation oriented ethics” will inevitably influence the “specification” and application of these bioethical principles and hence tend to grant “beneficence” a favourable position that diminishes the respect for individual rights and autonomy. In contrast, the centrality of respect for autonomy and its stance of “first among equals” are more and more stressed in Western liberal viewpoints. Nevertheless, if the Confucian “doctrine of Mean” and a balanced “two dimensional personhood” approach are properly employed, this will require both theorists and clinicians, who are facing medical ethical dilemmas, of searching to attain due mean out of competing moral principles thus preventing “giving beneficence a priority” or “asserting autonomy must triumph”. (shrink)

Several authors believe that there are certain facts that are striking and cry out for explanation—for instance, a coin that is tossed many times and lands in the alternating sequence HTHTHTHTHTHT…. According to this view, we have prima facie reason to believe that such facts are not the result of chance. I call this view the striking principle. Based on this principle, some have argued for far-reaching conclusions, such as that our universe was created by intelligent design, that (...) there are many universes other than the one we inhabit, and that there are no mathematical or normative facts. Appealing as the view may initially seem, I argue that we lack sufficient reason to accept it. (shrink)

I will discuss the relationship between two different accounts of remedial duty ascriptions. According to one account, the beneficiary account, individuals who benefit innocently from injustices ought to bear remedial responsibilities towards the victims of these injustices. According to another account, the causal account, individuals who caused injustices ought to bear remedial duties towards the victim. In this paper, I examine the relation between the principles central to these accounts: the Beneficiary Pays Principle and the well-established principle of Strict (...) Liability in law. I argue that both principles display a strong yet unexplored similarity as they make certain kinds of causal connection sufficient for incurring liability. Because of this similarity, I suggest that insights into the Beneficiary Pays Principle can be gained from exploring its relation with Strict Liability. In particular, I examine two new positive arguments that could be adapted to support of the Beneficiary Pays Principle: the Minimising Injustice Argument and the Normative Connection Argument. However, I’ll show that only one of those arguments, namely the Normative Connection Argument, can truly support the Beneficiary Pays Principle. I conclude that, if you endorse the Normative Connection Argument for Strict Liability, you have at least a strong prima facie reason to endorse the parallel argument for the Beneficiary Pays Principle. (shrink)

This commentary briefly argues that the four prima facie principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy and justice enable a clinician (and anybody else) to make ethical sense of the author's proposed reliance on professional guidance and rules, on law, on professional integrity and on best interests, and to subject them all to ethical analysis and criticism based on widely acceptable basic prima facie moral obligations; and also to confront new situations in the light of (...) those acceptable principles. (shrink)

According to Principles of Sufficient Reason, every truth (in some relevant group) has an explanation. One of the most popular defenses of Principles of Sufficient Reason has been the presupposition of reason defense, which takes endorsement of the defended PSR to play a crucial role in our theory selection. According to recent presentations of this defense, our method of theory selection often depends on the assumption that, if a given proposition is true, then it has an explanation, and (...) this will only be justified if we think this holds for all propositions in the relevant group. I argue that this argument fails even when restricted to contingent propositions, and even if we grant that there is no non-arbitrary way to divide true propositions that have explanations from those that lack them. Further, we can give an alternate explanation of what justifies our selecting theories on the basis of explanatory features: the crucial role is not played by an endorsement of a PSR, but rather by our belief that, prima facie, we should prefer theories that exemplify explanatory power to greater degrees than their rivals. This guides our theory selection in a manner similar to ontological parsimony and theoretical simplicity. Unlike a PSR, our belief about explanatory power gives us a prima facie guiding principle, which provides justification in the cases where we think we have it, and not in the cases where we think we don't. (shrink)

Effective infectious disease control may require states to restrict the liberty of individuals. Since preventing harm to others is almost universally accepted as a legitimate (prima facie) reason for restricting the liberty of individuals, it seems plausible to employ a mid‐level harm principle in infectious disease control. Moral practices like infectious disease control support – or even require – a certain level of theory‐modesty. However, employing a mid‐level harm principle in infectious disease control faces at least three problems. (...) First, it is unclear what we gain by attaining convergence on a specific formulation of the harm principle. Likely candidates for convergence, a harm principle aimed at preventing harmful conduct, supplemented by considerations of effectiveness and always choosing the least intrusive means still leave ample room for normative disagreement. Second, while mid‐level principles are sometimes put forward in response to the problem of normative theories attaching different weight to moral principles, employing a mid‐level harm principle completely leaves open how to determine what weight to attach to it in application. Third, there appears to be a trade‐off between attaining convergence and finding a formulation of the harm principle that can justify liberty‐restrictions in all situations of contagion, including interventions that are commonly allowed. These are not reasons to abandon mid‐level theorizing altogether. But there is no reason to be too theory‐modest in applied ethics. Morally justifying e.g. if a liberty‐restriction in infectious disease control is proportional to the aim of harm‐prevention, promptly requires moving beyond the mid‐level harm principle. (shrink)

Abortion, euthanasia, racism, sexism, pater­nalism, the rights of children, the population explosion, and the dynamics of economic growth are examined in the light of ethical principles by leading philosophers in order to suggest reasonable judgments. Originally prepared for the distinguished Wayne Leys Memorial Lecture Series at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, the essayists have addressed themselves to the most pressing ethical questions being asked today. William K. Frankena, Professor Emer­itus, University of Michigan, in “The Ethics of Respect for Life” argues (...) for a qualified view of moral respect for human personality. From his viewpoint it is always prima facie wrong to shorten or prevent human life, but not always actually wrong as other moral conditions may counter the presumed wrong. The late William T. Blackstone in “Zero Population Growth and Zero Economic Growth” contends that justice will require the production of the maximal level of goods to fulfill basic human needs com­patible with the avoidance of ecological catastrophe. Richard Wasserstrom, Professor of Phi­losophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, proposes an assimilationist ideal in “Racism, Sexism, and Preferential Treat­ment.” Gerald Dworkin, Professor of Phi­losophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, dares to ask “Is More Choice Better than Less?” Joel Feinberg, Professor of Phi­losophy at the University of Arizona, in “The Child’s Right to an Open Future,” offers a defense of “rights-in-trust” of children. Tom L. Beauchamp, Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy In­stitute-Center for Bioethics of Georgetown University, considers the paternalism used to justify social policies in the practice of medi­cine and insists that it invariably involves a conflict between the ethical principles of be­neficence and autonomy. (shrink)

The all-affected principle, by which all those affected by the policies of the state ought to be included in the demos governing it, is often considered prima facie attractive but, upon closer examination, implausible. The main alternative, according to which all those and only those affected by possible consequences of possible decisions ought to be included in the demos, is equally implausible. I suggest a reformulated principle: the demos includes all those affected by foreseeable consequences of decisions that (...) the state has legal authority and capacity to take. This avoids the problems of the standard version and the main alternative. (shrink)

This paper is a defence of a holistic version of the generalist view of moral reasoning based on prima facie principles. In Section 1 I summarise Dancy’s arguments for particularism. Then I argue that particularism goes against strong intuitions regarding reasoning in general (Section 2), fails to account for the asymmetry of reasons (Section 3) and to make sense of compunction and moral imbecility (Section 4). I conclude (Section 5) that a holistic generalism is the right view (...) of moral reasoning. Then I discuss Dancy’s objections to it. I argue that Dancy’s appeal to default reasons is philosophically equivalent to a holistic version of generalism, and hence incompatible with particularism (Section 6) and that his resistance to accept holistic generalism is the result of a foundationalist view of reasoning (Section 7). As an alternative to foundationalism I defend an Aristotelian dialectical view of moral reasoning. (shrink)

Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the (...) class='Hi'>Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View. (shrink)

There are many uses in English of the word “ought” (see Ought). This essay concerns the normative uses and the concepts or properties denoted thereby. In particular, it concerns two nonfinal oughts commonly used in the philosophical literature: prima facie oughts and pro tanto oughts.

This paper presents a nonmonotonic deontic logic based on commonsense entailment. It establishes criteria a successful account of obligation should satisfy, and develops a theory that satisfies them. The theory includes two conditional notions of prima facie obligation. One is constitutive; the other is epistemic, and follows nonmonotonically from the constitutive notion. The paper defines unconditional notions of prima facie obligation in terms of the conditional notions.

A common ethical code for everybody involved in health care is desirable, but there are important limitations to the role such a code could play. In order to understand these limitations the approach to ethics using principles and their application to medicine is discussed, and in particular the implications of their being prima facie. The expectation of what an ethical code can do changes depending on how ethical properties in general are understood. The difficulties encountered when ethical (...) values are applied reactively to an objective world can be avoided by seeing them as a more integral part of our understanding of the world. It is concluded that an ethical code can establish important values and describe a common ethical context for health care but is of limited use in solving new and complex ethical problems. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Western-European concept of libertarian rights-based autonomy, which advocates respect for individual rights, may conflict with African cultural values and norms. African communitarian ethics focuses on the interests of the collective whole or community, rather than rugged individualism. Hence collective decision-making processes take precedence over individual autonomy or consent. This apparent conflict may impact informed consent practice during biomedical research in African communities and may hinder ethical principlism in African bioethics. This study explored African biomedical researchers' perspectives regarding informed consent (...) and potential limitations to the principle of respect for autonomy in African communities.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 12 biomedical researchers, five females and seven males aged 34 to 74 years, currently working at an African university. Interviews lasted 35–40 min each and involved semi-structured open-ended interviews, which allowed participants to offer information about their perceptions and feelings regarding respect for autonomy and informed consent as practised in Africa. Empirical data from the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using thematic content analysis, together with an interrogation of relevant scientific literature about African communitarian ethics, making evaluations and drawing inferences consistent with the empirical bioethics approach.ResultsBased on these interviews and analysis of relevant literature, we found that informed consent is difficult to apply in an African context because it derives from a Western conception of libertarian rights-based autonomy. Most respondents pointed out that it was challenging to implement informed consent in the African setting. Furthermore, communalism, customary beliefs, spirituality, and relational autonomy are predominant in most African communities, as exemplified by the African moral philosophies of Ubuntu/botho and Ukama, which emphasize communitarianism over individual rights. We also found that language, education, poverty, and cultural beliefs are barriers to obtaining proper informed consent in African communities.ConclusionsWe conclude that there are limitations to applying the principle of respect for autonomy and informed consent in African communities, especially in the context of human biomedical research. We recommend using a more relational approach, such as Ross’s prima facie duties, to implement informed consent in African communities. (shrink)

We describe the application of fundamental moral principles, with particular emphasis on prima facie duties, to formal codes of ethics that regulate the conduct of forensic psychologists who act as expert witnesses. Then we discuss the American Psychological Association's "Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct" and the Committee on Ethical Guidelines for Forensic Psychologists's "Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychologists" and critically appraise how these documents translate basic moral principles. We conclude that, in many (...) ways, the documents exemplify ethical obligations such as nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice, but they fall short in many other ways, particularly with regard to autonomy and fidelity. (shrink)

This paper presents a non-consequentialist defense of Rawls’s general conception of justice requiring that primary social goods be distributed so that the least share is as great as possible. It suggests that a defense of this idea can be offered within a Rossian framework of prima facie duties. The prima facie duty not to harm constrains people from supporting social institutions which do not leave their fellows with goods and resources above a certain threshold. The paper (...) argues that societies in accord with the Rawlsian general conception come closest to meeting this requirement. This way of arguing for the conception enables the defenders of the theory to elude standard objections offered by utilitarians, libertarians, and even other egalitarians. (shrink)

This article argues that corrective justice is an adequate principle of criminalization. On my interpretation, corrective justice holds that, in order for an action to count as a crime, there needs to be a plausible normative story about an offender having violated the interests of a victim in a way that disturbs their relationship as equal persons and a subsequent story about responding to crime in a way that corrects this disturbance. More specifically, I claim that corrective justice is concerned (...) with the protection of interests that persons have in owning private goods throughout standard interactions with other persons. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I specify the subject-matter that principles of criminal law need to ground and provide an outline of the idea of corrective justice. Second, I show that corrective justice can account for the main cases of crime and the salient modes of criminal responsibility. I also argue that corrective justice can make sense of two prima facie recalcitrant types of cases. Third, and finally, I address two objections to my corrective justice theory of criminal law. The first concerns the implications corrective justice has for locating criminal law along the private/public law divide. The second objection raises the putatively problematic consequences corrective justice has for understanding the separation between criminal and civil law. (shrink)

A common assumption in the selection of nonhuman animal subjects for research and the approval of research is that, if the risks of a procedure are too great for humans, and if there is a so-called scientific necessity, then it is permissible to use nonhuman animal subjects. I reject the common assumption as neglecting the central ethical issue of the permissibility of using nonhuman animal subjects and as being inconsistent with the principle of justice used in human subjects research ethics. (...) This principle requires that certain classes of individuals not be subjected to a disproportionate share of the burdens or risks of research. I argue for an extension of this principle to nonhuman animal research and show that a prima facie violation of the principle occurs because nonhuman animals bear an overwhelmingly disproportionate share of the risks of research without sufficient justification or reciprocal benefit. (shrink)

We explore the grammar of Bayesian confirmation by focusing on some likelihood principles, including the Weak Law of Likelihood. We show that none of the likelihood principles proposed so far is satisfied by all incremental measures of confirmation, and we argue that some of these measures indeed obey new, prima facie strange, antilikelihood principles. To prove this, we introduce a new measure that violates the Weak Law of Likelihood while satisfying a strong antilikelihood condition. We (...) conclude by hinting at some relevant links between the likelihood principles considered here and other properties of Bayesian confirmation recently explored in the literature. (shrink)

In this article, I comment on Simester and von Hirsch’s theory of criminalization and discuss general principles of criminalization. After some brief comments on punishment theories and the role of moral wrongdoing, I examine main lines of contemporary criminalization theories which tend to focus on the issues of harm, offense, paternalism and side-constraints. One of the points of disagreement with Simester and von Hirsch concerns the role of the harm principle. I rely on a straightforward normative concept of “rights (...) of others,” not in the sense of rights granted in positive law but in the sense of rights which are to be justified in political philosophy. With a rights-centered rather than a harm-centered approach, a prima facie reason for criminalization is the violation of others’ rights. It is unnecessary to develop a separate category of “offense to others,” and paternalistic interventions can be criticized straightforwardly because rights can be waived. (shrink)

Liberal societies are characterized by respect for a fundamental value pluralism; i.e., respect for individuals’ rights to live by their own conception of the good. Still, the state must make decisions that privilege some values at the cost of others. When public ethics committees give substantial ethical advice on policy related issues, it is therefore important that this advice is well justified. The use of explicit tools for ethical assessment can contribute to justifying advice. In this article, I will discuss (...) one approach to ethical assessment, the ethical matrix method. This method is a variant of intuitionist balancing. Intuitionism is characterized by stressing the existence of several (at least two) fundamental prima facie moral principles, between which there is no given rank order. For some intuitionist approaches, coherentism has been proposed as a model of justification. This article will discuss justification of ethical advice and evaluate the appropriateness of coherentism as a justificatory approach to intuitionist tools. (shrink)

The normative theory of multilateral democratic integration starts within the context of liberal peoples engaged in the common realization of rights, freedoms, and life chances for their citizens while seeking to preserve self-government and popular sovereignty. The point argued in the paper is that the fair terms of multilateral democratic integration must be determined by an integrated original position of citizen and people representatives choosing basic principles of liberal multilateralism. The proposal to merge the two Rawlsian original positions offers (...) a political solution to the contrast between rival conceptions of grand universalism and national particularism. After a general discussion of the wider problematic and the original position, I explain the concept and the reality of multilateral democratic integration. In part three, I justify why citizen and people representatives ought to be seen as participants of the original position of multilateral democratic integration. I then assess the rational motives of both types of representatives and determine the veil of ignorance of the integrated original position. In section, the original position is applied to the test of several normative hypotheses prima facie considered as candidates for basic principles of multilateral democratic integration. These principles are not necessarily new, but they are principles which presumably apply to multilateral democratic integration as a specific political order and system of cooperation. (shrink)

Until recently, it was widely assumed in societies with long-established, publicly funded school systems that school attendance served the interests of children, society, and parents alike. In the United States and other common-law jurisdictions, safeguarding and promoting the independent welfare and developmental interests of every child was a public responsibility under the parens patriae doctrine. Compulsory schooling laws enacted under parens patriae authority required all persons having care and control of a child to share their custodial authority with publicly certified (...) teachers for limited periods of time. By compelling all parents to send their children to school, the state ensured that all children had access to instruction and opportunities for social, economic, and civic participation beyond what their parents alone could provide. Parents were incidentally freer to manage the competing demands of domestic life and paid employment, and the enforcement of child labor laws was greatly facilitated by efforts to ensure school attendance. While compulsory schooling laws imposed obvious limits on the custodial authority of all parents for the sake of all children, they were rarely challenged on that basis. Not so today. (shrink)

Analyses are given of the concepts of absolute and prima facie obligation. The former is a maximizing analysis: roughly, one ought absolutely to perform those actions which are performed in the best worlds accessible to one. The latter analysis is roughly this: one ought prima facie to perform those actions which are such that those accessible worlds in which they are performed are better than the closest accessible worlds in which they are not performed. Accounts of (...) conditional obligation, both absolute and prima facie, are also given, and the issue of the detachment of unconditional from conditional obligation is addressed. (shrink)

In moral dilemmas, where circumstances prevent two or more equally justified prima facie ethical requirements from being fulfilled, it is often maintained that, since the agent cannot do both, conjoint obligation is overridden by Kant's principle that ought implies can, but that the agent nevertheless has a disjunctive obligation to perform one of the otherwise obligatory actions or the other. Against this commonly received view, it is demonstrated that although Kant's ought-can principle may avoid logical inconsistency, the principle (...) is incompatible with disjunctive obligation in standard deontic logic, and that it entails paradoxically that none of the conflicting dilemma actions will in fact occur. The principle appears to provide the only plausible safeguard against deontic antinomy, but cannot be admitted because of its collision with considered moral judgments. (shrink)

Even when a person appears to have consented to another’s interference with her interests, we sometimes treat this apparent consent as ineffective. This may either be because the law does not permit consent to validate the actions concerned, or because the consent is undermined by the presence of additional factors which render it insufficiently autonomous to be effective. In this paper I propose that the project of categorising and systematically analysing the latter set of cases, would be furthered by recognising (...) (1) that prima facie consent is undermined when the prima facie consenter’s autonomy to choose whether or not to consent has been unfairly constrained, and (2) that theoretical and doctrinal clarity can be promoted by analysing the factors that unfairly constrain autonomy in the criminal law using a framework developed in contract law to determine analogous questions arising in relation to assent to a contract. (shrink)

It is argued that a little-Discussed notion of prima facie good (and a related notion of a "basic value experience") can throw light on some of the most vexing problems of value theory, About the meaning of 'good', The naturalistic fallacy, The objectivity of value, The fact-Value distinction and intrinsic value. The notion of prima facie good is formally analogous to w d ross's notion of prima facie duty, But is more general (applying to (...) value generally) and (it is argued) is more useful and less problematic. Views of spinoza, Ross, Moore, Perry and recent value theorists are discussed. (shrink)

The transgenerational community is based on moral similarity between contemporary and future people, referring to an ongoing moral deliberation across generations. It justifies obligations of justice towards the not yet born. Prioritarianism gives extra weight to the wellbeing of the least advantaged. I argue that both sentiments are egalitarian, and ask whether there is any tension between them. If we assume economic growth, and/or technological improvements and/or inflation, then prioritarianism prima facie implies that we should prefer to spend (...) any dollar on today’s disadvantaged than on future generations, hence is in tension with the demands of the transgenerational community. Analyzing four ways of meeting this challenge, I argue that the two principles are not in tension. (shrink)

Modern Empiricists are typically troubled by the two following problems: (1) There is an epistemic gap between experience of individuals and understanding universals such that empiricist accounts of concept formation seem to beg the question. (2) There needs to be an answer to the skeptic who denies that sensory experience warrants our belief in the existence of the material substances that underlie sensible qualities. Although Aristotle’s account of induction is subject to these problems prima facie, his theory of (...) perception, his teleologically driven reliabilism about the senses, and his broader metaphysical views concerning the relation between substance and accident serve to insulate his account of induction from the pitfalls of modern empiricism. The resolution to these problems proposed in this paper allows for a consistent reading of otherwise controversial Aristotelian texts, while recommending a defense of realism about material substance against the claims of the Humean skeptic. (shrink)

In "moral philosophy" richard garner and bernard rosen give a counter-Example against w d ross. We have no prima facie duty to tell a neighbor our love life, Although he might gain knowledge and pleasure. I argue that for ross we could have such a prima facie, Though not an actual, Duty. The lover-Acquaintance relation makes unlikely such an action becoming an actual duty. Also we can conceive of cases in which it might be an actual (...) duty; viz. A case in which the divulger is a psychologist who needs to gain the neighbor's confidence in a group therapy situation. (shrink)