Beyond Human is an informative and accessible guide for all those interested in the developing sciences of genetic engineering, bioprinting, and human cloning. Illustrating the ideas with reference to well-known science fiction films and novels, the author provides a unique insight into and understanding of how genetic manipulation, cloning, and other novel bio-technologies will one day allow us to redesign our species. It also addresses the legitimate concerns about "playing God", while at the same time embracing the positive aspects of (...) the scientific trajectory that will lead to our transhuman future. (shrink)

A popular view of harming is the causal account (CA), on which harming is causing harm. CA has several attractive features. In particular, it appears well equipped to deal with the most important problems for its main competitor, the counterfactual comparative account (CCA). However, we argue that, despite its advantages, CA is ultimately an unacceptable theory of harming. Indeed, while CA avoids several counterexamples to CCA, it is vulnerable to close variants of some of the problems that beset CCA.

Drawing on research in the psychology of judgment and decision making, I argue that individual economists acting as experts in matters of public policy are likely to be victims of significant overconfidence. The case is based on the pervasiveness of the phenomenon, the nature of the task facing economists?as?experts, and the character of the institutional constraints under which they operate. Moreover, I argue that economist overconfidence can have dramatic consequences. Finally, I explore how the negative consequences of overconfidence can be (...) mitigated, and how the phenomenon can be reduced or eliminated. As a case study, I discuss the involvement of Western experts in post?communist Russian economic reforms. (shrink)

In Consequentialism Reconsidered, Carlson strives to find a plausible formulation of the structural part of consequentialism. Key notions are analyzed, such as outcomes, alternatives and performability. Carlson argues that consequentialism should be understood as a maximizing rather than a satisficing theory, and as temporally neutral rather than future oriented. He also shows that certain moral theories cannot be reformulated as consequentialist theories. The relevant alternatives for an agent in a situation are taken to comprise all actions that they can perform (...) in the situation. The defense of this idea necessitates certain modifications to the standard consequentialist criteria of obligatoriness, rightness and wrongness. The problem of whether agents should adapt their actions to their own future actions is also addressed. Further, a conditional analysis of performability is suggested, and it is argued that particular actions should in this connection be regarded as `abstract' rather than `concrete'. The final chapter sketches a consequentialist theory for collective agents. (shrink)

In a seminal book, Alvin I. Goldman outlines a theory for how to evaluate social practices with respect to their , i.e., their tendency to promote the acquisition of true beliefs (and impede the acquisition of false beliefs) in society. In the same work, Goldman raises a number of serious worries for his account. Two of them concern the possibility of determining the veritistic value of a practice in a concrete case because (1) we often don't know what beliefs are (...) actually true, and (2) even if we did, the task of determining the veritistic value would be computationally extremely difficult. Neither problem is specific to Goldman's theory and both can be expected to arise for just about any account of veritistic value. It is argued here that the first problem does not pose a serious threat to large classes of interesting practices. The bulk of the paper is devoted to the computational problem, which, it is submitted, can be addressed in promising terms by means of computer simulation. In an attempt to add vividness to this proposal, an up-and-running simulation environment (Laputa) is presented and put to some preliminary tests. (shrink)

The ongoing ‘enhancement’ debate pits critics of new self-shaping technologies against enthusiasts. One important thread of that debate concerns medicalization, the process whereby ‘non-medical’ problems become framed as ‘medical’ problems.In this paper I consider the charge of medicalization, which critics often level at new forms of technological self-shaping, and explain how that charge can illuminate – and obfuscate. Then, more briefly, I examine the charge of pharmacological Calvinism, which enthusiasts, in their support of technological self-shaping, often level at critics. And (...) I suggest how that charge, too, can illuminate and obfuscate.Exploring the broad charge of medicalization and the narrower counter charge of pharmacological Calvinism leads me to conclude that, as satisfying as it can be to level one of those charges at our intellectual opponents, and as tempting as it is to lie down and rest with our favorite insight, we need to gather the energy to have a conversation about the difference between good and bad forms of medicalization. Specifically, I suggest that if we consider the ‘medicalization of love,’ we can see why critics of and enthusiasts about technological self-shaping should want (and in some cases have already begun) to distinguish between good and bad forms of such medicalization. (shrink)

"In these essays, health care professionals, scholars, and members of the disability community debate the implications of prenatal testing for people with disabilitties and for parent-child relationships generally."--Cover.

Formulating my comments I have had difficulties of three kinds. First, I am not at all sure that I have understood Davidson correctly at every point. Secondly, not being aware of how far I may take for granted that Davidson and I share what may be called the same background ...

Beginning with the assumptions that genetic technology will make possible the enhancement of some significant human capacities and that our society will have self-evident reasons to pursue such enhancements, this essay suggests less evident reasons to proceed with extreme caution. The essay asks: Will we, in our attempts to enhance humans by reducing their subjection to chance and change, inadvertently impoverish them? It explores how technologies aimed at enhancement might affect the good that is our experience of some forms of (...) the beautiful and the excellent, the good that is relationships of care, and the good that is diversity across the life span. In the end, it speculates about the fundamental philosophical difference that underlies the disagreement between those who would tend to embrace a project to enhance human capacities and those who would tend to criticize such a project. (shrink)

The counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit has several virtues, but it also faces serious problems. I argue that CCA is incompatible with the prudential and moral relevance of harm and benefit. Some possible ways to revise or restrict CCA, in order to avoid this conclusion, are discussed and found wanting. Finally, I try to show that appealing to the context-sensitivity of counterfactuals, or to the alleged contrastive nature of harm and benefit, does not provide a solution.

A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: (...) Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule. (shrink)

Jonathan Cohen has claimed that in cases of witness agreement there is an inverse relationship between the prior probability and the posterior probability of what is being agreed: the posterior rises as the prior falls. As is demonstrated in this paper, this contention is not generally valid. In fact, in the most straightforward case exactly the opposite is true: a lower prior also means a lower posterior. This notwithstanding, there is a grain of truth to what Cohen is saying, as (...) there are special circumstances under which a thesis similar to his holds good. What characterises these circumstances is that they allow for the fact of agreement to be surprising. In making this precise, I draw on Paul Horwich's probabilistic analysis of surprise. I also consider a related claim made by Cohen concerning the effect of lowering the prior on the strength of corroboration. 1 Introduction 2 Cohen's claim 3 A counterexample 4 A weaker claim 5 A counterexample to the weaker claim 6 The grain of truth in Cohen's claim 7 Prior probability and strength of corroboration 8 Conclusion. (shrink)

During antiquity, the astronomical questions of the day and the methods used to formulate and answer them were clearly within the realm of philosophy. That changed most notably in the sixteenth century when Tycho Brahe turned astronomy into a modern empirical science by formulating (in principle) testable hypotheses, figuring out how to test them, building the proper instruments, and making – for that time – very accurate and systematic observations of the sky. These observations eventually led to the modern view (...) of the solar system and ultimately the rejection of the classical Aristotelian worldview. Since then, the exploration of space has been located clearly in the realm of natural science – and, to an increasing extent, technology. In parallel to that, space has – at least since World War II –to a high degree been a place for military and political ambitions and activities. The scientists that have been involved in space exploration have mainly been physicists, together with some chemists and geologists. Lately, the exploration of space has engaged more and more biologists in the search for extraterrestrial life. The international space station, along with plans to send humans to Mars, has led to an increased involvement of medical science. If present speculations about space tourism and mining on planets, moons, and asteroids hold true, in the future we will probably see many new professions dealing not just with exploration, but also exploitation of space. Philosophy has never totally left the realm of space exploration. As space exploration and exploitation become more and more interdisciplinary, and as space becomes a bigger part of our lives, it will be time once more for philosophy to turn its attention towards space. The mission for philosophers is not to indulge in speculations over questions that are better dealt with by empirical methods. Ther are, however, several questions connected to the exploration and exploitation of space that are of a philosophical nature and that deserve to be examined seriously from a philosophical perspective. I believe that philosophical scrutiny of these questions will be to the benefit of both space exploration and philosophy. Interesting and, indeed, important philosophical questions arise in many areas of space exploration. Some of the most interesting and important ones relate to the search for extraterrestrial life, of which some will be presented here. I will not attempt to answer these questions here. Instead, this chapter should be seen as an introduction to some of the philosophical questions raised by astrobiology. (shrink)

While color realism is endorsed, Byrne & Hilbert's (B&H's) case for it stretches the notion of “physical property” beyond acceptable bounds. It is argued that a satisfactory account of color should do much more to respond to antirealist intuitions that flow from the specificity of color experience, and a pointer to an approach that does so is provided.

We reply to Christoph Jäger's criticism of the conditional probability solution (CPS) to the value problem for reliabilism due to Goldman and Olsson (2009). We argue that while Jäger raises some legitimate concerns about the compatibility of CPS with externalist epistemology, his objections do not in the end reduce the plausibility of that solution.

According to the so?called swamping problem, reliabilist knowledge is no more valuable than mere true belief. In a paper called ?Reliabilism and the value of knowledge? (in Epistemic value, edited by A. Haddock, A. Millar, and D. H. Pritchard, pp. 19?41. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), Alvin I. Goldman and myself proposed, among other things, a solution based on conditional probabilities. This approach, however, is heavily criticized by Jonathan L. Kvanvig in his paper ?The swamping problem redux: Pith and gist? (...) (in Social Epistemology, edited by A. Haddock, A. Millar, and D. H. Pritchard, pp. 89?111. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). In the present article, I defend the conditional probability solution against Kvanvig?s objections. (shrink)

The “new natural lawyers” (NNLs) are a prolific group of philosophers, theologians, and political theorists that includes John Finnis, Robert George, Patrick Lee, Gerard Bradley, and Germain Grisez, among others. These thinkers have devoted themselves to developing and defending a traditional sexual ethic according to which homosexual sexual acts are immoral per se and marriage ought to remain an exclusively heterosexual institution. The sterility objection holds that the NNLs are guilty of making an arbitrary and irrational distinction between same-sex couples (...) and sterile heterosexual couples. The NNLs believe that it is a necessary condition for two people’s being morally and legally entitled to get married that they be able to perform sexual acts that are “suited to procreating.” But sterile heterosexual couples are incapable of performing such acts. Therefore, it should follow from the NNLs’ own premises that sterile heterosexual couples are not entitled to marry. But the NNLs do not draw this conclusion. Instead, they maintain that sterile heterosexuals can marry while denying that the same is true of same-sex couples. The sterility objection claims the NNLs are being inconsistent in treating the two kinds of couples differently. Although the sterility objection has been endorsed by recent critics, I don’t think it has yet been adequately defended. The NNLs have responded by arguing that there is a sense in which the sex acts of sterile heterosexual couples are as suited to reproduction as those of fertile heterosexuals. Thus they maintain that the distinction they draw between the two kinds of couple has a rational basis. A successful defense of the sterility objection must show that this response on the part of the NNLs fails. Such is the task I undertake in this paper. I argue that the NNLs’ response fails because acts of penile-vaginal intercourse between sterile heterosexuals lack the actual causal power to produce conception that sexual acts need to be considered truly reproductive, and because their assumption that penile-vaginal intercourse always functions reproductively is bad biology. (shrink)

It is difficult to understand the meaning of ‘dignity’ in human rights, bioethics and nursing literature because the word is used so vaguely. Unless dignity’s meaning is spelt out it can disappear beneath more tangible priorities. In this article we define dignity and show how this can help health workers to maintain the dignity of people in their care.

For more than 20 years, sustainable development has been advocated as a way of tackling growing global environmental and social problems. The sustainable development discourse has always had a strong technological component and the literature boasts an enormous amount of debate on which technologies should be developed and employed and how this can most efficiently be done. The mainstream discourse in sustainable development argues for an eco-efficiency approach in which a technology push strategy boosts efficiency levels by a factor 10 (...) and more in industrialised and developing countries. A minority argues for a socio-cultural lifestyle switch, relying on new values, quality of life, sufficiency and redistribution strategies, with calls for appropriate and soft technologies. It is remarkable, however, that the articles, books and policy debates on sustainability seldom explicitly draw in a discussion of the nature of technology, how technology influences and is influenced by society, and what this implies for sustainable development. The mainstream interprets technology as neutral and instrumental: technology is no more than an instrument to reach a goal; it cannot be judged on its intrinsic characteristics, only on its use. The alternative view often builds on an autonomous and substantive interpretation of technology: technology is an autonomous, almost uncontrollable power that fundamentally reshapes our culture. A more balanced approach seems to be growing in the research on socio-technical sustainability transitions where the focus shifts to the co-evolution of technology and society, and to the networks, seamless webs and complex multi-actor processes that may carry a sustainability transition forward. This approach builds on insights from recent traditions in the philosophy and sociology of technology, in particular the social construction of technology (SCOT) and actor-network theory (ANT). While this provides for a better understanding of the nature and potential role of technology in sustainability policies, it remains to be seen whether it will actually influence the choice between technologies. This article investigates the different conceptualisations of technology in the sustainability debate. It first distinguishes between different approaches of sustainability and how these are related to differing views on technology. It then moves on to how the socio-technical transitions research incorporates insights from contemporary philosophy and sociology of technology. It reflects on the potential of transitions research to give guidance in technology choices, suggesting that the transition approach might be strengthened by drawing in insights from critical theory of technology and by taking a more political stance in defining sustainable development. (shrink)

The ‘non-identity problem’ raises a well-known challenge to the person-affecting view, according to which an action can be wrong only if it affects someone for the worse. In a recent article, however, Thomas D. Bontly proposes a novel way to solve the non-identity problem in person-affecting terms. Bontly's argument is based on a contrastive causal account of harm. In this response, we argue that Bontly's argument fails even assuming that the contrastive causal account is correct.

Chapter Introduction The field of artificial intelligence is concerned with the construction of computer systems which exhibit intelligent behavior in order ...

Nicholas Wolterstorff and Christopher J. Eberle have defended the view that the ethics of liberal citizenship allows citizens to publicly support the passage of coercive laws based solely on their religious convictions. They also develop positive conceptions of virtuous citizenship that place moral limits on how citizens may appeal to their religion. The question I address in this essay is whether the limits they impose on citizens’ appeals to their religion are adequate. Since Eberle’s “ideal of conscientious engagement” provides us (...) with the most extensive statement of these limits, it is the primary focus of my attention here. My conclusion is that in its current form, Eberle’s ideal is not constraining enough. In the first section, I argue that Eberle’s ideal does not require citizens to be self-critical enough about their religious and political commitments. In the second section, I highlight a conflict between Eberle’s ideal and the need for citizens to respect the religious freedom of their fellow citizens. I argue that the way to resolve this conflict is to adopt a more fine-grained conception of religious reasons and to hold that citizens should not rely on religious reasons of certain kinds. In the final section, I argue that laws punishing or discouraging homosexual conduct (which Eberle’s ideal would apparently allow) violate what Wolterstorff calls “the Idea of liberal democracy” and so are not the kind of proposal that virtuous citizens can defend. (shrink)

Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitschy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles (...) of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions, relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and related concepts. I go on to contend that these concepts, properly understood, serve as helpful test cases concerning some important issues in contemporary aesthetics, such as the paradox of negative art, and the contentious debate between intentionalists and anti-intentionalists. (shrink)

Angner is especially interested in the work of Goodman Watson. “He was a professor of educational psychology at Columbia University who wrote a prominent article in 1930 that outlined his determination to explore whether it was possible to measure happiness,” Angner explains.