With the help of medicine and technology we are living longer than ever before. As human life spans have increased, the moral and political issues surrounding longevity have become more complex. Should we desire to live as long as possible? What are the social ramifications of longer lives? How does a longer life span change the way we think about the value of our lives and about death and dying? Christine Overall offers a clear and intelligent discussion of the (...) philosophical and cultural issues surrounding this difficult and often emotionally charged issue. Her book is unique in its comprehensive presentation and evaluation of the arguments—both ancient and contemporary—for and against prolonging life. It also proposes a progressive social policy for responding to dramatic increases in life expectancy. Writing from a feminist perspective, Overall highlights the ways that our biases about race, class, and gender have affected our views of elderly people and longevity, and her policy recommendations represent an effort to overcome these biases. She also covers the arguments surrounding the question of the "duty to die" and includes a provocative discussion of immortality. After judiciously weighing the benefits and the risks of prolonging human life, Overall persuasively concludes that the length of life does matter and that its duration can make a difference to the quality and value of our lives. Her book will be an essential guide as we consider our social responsibilities, the meaning of human life, and the prospects of living longer. (shrink)

Some are concerned about the possibility that offering money for research participation can constitute coercion or undue influence capable of distorting the judgment of potential research subjects and compromising the voluntariness of their informed consent. The author recognizes that more often than not there are multiple influences leading to decisions, including decisions about research participation. The concept of undue influence is explored, as well as the question of whether or not there is something uniquely distorting about money as opposed to (...) a chance for treatment or medical care. An amount of money that is not excessive and is calculated on the basis of time or contribution may, rather than constitute an undue inducement, be an indication of respect for the time and contribution that research subjects make. (shrink)

Evaluative concepts and emotions appear closely connected. According to a prominent account, this relation can be expressed by propositions of the form ‘something is admirable if and only if feeling admiration is appropriate in response to it’. The first section discusses various interpretations of such ‘Value-Emotion Equivalences’, for example the Fitting Attitude Analysis, and it offers a plausible way to read them. The main virtue of the proposed way to read them is that it is well-supported by a promising account (...) of emotions, namely the Perceptual Theory of Emotions, which emphasises the analogies between emotions and sensory perceptual experiences. The second section considers a worry about whether concepts such as admirable are really evaluative. It is maintained that even though the arguments used to show that thick terms and concepts are not inherently evaluative can be transposed to affective concepts, these arguments can be resisted. So there is no need to abandon the intuitive claim that affective concepts are inherently evaluative. (shrink)

Purpose/methods: This study investigated the relationship between ethics education and training, and the use and usefulness of ethics resources, confidence in moral decisions, and moral action/activism through a survey of practicing nurses and social workers from four United States (US) census regions. Findings: The sample (n = 1215) was primarily Caucasian (83%), female (85%), well educated (57% with a master's degree). no ethics education at all was reported by 14% of study participants (8% of social workers had no ethics education, (...) versus 23% of nurses), and only 57% of participants had ethics education in their professional educational program. Those with both professional ethics education and in-service or continuing education were more confident in their moral judgments and more likely to use ethics resources and to take moral action. Social workers had more overall education, more ethics education, and higher confidence and moral action scores, and were more likely to use ethics resources than nurses. Conclusion: Ethics education has a significant positive influence on moral confidence, moral action, and use of ethics resources by nurses and social workers. (shrink)

Recent debate about the error theory has taken a ‘formal turn’. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the error theory should be rejected because of its difficulties in providing a convincing formal account of the logic and semantics of moral claims. On the other hand, there are those who claim that such formal objections fail, maintaining that arguments against the error theory must be of a substantive rather than a formal kind. In this paper, we argue (...) that formal objections to the error theory cannot be eschewed but must be met head-on. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

One major insight derived from the moral twin earth debate is that evaluative and descriptive terms possess different levels of semantic stability, in that the meanings of the former but not the latter tend to remain constant over significant counterfactual variance in patterns of application. At the same time, it is common in metanormative debate to divide evaluative terms into those that are thin and those that are thick. In this paper, I combine debates about semantic stability and the distinction (...) between the thin and the thick by presenting a new seamless inferentialist account of thin and thick evaluative terms which, despite subsuming them under the same metasemantic analysis, can nevertheless account for their varying levels of semantic stability. According to this position of ‘seamless metaconceptualism’, thin and thick evaluative terms do not belong to different categories, but are both understood as metaconceptual devices which do not differ in kind, but in scope. By providing the same analysis for both thin and thick terms, seamless metaconceptualism not only entails that the latter cannot shoulder the philosophical work that some have attributed to them, but also removes much of their surrounding intrigue. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Much thought has been devoted to how metaethical disagreement between moral realism and expressivism can be saved once minimalism starts creeping. Very little thought has been given to how creeping minimalism affects error-theories’ disagreement with their metaethical competitors. The reason for this omission, I suspect, is found in the belief that whilst locating distinctive moral realist and expressivist positions within a minimalist landscape poses a severe challenge, no such difficulties are encountered when differentiating error-theories from moral realism and expressivism. In (...) the first part of this paper, I show that this belief is mistaken: Insofar as moral realists and error-theorists are still taken to disagree, creeping minimalism renders their disagreement moral, but makes these positions metaethically indistinguishable. In the second part of the paper, I present a modified inferentialist solution to the problem of creeping minimalism which seeks to put error-theories back on the metaethical map. Yet, this too comes at a cost, in that it significantly modifies our interpretation of error-theories. Whichever way we turn, then, creeping minimalism not only forces us to re-phrase metaethical positions in a way that is compatible with minimalism, but also requires us to change our very understanding of these positions. (shrink)

Personal autonomy is often taken to consist in self-government or self-determination. Personal autonomy thus seems to require self-control. However, there is reason to think that autonomy is compatible with the absence of self-control. Akratic action, i.e., action performed against the agent’s better judgement, can be free. And it is also plausible to think that free actions require autonomy. It is only when you determine what you do yourself that you act freely. It follows that akratic actions can be autonomous. At (...) least in some cases, it is the agent herself, and not some alien part of her, who determines her akratic actions. But akratic actions are usually thought to be paradigm cases of self-control failure. Thus, we have reason both to conclude that autonomy requires self-control and that autonomy is compatible with the absence of self-control. My aim is to discuss the main solutions to this paradox. (shrink)

Ascribing moral responsibility in collective action cases is notoriously difficult. After all, if my individual actions make no difference with regard to the prevention of climate change, the alleviation of poverty, or the outcome of national elections, why ought I to stop driving, donate money, or cast my vote? Neither consequentialist nor non-consequentialist moral theories have straightforward responses ready at hand. In this contribution, I present a new suggestion which, based on thoughts about causal overdetermination along the lines of Mackie’s (...) INUS account, aims to show that causally overdetermined collective action cases are morally arbitrary in a way that makes it possible to ascribe moral responsibility even if individual actions make no difference. (shrink)

The movement of people across borders is one of the most pressing issues of our time. Yet it is still unclear how migration should be regulated to be fair to the sending societies, the host societies and the individual migrant. What is at issue? Are we discussing migration from an ethical or from a political philosophical perspective, or both? Are we discussing migration from a global justice perspective or social justice perspective? Do we consider political legitimacy and democratic self-determination as (...) part of our analysis? How should we balance demands of justice in immigration compared to those of emigration? (shrink)

This chapter argues that Hume's views on the nature and sources of virtue are pluralistic. He has a pluralistic account of the sources of the moral sentiment, the taxonomy of virtue, and most importantly, the criteria of virtue. The chapter also argues that his views are neither utilitarian in particular nor consequentialist in general, but comprise overlooked but significant non‐consequentialist features, gleaned particularly from Book II of the Treatise (Of the Passions), and which are characteristic of virtue ethics in general. (...) It is devoted to investigating the status of (C2) as an independent criterion of virtue. The chapter discusses three broad categories of “species” or “appearance” which make a trait “naturally fitted” to be regarded as a virtue. Discussions also include indirect passion of pride. The connection between love of truth and hope for success brings us to the virtue cluster associated with the direct passion of hope. (shrink)

Climate change challenges the means of subsistence for many, particularly in the Global South. To respond to the challenges of climate change, countries increasingly resort to resettling those most affected by land erosion, heat, drought, floods, and the like. In this article, I investigate to what extent resettlement can compensate for the harm that climate-induced migration brings. The first harm I identify is that to individual autonomy. I argue that climate change changes the options of those affected by it to (...) the point that the decision to migrate can no longer count as a voluntary one. In some cases, I argue, the conditions of climate change coerce individuals. Second, I suggest that climate-induced migration severs the ties to territory, explaining the constitutive nature of such ties for accounts of individual autonomy. Third, I argue that severing ties with a traditional and historical territory challenges the capacity to imagine a future for individuals. I conclude that resettlement, even if actively planned and chosen, possibly providing gains in individual well-being and human flourishing, nevertheless harms individual autonomy interests. (shrink)

Are values objective or subjective? To clarify this question we start with an overview of the main concepts and debates in the philosophy of values. We then discuss the arguments for and against value realism, the thesis that there are objective evaluative facts. By contrast with value anti-realism, which is generally associated with sentimentalism, according to which evaluative judgements are grounded in sentiments, value realism is commonly coupled with rationalism. Against this common view, we argue that value realism can be (...) combined with sentimentalism, and we suggest that a plausible account, which we call ‘sentimental realism’, and according to which evaluative judgements are closely related to emotions, can be developped. (shrink)

A serious moral weakness of reproductive ‘surrogacy’ is that it can be harmful to the children who are created. This article presents a proposal for mitigating this weakness. Currently, the practice of commercial ‘surrogacy’ operates only in the interests of the adults involved , not in the interests of the child who is created. Whether ‘surrogacy’ is seen as the purchase of a baby, the purchase of parental rights, or the purchase of reproductive labor, all three views share the same (...) significant flaws. They endorse the transfer, for a fee, of the infant from the woman who gestated it to those who commissioned it, but without justifying such a transfer; they fail to demonstrate that the commissioners have any entitlement to the infant, or, for that matter, suitability to be the infant's parents; and they fail to take any notice of the infant's needs, interests, and wellbeing. A mere genetic connection is not enough to establish that the commissioners are entitled to receive the baby or that they are competent to raise it. Their good intentions, however caring, are not enough. Therefore, just as in the practice of adoption, there should be a formal institutionalized system for screening and licensing the prospective social parents, which would make the infant's needs, interests, and wellbeing paramount. I reply to several potential objections to this proposal, including the objection that genetic parents who raise their own child are not screened and licensed. (shrink)

Despite extinction-based processes demonstrating efficacy in the animal extinction and human anxiety literatures, extinction for substance use disorders has shown poor efficacy. Reasons for this lack of success include common threats to extinction, such as renewal and reinstatement. In recent decades, research on mindfulness for SUD has flourished, and a key aspect of these mindfulness-based interventions includes teaching individuals to stay present with whatever experience they have, even if unpleasant, without trying to change/escape/avoid it. Similarly, CET teaches individuals to not (...) escape/avoid conditioned responses by engaging in drug use behavior. This paper discusses how mindfulness-based research and practices could positively influence CET through future research, with the long-term goal of improving SUD treatment. (shrink)

Cognitive Theories of emotions have enjoyed great popularity in recent times. Allegedly, the so-called Perceptual Theory constitutes the most attractive version of this approach. However, the Perceptual Theory has come under increasing pressure. There are at least two ways to deal with the barrage of objections, which have been mounted against the Perceptual Theory. One is to argue that the objections work only if one assumes an overly narrow conception of what perception consists in. On a better and more liberal (...) understanding of perception, the objections lose their force. The other is to stress that the differences between emotions and sensory perceptions can be explained by focusing on a new analogy. As I will argue, emotions have interesting similarities with magnitude representations, such as the representation of distance. Such representations are plausibly thought to be analog and non-conceptual, but by contrast to sensory perceptions, such as colour perceptions, they do not lie at the sensory periphery. This new analogy makes room for a novel and attractive theory of emotions, the Receptive Theory, which allows for a positive and epistemologically fruitful characterization of emotions. (shrink)

Political philosophers are divided on the question of whether society should guide individuals in their projects and goals in light of the competing, yet overlapping, values of moral independence and human well-being. The lively neutralism-perfectionism debate appears to be significantly muted, however, when it comes to children who, all parties assume, should be guided by adults in their plans of life. Thus, in their stimulating new book, Family Values: the Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships, liberals Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift affirm (...) the role of the family in directing and enabling children’s flourishing. My paper challenges this distinction between parents and children in the liberal position to argue that the idea that it is appropriate to direct children to enable them to flourish, entails in fact, a commitment to policies that promote and enable the flourishing of all. (shrink)

Social work is a contested tradition, torn between the demands of social governance and autonomy. Today, this struggle is reflected in the division between the dominant, neoliberal agenda of service provision and the resistance offered by various critical perspectives employed by disparate groups of practitioners serving diverse communities. Critical social work challenges oppressive conditions and discourses, in addition to addressing their consequences in individuals’ lives. However, very few recent critical theorists informing critical social work have advocated revolution. A challenging exception (...) can be found in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–97), whose explication of ontological underdetermination and creation evades the pitfalls of both structural determinism and post-structural relativism, enabling an understanding of society as the contested creation of collective imaginaries in action and a politics of radical transformation. On this basis, we argue that Castoriadis’s radical-democratic revisioning of revolutionary praxis can help in reimagining critical social work’s emancipatory potential. (shrink)

Recent studies indicate that many people demonstrate resilience to the loss of a spouse, and are able to return fairly quickly to their normal levels of subjective well-being. The question I address here is whether these empirical findings support scepticism about the importance of our loved ones. I argue that we have reason to doubt the correlation posited by the sceptic between the importance of a person’s spouse and his or her reaction to spousal loss. Extreme devastation may not be (...) a sign of love, but may only indicate a person’s dependence on his or her spouse. I also argue that one cannot draw any meaningful conclusions about the value of a loved one on the basis of their reaction to loss, for those reactions will be influenced by factors such as replaceability, which need not correlate with love. I conclude that resilience offers no reason for scepticism about the depth of spousal love. (shrink)

In this reply, I argue that the worries raised by Kurth and this coauthors are not fatal for the perceptual theory of emotions. A first point to keep in mind in discussing the analogy argument in favor of that account is that what counts is the overall balance of similarities and differences, given their respective weight. In any case, I argue that none of the alleged differences between sensory perceptual experiences and emotions are such as to rule out that emotions (...) are a kind of perceptual experience which can confer epistemic justification of our evaluative beliefs. Finally, I suggest that the perceptual theory is in a position to nicely capture what happens when we disagree about evaluative issues. (shrink)

Individuals with limited resources are often presumed to be vulnerable in research. Concerns include the possibility of impaired decision making, susceptibility to undue inducement, and risk of exploitation. Although each of these concerns should be considered by investigators and IRBs, none justifies categorical exclusion of individuals with limited resources.

Controversy persists over the ethics of compensating research participants and providing posttrial benefits to communities in developing countries. Little is known about residents' views on these subjects. In this study, interviews about compensation and posttrial benefits from a hypothetical HIV vaccine trial were conducted in Uganda’s Rakai District. Most respondents said researchers owed the community posttrial benefits and research compensation, but opinions differed as to what these should be. Debates about posttrial benefits and compensation rarely include residents' views like these, (...) but future ones should. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of G. A. Cohen’s essay “If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?” the matter of personal responsibility for the amelioration of economic disadvantage has become a question for egalitarian political philosophers to wrestle with both theoretically and personally. This essay examines “the demands of equality” in light of an egalitarian philosophy that focuses on human flourishing. I consider Cohen’s call for personal commitments to the egalitarian project to show both the power and problems of (...) his approach and propose an alternative view, where individuals’ concern for living well involves an engagement with the demands of equality, but also some respite from its strictures. (shrink)

Liberals are concerned with the equal moral status of all human beings. This article discusses what flows from this premise for moral cosmopolitans when analysing temporary foreign worker programs for low-skilled workers. Some have hailed these programs as a tool to achieve redistributive global goals. However, I argue that in the example of Live-In-Caregivers in Canada, the morally most problematic aspect is that it provokes vulnerability of individual workers. Once in a situation of vulnerability, important conditions of individual autonomy are (...) jeopardized. Even if these programs provide for redistribution of opportunities on a global scale, the challenge such programs pose to the conditions of autonomy can not outweigh these gains. Instead, they need to be re-assessed and changed to fundamentally express equal moral status of all human beings. (shrink)

This is a precious companion for all those who want to achieve a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics of innovation."--Roberto Verganti, author of "Design-Driven Innovation".

This chapter provides a response dependence interpretation of it, and shows that it is compatible with a virtue ethical interpretation of Hume's moral philosophy. It aims to do justice to Hume's convictions both that sentiment lies at the foundations of ethics, and that ethics is a form of reliable, objective interaction with the world, permitting critical purchase on both people's behavior and emotions through objectively and socially accessible notions of virtue and vice. The distinction between a scientific constitution of properties (...) and an ethical or aesthetic one is nicely illustrated with Hume's discussion of the beauty of a circle. The chapter discusses the analysis of Hume's notion of the moral sense itself. The moral sense, as an appreciation of virtue, involves sensitivities due to the excitement of “sympathy” but a sympathy driven by or operating within the background of desires for the good of others. (shrink)

In his new book Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer argues that there is no way around the result that all metaethical views other than the error theory either fail for the same reasons as metaphysical normative realism, or for the same reasons as expressivism. In this contribution, I seek to show that this is false: We can eschew this result by ‘relaxing’ about normative truths. Even if Streumer were right about the fate of metaphysical normative realism and expressivism, then, relaxed realists (...) can avoid the problems he raises. (shrink)

The question of education for democratic ‘empowerment and liberation’, and how this might guide pedagogic practice is seldom raised and extremely challenging for social work education today. This chapter takes up the proposition that social work, through its educational practices, ‘can’ deliver on its promise of ‘democratic practice’ if democracy is understood as a process and not a predefined product. We argue that such a process and its embodiment in institutions cannot exist without the formation of radically democratic subjects, people (...) (including social workers) capable of questioning dominant social forms and of creating new forms and practices. Accordingly, this chapter explores the educational implications for social work of the work of the revolutionary theorist, Cornelius Castoriadis (1921–1997). Castoriadis’ philosophy accords a crucial role to democratic pedagogy (paideía) as an essential form of praxis in the creation of a radically democratic, egalitarian and sustainable society. In particular, we examine his idea (against (neo)liberal individualisation) that ‘autonomy’ is simultaneously an individual and social project that begins in, and is always dependent upon, individual and collective self-reflection. This argument is illustrated by examples from the authors’ classroom experiences of teaching both critical reflection and critical social theory to social work students in Australian universities, on the premise that both are indispensable in social work education as a democratic practice for ‘empowerment and liberation’. The chapter outlines a brief discussion of Castoriadis, his main ideas and the pedagogic dimensions of his philosophy before bringing the latter to bear on the authors’ teaching experiences. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the differences between Nietzsche and Aristotle are easily exaggerated. It discusses Nietzsche's “perspectivism.” The chapter focuses on three central basic universal virtues which the author argues Nietzsche both endorses and describes: forgetfulness, justice, and wisdom. In order for a genuine virtue of justice to be strong and tempered by grace, a strong “forgetfulness” is necessary. Virtues are described as “overflowing,” have extreme enthusiasm and passion at their core, and practical wisdom is nowhere or hardly to be (...) seen. The chapter describes the universal virtues as basic virtues and also discusses the issue of their differentiation. Two more forms of differentiation apparently create problems for understanding Nietzsche as a virtue ethicist: his idea that virtues are “individual” and his idea that there are virtues of the “convalescent” by contrast with virtues of the strong. (shrink)

As common experience confirms, procrastination seems not only possible, but widespread. However, procrastination should not be taken for granted. Often, the procrastinator harms herself knowingly. It thus clearly seems that such a person lacks the self-concern that usually characterises us. After having spelled out what procrastination is, and having explored its main varieties, I consider the relation between procrastination and risk-taking. After this, I discuss the implications of this phenomenon for the debates about personal identity. The upshot, I argue, is (...) that reductionist accounts, according to which identity is a matter of psychological continuity, are in a better position as might have been thought. (shrink)

A correct understanding of Hume's sentimentalism cleared away the alleged difficulties of his sentimentalism; this chapter shows how a correct understanding of Nietzsche's attacks on “morality” and altruism removes the difficulties of his egoism. The chapter investigates what it is to affirm one's own life, and what is involved in self‐sacrificing altruism. It also shows how affirming one's own life can be compatible with “working for one's fellow men”. One has seen that virtuous egoism is consistent with “overflowing” “gift‐giving” but (...) the overflowing nature of giving is not sufficient for virtuous egoism. Full virtue requires the social feeling of the “collective‐individual.” Finally, one should recall that consequentialism for Nietzsche is the most shallow and “immature” of all the major types of moral theory, simply because it assesses states and actions solely in terms of their consequences, rather than in terms of the depth psychological states of individuals. (shrink)

Liberals are concerned with the equal moral status of all human beings. This article discusses what flows from this premise for moral cosmopolitans when analysing temporary foreign worker programs for low-skilled workers. Some have hailed these programs as a tool to achieve redistributive global goals. However, I argue that in the example of Live-In-Caregivers in Canada, the morally most problematic aspect is that it provokes vulnerability of individual workers. Once in a situation of vulnerability, important conditions of individual autonomy are (...) jeopardized. Even if these programs provide for redistribution of opportunities on a global scale, the challenge such programs pose to the conditions of autonomy can not outweigh these gains. Instead, they need to be re-assessed and changed to fundamentally express equal moral status of all human beings. (shrink)