In Our Best Interest argues that it is permissible to intervene in a person's affairs whenever doing so serves her best interest without wronging others. Jason Hanna makes the case for paternalism, responding to common objections that paternalism is disrespectful or that it violates rights, and arguing that popular anti-paternalist views confront serious problems.

“Libertarian paternalism” aims to harness cognitive biases in order to improve prudential decision-making. Some critics have objected that libertarian paternalism is wrongly manipulative. I argue that this objection is mostly unsuccessful. First, I point out that some strategies endorsed by libertarian paternalists can help people to better appreciate reasons. Second, I develop an account of manipulation according to which an agent manipulates her target by worsening the target’s deliberative position. The means of influence defended by libertarian paternalists—for instance, the judicious (...) use of default rules—are not manipulative in this way. (shrink)

Our decision-making is often subject to framing effects: alternative but equally informative descriptions of the same options elicit different choices. When a decision-maker is vulnerable to framing, she may consent under one description of the act, which suggests that she has waived her right, yet be disposed to dissent under an equally informative description of the act, which suggests that she has not waived her right. I argue that in such a case the decision-maker’s consent is simply irrelevant to the (...) permissibility of proceeding. I then consider two alternative views. According to the first, people susceptible to framing are able to give valid consent so long as they are sufficiently informed. This suggestion, I argue, maintains an overly narrow focus on mere quantity of information to the exclusion of other choice-affecting factors. A second response, which appeals to hypothetical consent, is likewise of little use in resolving the moral problem posed by framing effects. I conclude that if susceptibility to framing undermines the validity of consent, we may have good reason to reconsider whether consent has the rights-waiving function commonly attributed to it. (shrink)

Most people believe that it is permissible to kill a nonresponsible threat, or someone who threatens one's life without exercising agency. Defenders of this view must show that there is a morally relevant difference between nonresponsible threats and innocent bystanders. Some philosophers, including Jonathan Quong and Helen Frowe, have attempted to do this by arguing that one who kills a bystander takes advantage of another person, while one who kills a threat does not. In this paper, I show that the (...) proposals offered by Quong and Frowe have unacceptable implications. I then argue that those who claim that nonresponsible threats may be killed face a dilemma generated by the possibility of a stationary threat, or someone who endangers another person's life without moving. Unless we arbitrarily distinguish between stationary and moving nonresponsible threats, it is unclear how the permission to kill nonresponsible threats is to be explicated. I conclude that nonresponsible threats are not legitimate targets of self-defence. (shrink)

Most anti-paternalists claim that informed and competent self-regarding choices are protected by autonomy, while ill-informed or impaired self-regarding choices are not. Joel Feinberg, among many others, argues that we can in this way distinguish impermissible “hard” paternalism from permissible “soft” paternalism. I argue that this view confronts two related problems in its treatment of ill-informed decision-makers. First, it faces a dilemma when applied to decision-makers who are responsible for their ignorance: it either permits too much, or else too little, intervention (...) to satisfy its proponents. Second, the most promising rationales in favor of the view ignore the distinction between an agent’s voluntarily bringing about some state of affairs, on the one hand, and an agent’s voluntarily assuming a risk, on the other. I conclude that a decision-maker’s ignorance is irrelevant to the permissibility of intervention on her behalf. If it is permissible to intervene in a given ill-informed choice, it would be permissible to intervene in an otherwise similar but informed choice, at least provided that intervention would produce similar benefits in both cases. This shows that we should sometimes accept straightforwardly paternalistic rationales. (shrink)

Many critics of commercial surrogate motherhood argue that it violates the rights of children. In this paper, I respond to several versions of this objection. The most common version claims that surrogacy involves child‐selling. I argue that while proponents of surrogacy have generally failed to provide an adequate response to this objection, it can be overcome. After showing that the two most prominent arguments for the child‐selling objection fail, I explain how the commissioning couple can acquire parental rights by paying (...) the surrogate only for her reproductive labor. My explanation appeals to the idea that parental rights are acquired by those who have claims over the reproductive labor that produces the child, not necessarily by those who actually perform the labor. This account clarifies how commercial surrogacy differs from commercial adoption. In the final section of the paper, I consider and reject three further child‐based objections to commercial surrogacy: that it establishes a market in children's attributes, that it requires courts to stray from the best interests standard in determining custodial rights, and that it requires the surrogate to neglect her parental responsibilities. Since each of these objections fails, children's rights probably do not pose an obstacle to the acceptability of commercial surrogacy arrangements. (shrink)

Most deontologists claim that it is more objectionable to do harm than it is to allow harm of comparable magnitude. I argue that this view faces a largely neglected puzzle regarding the moral relevance of an agent's past behavior. Consider an agent who chooses to save five people rather than one, where the one person's life is in jeopardy because of something the agent did earlier. How are the agent's obligations affected by the fact that his now letting the one (...) die would retroactively make it the case that he has killed? I argue that the most promising deontological responses to this question are difficult to defend. Further, it is unclear how the deontologist can resolve a further set of cases, in which commonsense intuition indicates that an agent is required to terminate a threat she initiated more recently in preference to a threat she initiated less recently. (shrink)

Philosophers disagree about the moral status of harm-enabling, or behavior by which an agent removes an obstacle to the completion of a threatening sequence. I argue that enabling harm is equivalent to doing harm, at least when an agent withdraws a resource to which neither she nor the victim has any prior moral claim. This conclusion reinforces the common objection that deontological appeals to the doing/allowing distinction cannot easily handle cases involving the withdrawal of aid. I argue that the existing (...) literature on this issue overlooks a more fundamental problem concerning the moral relevance of an agent’s past behavior. (shrink)

According to the causal theory of parenthood, people incur parental obligations by causing children to exist. Proponents of the causal theory often argue that gamete donors have special obligations to their genetic offspring. In response, many defenders of current gamete donation practices would reject the causal theory. In particular, they may invoke the ‘too many parents problem’: many people who causally contribute to the existence of children – for instance, fertility doctors – do not thereby incur parental obligations. This article (...) argues that the conclusions commonly drawn by causal theorists, and by their critics, are premature. Causal theorists have a promising response to the too many parents problem. This response, however, defuses the moral concern that many causal theorists have raised about gamete donation. A similar point, it is argued, applies to Rivka Weinberg’s ‘Hazmat Theory’. -/- . (shrink)

Most deontologists claim that it is more objectionable to do harm than it is to allow harm of comparable magnitude. I argue that this view faces a largely neglected puzzle regarding the moral relevance of an agent's past behavior. Consider an agent who chooses to save five people rather than one, where the one person's life is in jeopardy because of something the agent did earlier. How are the agent's obligations affected by the fact that his now letting the one (...) die would retroactively make it the case that he has killed? I argue that the most promising deontological responses to this question are difficult to defend. Further, it is unclear how the deontologist can resolve a further set of cases, in which commonsense intuition indicates that an agent is required to terminate a threat she initiated more recently in preference to a threat she initiated less recently. (shrink)

Most opponents of paternalism agree that autonomy does not protect substantially impaired choices. Yet this common anti-paternalist view faces serious problems. First, I argue that it threatens to justify nearly all beneficial intervention, since all imprudent choices are impaired. Attempts to avoid this problem yield other implications that anti-paternalists would reject. Second, I argue that anti-paternalists have no convincing way of showing that impaired choices, such as those produced by emotional distress, are not protected by autonomy. In light of these (...) problems, we should likely accept a hard paternalist view--one that permits intervention simply in virtue of the consequences. (shrink)

Many philosophers distinguish between "hard" paternalism, which supposedly violates autonomy, and "soft" paternalism, which does not. This chapter begins by critically assessing Joel Feinberg's account of the distinction, according to which hard paternalism interferes with voluntary self-regarding choices while soft paternalism interferes with substantially nonvoluntary self-regarding choices. It then considers several other ways to draw the hard/soft distinction. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that although the hard/soft distinction is a crucially important component of most antipaternalist views, it is surprisingly difficult to (...) draw in a satisfying way. (shrink)

While paternalism has been a long-standing philosophical issue, it has recently received renewed attention among scholars and the general public. Comprising twenty-seven chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook is divided into five parts: (i) What is Paternalism; (ii) Paternalism and Ethical Theory; (iii) Paternalism and Political Philosophy; (iv) Paternalism without Coercion; (v) Paternalism in Practice. Within these sections central debates, issues, and questions are examined, including: how should paternalism be defined or characterized? How is paternalism related to (...) such moral notions as rights, well-being, and autonomy? When is paternalism morally objectionable? What are the legitimate limits of government benevolence? To what extent should medical practice be paternalistic? (shrink)

This chapter considers various arguments purporting to show that respect for animal rights is consistent with "therapeutic hunting"--that is, hunting undertaken as part of a plan to control wild animal populations. It concludes that these arguments fail. It also suggests that the implications of Regan's rights view may be more sweeping than are generally recognizes: the rights view seems to rule out not only therapeutic hunting, but also subsistence hunting.

According to the Weak Procreation Asymmetry, there are weighty reasons not to create miserable people and only weaker reasons to create happy people. This view has several advantages over the Strong Procreation Asymmetry, which holds that there are no reasons to create happy people. Nonetheless, it faces a serious problem: according to some critics, it suggests that our reasons to create lives are as strong as our reasons to save lives. In response, this essay draws on the intuition that we (...) have reason to maximize the number of lives saved, even when doing so would not secure a greater benefit. Numbers are not comparably relevant, however, to choices involving the creation of people. Taken together, these judgments show that there is typically an “extra” consideration that favors saving lives over creating lives. They thereby help to defuse a common objection to the Weak Procreation Asymmetry. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is no general justification for punishing failed attempts less severely than successful attempts.

People with disabilities often report enjoying a much higher quality of life than people without disabilities would expect. For instance, many people believe that their lives would be much worse if they were to become paraplegic. Indeed, some people believe that life with paraplegia would be barely worth living. Yet many paraplegics report being roughly as happy as able-bodied people. This conflict in attitudes has come to be known as “the disability paradox.” Many psychologists claim that the disability paradox is (...) at least partly explained by affective forecasting errors. Someone makes an affective forecasting error when she makes a mistaken prediction about the effect of some event on her experiential quality of life. Such affective forecasting errors raise moral problems that are especially pressing in the context of medical decision-making. For instance, when a recommended treatment would leave someone disabled, she may refuse on the grounds that she would rather live a shorter life without the disability than a longer life with the disability. Yet it may be that she would feel very differently after adapting to the condition in question. What should we say about such cases? On the one hand, some ethicists have argued that affective forecasting errors compromise autonomy, so that decision-makers should take account of the likelihood that they will adapt. On the other, it may appear that decision-makers should have no regard for adaptive preferences they may form in the future. My central goal in this paper is to argue that both of these views are mistaken. If sound, my arguments suggest that legitimate moral concerns about a subject’s well-being are sometimes misrepresented as concerns about her autonomy. (shrink)

Neurological interventions are sometimes used to prevent criminal behavior. For instance, in some jurisdictions, sex offenders can be compelled to undergo treatment designed to reduce sexual desire. As David Birks and Thomas Douglas observe in their introduction to this volume, “chemical castration” may be just the tip of the iceberg. As neuroscience advances, it could reveal many other ways to control criminality. For instance, pharmacological treatments may help combat violent behavior or drug abuse. Such “crime-preventing neurointerventions” have been controversial. On (...) the one hand, proponents argue that CPNs could be both more effective and more humane than incarceration. On the other, critics argue that coercively imposed CPNs violate individual rights and that society has a poor track record of using medical interventions for social control. The nineteen original essays in this book comprehensively cover and effectively advance the moral debate over the appropriate use of CPNs. (shrink)