: Some scientific research should not be published. The risks to national security and public health override the social benefits of disseminating scientific results openly. Unfortunately, scientists themselves are not in a position to know which studies to withhold from public view, as the National Research Council has proposed. Yet neither can government alone be trusted to balance the competing interests at stake.

The following argument is addressed: (1) a person is morally responsible for an event's occurring only if that event's occurring was not a matter of luck; (2) no event is such that its occurring is not a matter of luck; therefore, (3) no event is such that someone is morally responsible for its occurring. Two notions of control are distinguished: restricted and complete. (2) is shown false on the first interpretation, (1) on the second. The discussion involves a distinction between (...) resultant and situational luck, And it is argued that, Even when luck's role in life, And the unfairness that stems from it, Is acknowledged, Moral responsibility remains possible. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate regarding the relative merits of two theses about moral obligation known as actualism and possibilism. Both theses seek to give expression to the general idea that one ought to do the best one can. According to actualism, one’s obligations turn on what would happen if one chose some course of action, whereas, according to possibilism, they turn on what could happen if one chose some course of action. There are two strands to the debate: the (...) substantive verdicts that the two theses render in particular cases, and the accounts that they yield of the conceptual structure of moral obligation. Possibilism is conceptually appealing, whereas actualism is not, but the latter may seem to render superior substantive verdicts. In this paper, it is argued that, by turning from the objectivist’s emphasis on what is actually best to the prospectivist’s emphasis on what one’s evidence indicates is best, possibilists can provide an account of moral obligation that is both conceptually and substantively attractive. (shrink)

Part of a book symposium on Fred Feldman's *Pleasure and the Good Life*.

This chapter discusses the nature of and relation between value and normativity. Words such as “good” and “bad” give expression to value, while words such as “right,” “wrong,” “ought,” and “reason” give expression to normativity. Some philosophers hold the view that value is to be understood in terms of normativity, others hold the view that normativity is to be understood in terms of value. This chapter examines both views, explaining how each is plausible and yet also problematic.

Much of the focus of programs designed to promote responsible conduct in research has traditionally been on the high crimes of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. We believe that equally deserving of our attention are the misdemeanors that also can occur. Viewed as individual events, these “little murders” are far less serious. Yet, we believe that in the aggregate they can do great harm, not the least because they can set the stage for far greater crimes.

The concept of intrinsic value has enjoyed a long, rich history. From the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day, philosophers have placed it at the foundation of much of their theorizing. This is especially true of G.E. Moore, who made it the cornerstone of his Principia Ethica. Yet this venerable concept has recently come under serious, sustained attack. My aim in this paper is to show that this attack has been unsuccessful.When Principia Ethica appeared, its impact on (...) the philosophical community was immediate and profound. Of course, much of what Moore had to say was, and continues to be, strongly disputed. The view that goodness is a simple nonnatural property has been criticized by many people and in many ways. Some have argued that goodness is an analyzable property. Others have argued that it is a natural property. Still others have argued, more radically, that goodness is not a property at all. But none of these critics has rejected the very idea of goodness. None of them, that is, has contended that to say of something that it is good is to speak nonsense. (shrink)

The view that what one ought, or is obligated, to do is the best that one can do faces a problem even from the perspective of someone sympathetic with the view: there are cases of group action where, through lack of cooperation, the best that can be done is not done and yet where, it seems, each individual does the best that he or she can do. In this paper, various attempts to deal with this problem are criticized and then (...) a new solution is offered, one which requires "connected" individuals to be "transigent" relative to one another concerning possible group outcomes. (shrink)

In this article I critique Charles Kay’s aboriginal overkill hypothesis, which states that Native Americans numbered 100 million or more in precolumbian North America, extensively humanized the landscape, and suppressed wildlife numbers, thus allowing wildlife browse to proliferate. By examining Kay’s source use and pertinent information, I find that he makes four kinds of significant mistakes: exaggerations, failure to provide necessary data, errors of omission, and errors of logic. Through examples I illustrate that Kay’s errors compromise his hypothesis. Kay uses (...) Yellowstone National Park as his primary example of such a humanized area; in contrast, I suggest it is a relatively pristine area. (shrink)

In everyday life it is common to judge people morally responsible for their actions, but there is a time-honored philosophical challenge to this practice with which we are all familiar. The challenge can be put briefly as follows: moral responsibility requires that agents have a certain kind of control that is compatible with neither causal determinism nor its contradictory, causal indeterminism; hence moral responsibility is impossible. Haji notes that judgments about moral responsibility- which I will call hypological judgments—are not the (...) only category of moral, or morally relevant, judgments. There are also deontic judgments, which have to do with moral obligation, right, and wrong; aretaic judgments, which have to do with moral virtue and vice; and axiological judgments, which have to do with intrinsic and extrinsic value. In principle, a challenge to all such judgments can be made that parallels the challenge to hypological judgments: that they presuppose a certain kind of control that is compatible with neither determinism nor indeterminism and are therefore to be rejected. It is a surprising fact that, whereas the challenge to hypological judgments has been the subject of intense debate for centuries, the analogous challenges to the other kinds of judgments have received comparatively little, if any, attention. In this book, Haji seeks to rectify this omission. He concerns himself primarily with the challenge to deontic judgments. During the course of his discussion he deals in depth with the original challenge to hypological judgments, devotes a chapter to the challenge to aretaic judgments, and makes certain remarks in passing about the challenge to axiological judgments. (shrink)

This paper considers three general views about the nature of moral obligation and three particular answers concerning the following question: if on Monday you lend me a book that I promise to return to you by Friday, what precisely is my obligation to you and what constitutes its fulfillment? The example is borrowed from W.D. Ross, who in The Right and the Good proposed what he called the Objective View of obligation, from which he inferred what is here called the (...) First Answer to the question. In Foundations of Ethics Ross repudiated the Objective View in favor of the Subjective View, from which he inferred a Second Answer. In this paper each of the Objective and Subjective Views and the First and Second Answers are rejected in favor of the Prospective View and a Third Answer. The implications of the Prospective View for another question closely related to the original question are then investigated: what precisely is your right regarding my returning the book and what constitutes its satisfaction? (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)

Both fairness and efficiency are important considerations in market design and regulation, yet many regulators have neither defined nor measured these concepts. We develop an evidencebased policy framework in which these are both defined and measured using a series of empirical proxies. We then build a systems estimation model to examine the 2003–2011 explosive growth in algorithmic trading on the London Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext Paris. Our results show that greater AT is associated with increased transactional efficiency and reduced (...) information leakage in top quintile stocks. For less liquid stocks, manipulation at the close declines. We also document the tradeoff between reduced spreads and increased manipulation or information leakage following the introduction of MiFID1. (shrink)

This volume consists of 21 essays on Marsilio Ficino (1433-99), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus-priest who was the architect of Renaissance Platonism.

Michael J. Zimmerman explores whether and how our ignorance about ourselves and our circumstances affects what our moral obligations and moral rights are. He rejects objective and subjective views of the nature of moral obligation, and presents a new case for a 'prospective' view.

An Essay on Human Action seeks to provide a comprehensive, detailed, enlightening, and (in its detail) original account of human action. This account presupposes a theory of events as abstract, proposition-like entities, a theory which is given in the first chapter of the book. The core-issues of action-theory are then treated: what acting in general is (a version of the traditional volitional theory is proposed and defended); how actions are to be individuated; how long actions last; what acting intentionally is; (...) what doing one thing by doing another is; what basic action is; and what omitting to do something is. Attention is also given to the concepts of causation, intention, volition, deciding, choosing, and trying. Finally, a libertarian account of free action is tentatively proposed and defended. (shrink)

CAPPE LPO Box 8260 ANU Canberra ACT 2601 Australia Tel: +61 (0)2 6125 4355, Fax: +61 (0)2 6125 6579; Email: michael.selgelid{at}anu.edu.au ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract This article reviews ethically relevant history of tuberculosis and recent developments regarding extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). It argues that tuberculosis is one of the most important neglected topics in bioethics. With an emphasis on XDR-TB, it examines a range of the more challenging ethical issues associated with (...) tuberculosis: individual obligations to avoid infecting others, coercive social distancing measures, third-party notification, health workers' duty to treat contagious patients, and international justice. In each of these cases, key philosophical questions are highlighted and the need for empirical research/information is demonstrated. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reviews the dynamics behind, and ethical issues associated with, the phenomenon of drug resistance. Drug resistance is an important ethical issue partly because of the severe consequences likely to result from the increase in drug resistant pathogens if more is not done to control them. Drug resistance is also an ethical issue because, rather than being a mere quirk of nature, the problem is largely a product of drug distribution. Drug resistance results from the over‐consumption of antibiotics (...) by the wealthy; and it, ironically, results from the under‐consumption of antibiotics, usually by the poor or otherwise marginalized. In both kinds of cases the phenomenon of drug resistance illustrates why health (care) – at least in the context of infectious disease – should be treated as a (global) public good. The point is that drug resistance involves ‘externalities’ affecting third parties. When one patient develops a resistant strain of disease because of her over‐ or under‐consumption of medication, this more dangerous malady poses increased risk to others. The propriety of free‐market distribution of goods subject to externalities is famously dubious – given that the ‘efficiency’ rationale behind markets assumes an absence of externalities. Market failure in the context of drug resistance is partly revealed by the fact that no new classes of antibiotics have been developed since 1970. I conclude by arguing that the case of drug resistance reveals additional reasons – to those traditionally appealed to by bioethicists – for treating health care as something special when making policy decisions about its distribution. (shrink)

In everyday life it is common to judge people morally responsible for their actions, but there is a time-honored philosophical challenge to this practice with which we are all familiar. The challenge can be put briefly as follows: moral responsibility requires that agents have a certain kind of control that is compatible with neither causal determinism nor its contradictory, causal indeterminism; hence moral responsibility is impossible. Haji notes that judgments about moral responsibility- which I will call hypological judgments—are not the (...) only category of moral, or morally relevant, judgments. There are also deontic judgments, which have to do with moral obligation, right, and wrong; aretaic judgments, which have to do with moral virtue and vice; and axiological judgments, which have to do with intrinsic and extrinsic value. In principle, a challenge to all such judgments can be made that parallels the challenge to hypological judgments: that they presuppose a certain kind of control that is compatible with neither determinism nor indeterminism and are therefore to be rejected. It is a surprising fact that, whereas the challenge to hypological judgments has been the subject of intense debate for centuries, the analogous challenges to the other kinds of judgments have received comparatively little, if any, attention. In this book, Haji seeks to rectify this omission. He concerns himself primarily with the challenge to deontic judgments. During the course of his discussion he deals in depth with the original challenge to hypological judgments, devotes a chapter to the challenge to aretaic judgments, and makes certain remarks in passing about the challenge to axiological judgments. (shrink)

Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), Menzies Centre for Health Policy, The Australian National University, LPO Box 8260, ANU Canberra ACT 2601, Australia. Tel.: +61 (0)2 6125 4355; Mobile: +61 (0)431 124 286; Fax: +61 (0)2 6125 6579; Email: michael.selgelid{at}anu.edu.au ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Thomas Pogge has proposed a supplement to the standard patent regime whereby innovating companies would be rewarded in proportion to the extent to which their innovations lead (...) to reduction of the global burden of disease (GBD). This paper argues that an expansion of this proposal—whereby provision of already existing medicines are incentivised in a similar way—would provide a more comprehensive solution to the healthcare situation in developing countries. It then considers the practical challenges that the implementation of such a proposal (expanded or otherwise) would entail. Though these include difficulties associated with disease burden metric, I argue that the most serious difficulties are associated with the problem of causal attribution. A basic idea underlying Pogge's proposal is that the disease burden reduction attributable to particular interventions can be determined. Theoretically speaking, in cases involving multiple interacting causal factors, there may be no fact of the matter regarding the extent to which disease burden reduction should be attributed to one intervention as opposed to another; and (even if workable practical solutions to this theoretical challenge can be met) the data requirements for implementation would be daunting. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The book gives a diverse and even-handed treatment of the topic without attempting to resolve the matter.

Following Nancy Cartwright and others, I suggest that most theories incorporate, or depend on, one or more idealizing assumptions. I then argue that such theories ought to be regimented as counterfactuals, the antecedents of which are simplifying assumptions. If this account of the logical form of theories is granted, then a serious problem arises for Bayesians concerning the prior probabilities of theories that have counterfactual form. If no such probabilities can be assigned, then posterior probabilities will be undefined, as the (...) latter are defined in terms of the former. I argue here that the most plausible attempts to address the problem of probabilities of conditionals fail to help Bayesians, and, hence, that Bayesians are faced with a new problem. In so far as these proposed solutions fail, I argue that Bayesians must give up Bayesianism or accept the counterintuitive view that no theories that incorporate any idealizations have ever really been confirmed to any extent whatsoever. Moreover, as it appears that the latter horn of this dilemma is highly implausible, we are left with the conclusion that Bayesianism should be rejected, at least as it stands. (shrink)

Rousseau’s project in his Social Contract was to construct a conception of human subjectivity and political institutions that would transcend what he saw to be the limits of liberal political theory of his time. I take this as a starting point to put forward an interpretation of his theory of the general will as a kind of social cognition that is able to preserve individual autonomy and freedom alongside concerns with the collective welfare of the community. But whereas many have (...) seen Rousseau’s ideas as a prelude to communitarianism or authoritarianism, we should instead see his project as articulating an alternative model of moral-cognitivist reasoning. In order to provide a framework for this interpretation, I propose reading his conception of the general will through the theory of collective intentionality and social ontology. I end with a consideration of how this interpretation of the general will can provide a more satisfying understanding of political and practical rationality contemporary debates over republicanism and liberalism. (shrink)

When in 2006 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued revised recommendations for HIV testing in health care settings, vocal opponents charged that use of an ?opt-out? approach to presenting HIV testing to patients; the implementation of nontargeted, widespread HIV screening; the elimination of a separate signed consent; and the decoupling of required HIV prevention counseling from HIV testing are unethical. Here we undertake the first systematic ethical examination of the arguments both for and against the recommendations. Our examination (...) reveals that the ethical concerns raised by the critics predominately pertain not to ethically suspect elements of the recommendations themselves, but to suspicions that they will be implemented improperly. It has not been shown that the recommendations cannot be implemented properly. Here we show that in the United States the recommendations are morally justifiable and that safeguards or regulatory oversight may serve to ensure that the recommendations are properly implemented. (shrink)

I provide a critique of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition by calling into question the extent to which recognitive relations are immune to the effects of social and economic power and their ability to shape consciousness and moral cognition. I maintain that as a theory of socialization, Honneth’s theory is inadequate to deal with the strong structural-functional forces that hold administrative-capitalist societies together. This has the effect of constituting subjectivity in particular ways, and this problem of the constitution of the (...) personality and consciousness of individuals vitiates the descriptive and normative claims of the theory of recognition. I end by considering an alternative way to view recognition and its role in promoting a form of critical subjectivity. (shrink)