In this paper, I make a case for the view that we have special relationship duties (also known as “associative duties”) that are not identical to or derived from our non-associative impartial moral obligations. I call this view “moral partialism”. On the version of moral partialism I defend, only loving relationships can normatively ground special relationship duties. I propose that for two capable adults to have a loving relationship, they must have mutual non-trivial desires to promote each (...) other’s interests or flourishing and to respect each other’s core values. Along the way, I critically ascertain three alternative accounts of what normatively grounds special relationship duties and argue that my proposed view avoids the problems plaguing the alternatives. (shrink)

Does the failure of others to comply with collective duties create duties for us to step in and do their share? Defenders of the so-called duty to take up the slack answer this question in the positive. Against their view, defenders of fair shares argue that we only have a duty to contribute our fair share to discharging the collective duty. This paper offers a partial vindication of Liam Murphy’s account of fair shares. I argue that three (...) common objections to fair shares fail to rebut Murphy’s account. On the reading I propose, fair shares may ground as – or more – extensive duties towards third parties as the duty to take up the slack. In addition, fair shares provides something that defenses of slack-taking tend to omit – an account of the limits of our nonideal duties. The paper highlights previously overlooked aspects of Murphy’s account and paves the way for future discussions about slack-taking in the domain of global politics. (shrink)

In responce to criticisms of proposed regulation of surrogacy, it isargued that surrogate mothers and providers of fertility serviceshave duties which make the selling of claims to parenthood unethicaland which justify regulation of surrogacy arrangements.

This paper examines the ethical conundrum between a hospital's ethos of relieving distress, investigation and treatment, and its concurrent duties under English law to administer tests of decision-making capacity and safeguarding protection where it believes the patient may lack this capacity. Delirium, characterised by a precipitous decline in mental functioning exhibiting the shared symptomology of recoverable depressive disorders and terminal dementia, is not uncommon after emergency admission of elderly patients into acute medical hospital wards. The use of functional capacity (...) testing as a benchmark for decision-making capacity for post-discharge residence has been criticised as outdated, conceptually floored, subjective, lacking central guidance, transparent process, and accountability. A study of patient experience demonstrates the potential for hospital misuse of capacity testing, the failure of functional testing to differentiate decision making capacity from the disability of partial cognitive impairment, and how hospital capacity processes can interact and amplify patient pathology thereby decreasing recovery prospects. Prioritisation of mental capacity obligations above thorough investigation of emergent mental pathology and relief of patient anguish, results in extended detention in medical wards lacking bespoke facilities. Further understanding of patient experience is needed to inform policy with interventions tailored to avoid harm and increase wellbeing. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum has provided a sustained critique of Cicero’s De officiis (or On Duties), concerning what she claims is Cicero’s incoherent distinction between duties of justice, which are strict, cosmopolitan, and impartial, and duties of material aid, which are elastic, weighted towards those who are near and dear, and partial. No doubt, from Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan perspective, Cicero’s distinction between justice and beneficence seems problematic and lies at the root of modern moral failures to conceptualize adequately our (...) obligations in situations of famine and global inequality. And yet a careful reading of Cicero’s On Duties shows many duties that appear to be partial. It is hard to believe that Cicero’s discussion of these “partial duties” was a mere oversight or omission on his part. Rather, Cicero seemed to have no problem endorsing what I will call the “partial coherence” of duties in the work—namely, the claim that asserting that duties are exhaustively partial or impartial is a false dichotomy. With the help of conceptual analysis by Richard Kraut, my paper aims to establish and defend Cicero’s “partial coherence” against Nussbaum’s criticisms. (shrink)

Partiality is the special concern that we display for ourselves and other people with whom we stand in some special personal relationship. It is a central theme in moral philosophy, both ancient and modern. Questions about the justification of partiality arise in the context of enquiry into several moral topics, including the good life and the role in it of our personal commitments; the demands of impartial morality, equality, and other moral ideals; and commonsense ideas about supererogation. This paper provides (...) an overview of the debate on the ethics of partiality through the lens of the domains of permissible and required partiality. After outlining the conceptual space, I first discuss agent-centred moral options that concern permissions not to do what would be impartially optimal. I then focus on required partiality, which concerns associative duties that go beyond our general duties to others and require us to give special priority to people who are close to us. I discuss some notable features of associative duties and the two main objections that have been raised against them: the Voluntarist and the Distributive objections. I then turn to the justification of partiality, focusing on underivative approaches and reasons-based frameworks. I discuss the reductionism and non-reductionism debate: the question whether partiality is derivative or fundamental. I survey arguments for ‘the big three’, according to which partiality is justified by appeal to the special value of either projects, personal relationships, or individuals. I conclude by discussing four newly emerging areas in the debate: normative transitions of various personal relationships, relationships with AI, epistemic partiality, and negative partiality, which concerns the negative analogue of our positive personal relationships. (shrink)

Why, morally speaking, ought we do more for our family and friends than for strangers? In other words, what is the justification of special duties? According to partialists, the answer to this question cannot be reduced to impartial moral principles. According to impartialists, it can. This paper briefly argues in favour of impartialism, before drawing out an implication of the impartialist view: in addition to justifying some currently recognised special duties, impartialism also generates new special duties that (...) are not yet widely recognised. Specifically, in certain situations, impartial principles generate duties to take actions and adopt attitudes in our personal lives that increase the chance of new or different special relationships being formed—new or different friendships, family-like relationships, relationships akin to co-nationality, and so on. In fact, even if one thinks partialism is the best justification of the duties we have once in special relationships, impartialist justifications for taking steps to form such relationships should have some sway. Moreover, a little reflection shows that these duties are not as demanding or counterintuitive as one might expect. (shrink)

This paper evaluates an argument for immigration restrictions that appeals to the costs that immigration imposes on the citizens of a recipient state. According to this argument, citizens have associative duties to protect each other’s interests, immigration can damage these interests in certain cases, and the associative duties between compatriots justify immigration restrictions in these cases. Call this: the partiality argument for immigration restrictions. I argue that the partiality argument is unsound. Immigration restrictions violate negative duties to (...) refrain from interfering with people’s liberties and these duties silence compatriots’ associative duties to one another. Furthermore, I argue that compatriots lack associative duties to one another in virtue of the fact that the relationships between compatriots reliably cause injustice to outsiders. (shrink)

Ethical theories normally make room both for global duties to human beings everywhere and special duties to those we are attached to in some way. Such a split-level view requires us to specify the kind of attachment that can ground special duties, and to explain the comparative force of the two kinds of duties in cases of conflict. Special duties are generated within groups that are intrinsically valuable and not inherently unjust, where the duties (...) can be shown to be integral to relationships within the group. Since nations can be shown to meet these conditions, acknowledging special obligations towards compatriots is justified. However for such partiality to be reasonable, it must be balanced against recognition of duties of global justice. These duties include duties to respect human rights and duties of fairness towards non-nationals. Weighing such duties against domestic duties of social justice is not a simple task, and the outcome should depend on the precise specification of the duty at stake. In particular, the duty to respect human rights fragments into four sub-duties whose force when set against local duties is markedly different. (shrink)

Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers to them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This (...) paper considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics’ challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation. (shrink)

This article examines the conflict between people's associative duties and their wider obligations of global justice. After clarifying the nature of associative duties, it defends the view that such duties may be civic in nature: obtaining between citizens, not just friends and families. Samuel Scheffler's 'distributive objection' to civic associative duties is then presented in the context of global distributive injustice. Three solutions to the objection are considered. One is that the distributive objection is more a (...) philosophical puzzle than a practical problem because of the means by which global justice would be achieved. This is only partially correct. The second reply is that associative duties are additional to citizens' more cosmopolitan duties. This reply loses its purchase if global justice is conceived of in comparative terms. The third reply claims that associative duties are justified by genuine values and do not disappear even when over-ridden by more weighty moral concerns. While in practice, our duties to engineer global justice are likely to over-ride our associative duties in the near future, in ideal circumstances the two kinds of duties can co-exist. (shrink)

Epistemic partialism is the view that friends have a doxastic duty to overestimate each other. If one holds that there are no practical reasons for belief, we will argue, one has to deny the existence of any epistemic duties, and thus reject epistemic partialism. But if it is false that one has a doxastic duty to overestimate one’s friends, why does it so often seem true? We argue that there is a robust causal relationship between friendship and overestimation that (...) can be mistaken for a constitutive relationship; we also argue that one can still accept some of the normative intuitions that motivate epistemic partialism even if one rejects epistemic partialism itself. Along the way, we consider and reject a watered-down version of epistemic partialism—call it epistemic partialism-light—according to which one has a duty to take steps to create in oneself a disposition to overestimate one’s friends. (shrink)

The unique problem of lost territory poses one of the most important and complex challenges of compensating for loss and damage due to anthropogenic climate change. Anthropogenic climate change will cause a significant increase in the sea level for centuries to come. A rising sea level endangers many low‐lying coastal areas but also entire states. However, the inundation of an entire state will remain a rare event. Partial loss of territory will be far more pervasive. As measured by the (...) number of states, the area of land, and, in particular, the number of people affected, the phenomenon of partial territorial loss is much more significant. I address this from the perspective of compensatory justice. In particular, I offer (i) background on basic concepts, (ii) an overview and critique of existing accounts, and propose (iii) a novel interpretation of territory as well as (iv) a corresponding criterion of a duty to compensate before (v) I flesh out the overall theory, (vi) take into consideration implications and details of application, and (vii) respond to potential objections. (shrink)

In this article I criticize a theory of political obligation recently put forward by Christopher Wellman. Wellman's “samaritan theory” grounds both state legitimacy and political obligation in a natural duty to help people in need when this can be done at no unreasonable cost. I argue that this view is not able to account for some important features of the relation between state and citizens that Wellman himself seems to value. My conclusion is that the samaritan theory can only be (...) accepted if we are ready to give up either the traditional notion of political obligation as a prima facie duty valid for every citizen, or the current view of the relationships that should exist between states, citizens and foreigners (the view according to which states should have special concerns for their own citizens). (shrink)

This book explores the associative duties we owe to our children, parents, friends, colleagues, associates and compatriots and defends a novel account which justifies such duties through the realization of values that are produced in these various kinds of social relationships. Seglow engages with several key contemporary debates including parental rights over children’s education, the burdens of eldercare, permissible partiality to friends, and global justice versus compatriot duties.

Attention is given to a background idea that is often invoked in discussions about reasonable partiality: the idea of a moral division of labour. It is not only a right, but also a duty for professionals to attend (almost) exclusively to the interests of their own clients, because their partial activities are part of an impartial scheme providing for an allocation of professional help to all clients. To clarify that idea, a difference is made between two kinds of division (...) of labour, a technical one and a social one. In order to assess the applicability of the idea of a moral division of labour to professional ethics, journalism is contrasted with other professions. (shrink)

The moral issues about nationalism arise from the character of nationalism as a form of partiality. Nationalists care more about their own nation and its members than about other nations and their members; in that way nationalists are partial to their own national group. The question, then, is whether this national partiality is morally justified or, on the contrary, whether everyone ought to care impartially about all members of all nations. As Jeff McMahan emphasizes in [another chapter of the (...) book in which this essay appears], a philosophical examination of this question must consider the specific features of nationalism as one form of partiality among others. Some partiality--for example, toward one's spouse and children--seems morally acceptable and even a duty. According to commonsense moral thinking, one not only may but also should care more about one's family members than about strangers. But other instances of partiality, most notably racial partiality, are in most circumstances widely condemned. Is national partiality more like familial partiality or more like racial partiality? To answer this question, we must know what in general justifies attitudes of partiality. Caring more about certain people is appropriate when one stands in certain special relations to those people. But what are these relations, and to what degree do they hold among members of the same nation? Assuming they are present within families and not within races, to what degree are they present within nations? (shrink)

W. D. Ross’s ethical theory requires us somehow to compare the metaphorical “weights” of different prima facie duties, but it leaves mysterious how this might be done. The formulation of a procedure to achieve such a comparison would be desirable on practical, theoretical, and pedagogical grounds. I formulate a procedure that is congenial to Ross’s theory. Central to my procedure are instructions to characterize the weight of each prima facie duty with respect to (a) the general stringency of this (...) kind of duty, (b) the stringency of this particular duty relative to other duties of its own kind, and (c) the degree to which the duty specifically demands the particular action that it favors in a given case. The procedure leads to a determination of one’s actual, all-things-considered duty in some cases but not in all. (shrink)

W. D. Ross’s ethical theory requires us somehow to compare the metaphorical “weights” of different prima facie duties, but it leaves mysterious how this might be done. The formulation of a procedure to achieve such a comparison would be desirable on practical, theoretical, and pedagogical grounds. I formulate a procedure that is congenial to Ross’s theory. Central to my procedure are instructions to characterize the weight of each prima facie duty with respect to (a) the general stringency of this (...) kind of duty, (b) the stringency of this particular duty relative to other duties of its own kind, and (c) the degree to which the duty specifically demands the particular action that it favors in a given case. The procedure leads to a determination of one’s actual, all-things-considered duty in some cases but not in all. (shrink)

According to David Miller, duties of domestic national and global justice are of equal importance, given that nationhood is both intrinsically valuable and not inherently an unjust way of excluding outsiders. The consequence of this?split?level? view is that it may be reasonable to prioritize domestic justice in some cases, while letting demands of global justice take precedence in others, depending on a weighting model which seeks to account for the relative urgency of domestic and global claims and the extent (...) to which agents are more closely attached to compatriots than to outsiders. In this chapter, I argue against this weighting model on grounds of internal coherence with the theory set out in National responsibility and global justice. I first inquire into the conditions under which justice at home conflicts with justice in the world at large, according to Miller?s main principle of global justice? respect for basic human rights. I then show that on Miller?s own understanding of the various duties of global and domestic justice, cases of conflict rarely arise, and that when they do, there is a powerful argument for prioritizing global duties on grounds of urgency, which contradicts the reasoning of the weighting model. Finally, I address a problem arising from Miller?s basic assumption that under?fulfillment of basic human rights in poor countries only generates claims of global justice to which rich nations are under a duty to respond, following the acceptance of a scheme of remedial responsibilities to provide aid by each of these nations. The normative structure of the split?level view set out in NRGJ needs to be clarified with respect to the key question of whether nations can be held to be under a duty of justice to bring such a scheme into existence in the first place. (shrink)

We can often permissibly choose a worse self-interested option over a better altruistic alternative. For example, it is permissible to eat out rather than donate the money to feed five hungry children for a single meal. If we eat out, we do something permissibly partial toward ourselves. If we donate, we go beyond the call of moral duty and do something supererogatory. Such phenomena aren’t easy to explain, and they rule out otherwise promising moral theories. Incommensurability and Ruth Chang’s (...) notion of parity can explain certain small improvement puzzles, but they can’t explain permissible partiality and supererogation. On the other hand, Josh Gert’s distinction between justifying and requiring weight can explain all three phenomena: permissible partiality, supererogation, and the relevant small improvement puzzle. Indeed, this chapter provides a reason to endorse the justifying/requiring weight distinction by showing that it provides the only extant explanation of all three phenomena. (shrink)

Not all countries do their fair share in the effort of preventing dangerous climate change. This presents those who are willing to do their part with the question whether they should 'take up the slack' and try to compensate for the non-compliers' failure to reduce emissions. There is a pro tanto reason for doing so given the human rights violations associated with dangerous climate change. The article focuses on fending off two objections against a duty to take up the slack: (...) that it is unfair and ineffective. We grant that it is unfair if some have to step in for others but argue that this does not amount to a decisive objection under conditions of partial compliance. With regard to the charge of emission reductions being ineffective, we argue that the empirical case for this claim is missing and that even if it were not, there still remains the option of taking up the slack in other forms. (shrink)

Discussions of where the costs of climate change adaptation and mitigation should fall often focus on the 'polluter pays principle' or the 'ability to pay principle'. Simon Caney has recently defended a 'hybrid view', which includes versions of both of these principles. This article argues that Caney's view succeeds in overcoming several shortfalls of both principles, but is nevertheless subject to three important objections: first, it does not distinguish between those emissions which are hard to avoid and those which are (...) easy to avoid; second, its only partial reference to all-things-considered justice means it cannot provide a full account even of climate justice; and third, it assigns to the poor very limited duties to meet climate change costs, even where they have created those costs, which may incentivise them to increase emissions. An alternative pluralistic account which avoids these objections is presented. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Obligatory Ends Anti‐paternalism and the Duty of Beneficence Beneficence: The Finer Points The Question of Latitude Latitude and (Im)partiality Gratitude Sympathy Conclusion Bibliography.

Review: Toni Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism – Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of ‘Dislocated Communities’, Oxford, Oxford University Press 2008.

How is the validity of our consent, and others’ moral permission to act on our consent affected by coercion? Everyone agrees that in cases of two-party coercion—when X coerces Y to do something with or for X—the consent of the coerced is invalid, and the coercer is not permitted to act upon the consent they receive. But coercers and the recipients of consent are not always identical. Sometimes a victim, Y, agrees to do something to, with, or for Z because (...) they are being coerced by X. Recently, several philosophers have argued that consent under third-party coercion can be fully valid. We argue that this view has troubling implications. We develop a novel view of consent in third-party coercion cases, which we call the partial validity account. The core idea is that, under severe coercion, Y’s consent is at most partially valid—it reduces the strength of, but does not completely dissolve, Z’s consent-sensitive duties. We argue that the partial validity account gets the right results in important cases and explains the moral factors at play better than alternative accounts. (shrink)

John Rawls’s case for a duty of assistance is partially premised on the assumption that liberal societies have an interest in assisting burdened societies to become well-ordered: Not only are well-...

This dissertation contains a philosophical project and a psychological project. Together, they explore two central themes, and the relation between them: (1) doxastic control and the ethics of belief, and (2) the moral and epistemic import of close personal relationships. The philosophical project (Chapters 1 and 2) concerns a central puzzle in the ethics of belief: how can we make sense of apparent obligations to believe for moral or practical reasons, if we lack the ability to form beliefs in response (...) to such reasons? I draw on empirical work in emotion regulation to make progress on this problem of doxastic control. The psychological project (Chapters 3 and 4) concerns the role of relational closeness in moral judgment: though empirical moral psychology has traditionally focused on judgments about anonymous strangers, I contribute to a growing body of work showing how personal relationships can dramatically affect moral reasoning. Chapter 1, “Acceptance and the Ethics of Belief,” develops an empirically plausible and mechanistically detailed account of acceptance, the attitude classically characterized as “taking a proposition as a premise in practical reasoning and action.” I argue that acceptance centrally involves preventing a belief from playing its characteristic role in guiding cognition, reasoning, and action, that this centrally involves a “cognitive gating” operation, and that this view gains empirically plausibility by its analogy to well-studied strategies in emotion regulation. Ultimately, I defend acceptance as doxastic response modulation. I propose that this account holds promise for addressing puzzles in the ethics of belief—a domain plagued by the central theoretical challenge of our inability to believe for non-evidential reasons. Chapter 2, “Reframing Epistemic Partiality,” applies my account of acceptance to a specific debate in the ethics of belief: the epistemic partiality debate, which asks whether we sometimes ought to believe against the evidence regarding our friends. Though compelling, the partialist view has been plagued by serious objections. I argue that the debate has been focused on the wrong doxastic attitude: recasting our duties of friendship as duties of acceptance, rather than belief, satisfies the partialist intuitions, without falling prey to the varied objections against the view. Chapter 3, “What We Would (but Shouldn’t) Do for Those We Love” builds on prior work demonstrating that people say they are far more likely to report a distant other, compared to a close other, who commits a serious moral transgression. Across four studies, I demonstrate that people not only say they would protect close others more than distant others, but also that they say it is morally right to show such partiality towards close others. Furthermore, I show that people say that they would protect close others more than they think they should—suggesting that moral decisions involving those closest to us may be a context in which people are particularly likely to fail to do what they think is right. Chapter 4, “How Relationship Affects Adolescents’ Decisions to Report Moral Transgressions,” investigates how 6th-9th graders respond to the transgressions of close versus distant others. Given the social importance of peer relationships in adolescence, the role of relationship is central to understanding this stage of moral development. I show that adolescents—like adults—are more likely to report distant others who transgress than close others, and more likely to report serious moral transgressions than minor ones. (shrink)

This paper defends a new argument for enabling citizen participation in government: individuals must have genuine opportunities to try to change the law in order to be able to satisfy duties of conscience. Without such opportunities, citizens who regard systems of related laws as partially unjust face a moral dilemma. If they comply with these laws willingly without also trying to change them, they commit a pro tanto wrong by willingly participating in injustice . If they disobey, or if (...) they obey only to avoid sanction, they respond inadequately to the morally important purposes that the laws advance despite their injustice. Government should help citizens avoid this dilemma. This argument bolsters the non-instrumentalist view that responsiveness in the political process is desirable even if it does not promote just legislative outcomes. It also helps to explain what governments owe to citizens with minority political views. (shrink)

Certain relationships generate associative duties that exhibit robustness across change. It seems insufficient for friendship, for example, if I am only disposed to fulfil duties of friendship towards you as things stand here and now. However, robustness is not required across all variations. Were you to become monstrously cruel towards me, we might expect that my duties of friendship towards you would not be robust across that kind of change. The question then is this: is there any (...) principled way of distinguishing those variations across which robustness of the disposition to fulfil duties of friendship is required from those across which it is not? In this paper I propose a way of answering this question that invokes distinctions concerning how we value friends and friendships, and how persons and friendships possess value – distinctions that are central to the project of specifying not only the limits of robustness, but also the source of duties of friendship and associative duties more generally. (shrink)

Sabine Hohl and Dominic Roser argue that states that emit their fair share of greenhouse gases have a duty to step in for states that emit more than their fair share. In this comment I ask two questions: First, given that Hohl and Roser are right, how relevant is the duty to step in for the polluters in practice? Second, is there such a duty on more non-ideal approaches than the one taken by Hohl and Roser as well? I argue (...) that the duty to step in for the polluters is not very relevant (because of considerations of demandingness and fairness) and that on more extremely non-ideal approaches there may be only a limited duty to take up the slack, or no such duty at all (because the duty must be weighed against other duties, and because states are poorly motivated to act in conformity with it). (shrink)

Review: Toni Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism – Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of ‘Dislocated Communities’, Oxford, Oxford University Press 2008.

Review: Toni Erskine, Embedded Cosmopolitanism – Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of ‘Dislocated Communities’, Oxford, Oxford University Press 2008.

This paper focuses on the issue of justice as a challenge facing business and society. I advance a simple deductive argument based on two premises. The first emerges out of theories of justice and holds that fairness, as a foundational basis for justice, demands impartiality or the avoidance of bias. The second emerges out of fiduciary law and holds that the duty of loyalty owed by managers to serve the interests of investors is fundamentally partial or biased. The conclusion (...) is the troubling fact that the fiduciary duty of loyalty owed by managers to serve the interests of investors appears to be incompatible with the demands of justice. Having presented this, I describe the impartiality tools of Rawls’ veil of ignorance and Adam Smith’s impartial spectator and discuss how these might be applied in this context. I speculate that while Smith’s impartial spectator is absolutely incommensurable with managers’ fiduciary duty of loyalty, Rawls’ veil of ignorance might be used to imagine a synthesis between this duty of loyalty and the impartiality demands of justice – in theory at least. And finally, as a parting shot, I wonder whether the real “Leadership Challenge that Matters” isn’t the gap between theory and reality. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley’s early essay “My Station and Its Duties” might as well have been entitled “The Philosopher’s Station and Its Duties.” The philosopher takes a god’s-eye view of man as finally realizing himself only in the philosophical consciousness of the Whole. Thus it is the philosopher’s duty to remind man qua man of this Whole as the ultimate determinant of all Duty. But, said Bradley, some-where between this ultimate on the one hand and the very local thing (...) called the family on the other is a man’s profession. This too is an ethereal or spiritual ‘organism’ within the all-inclusive one, with internal requirements of its own more special sort. I focus on this partial thing, attributing more autonomy to it than Bradley’s totalitarian view would tolerate. And the profession I select for anxious consideration is the teacher’s. It is the teacher’s station and its duties that are here my ultimate concern. What these duties have become is a serious matter, owing especially to recent techno-logical developments and what this is doing to people and to the things they live with, in our time. But the panacea I am going to recommend in this connection is rather the opposite of the one suggested by the numerous thinkers who are worried about this. (shrink)

The article traces origins of the contradiction that calls into being the polemics on the moral status of duties to close persons. Special obligations are created by the unique life narrative of an actor that makes different recipients of her actions more or less distant. Those who are less distant are “close ones.” Those who are more distant are “strangers.” The basis of this distance can be different: individual sympathy, consanguinity, belonging to cultural, territorial and political communities. Special obligations (...) presuppose that the preferential treatment of “close ones” is not only permissible but obligatory. This feature of moral duties to close persons makes moral philosophers suspicious because they are prone to endow moral requirements with two interrelated properties: universality and the high level of generality. The main reason for this is that the typical moral duty is a duty of every human being to another human being without any further qualifications. Against the background of such duties, any preference to close persons looks like the breach of moral equality and manifestation of impermissible partiality. Though, common moral beliefs persistently include special obligations in the whole system of moral duty. R. Goodin thinks that they have a priority over positive general duties and yield to negative general duties. The empirical researches of moral evaluations which reviewed in this article in general confirm this conclusion. The ethical theory cannot ignore fundamental features of common moral beliefs. That is why it is doomed to look for ways of reconciling the moral equality and impartiality with the preferential treatment of close persons embedded into special obligations. (shrink)

Since the Supreme Court upheld the partial birth abortion ban in 2007, more U.S. abortion providers have begun performing intraamniotic digoxin injections prior to uterine dilation and evacuations. These injections can cause medical harm to abortion patients. Our objective is to perform an in-depth bioethical analysis of this procedure, which is performed mainly for the provider’s legal benefit despite potential medical consequences for the patient.

Precision livestock farming promises to allow modern, large-scale farms to replicate, at scale, caring farmers who know their animals. PLF refers to a suite of technologies, some only speculative. The goal is to use networked devices to continuously monitor individual animals on large farms, to compare this information to expected norms, and to use algorithms to manage individual animals automatically. Supporters say this could not only create an artificial version of the partially mythologized image of the good steward caring for (...) his or her animals, but to also improve on it. As one paper in favor of PLF has said, “We can not only replace the farmer’s ‘eyes and ears’ to each individual animal as in the past, but several other variables will soon be measurable in practice” Livestock production and society, Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen, pp 287–292, 2006). Yet these methods of monitoring and control raise a host of ethical issues, including alienation of laborers, further consolidation of farms, and further cover for meat consumption. In this paper, I will address these ethical issues, and suggest a different, under-examined concern: namely, that though PLF may indeed improve the lives of livestock, and the sustainability of livestock operations, it is possible that it will do so at the cost of a loss of identity and relationships for farmers, as well as for the animals in their charge. (shrink)

Two intuitions are important to commonsense morality: the claim that all persons have equal moral worth and the claim that persons have associative duties. These intuitions seem to contradict each other, and there has been extensive discussion concerning their reconciliation. The most widely held view claims that associative duties arise because relationships generate moral reasons to benefit our loved ones. However, such a view cannot account for the phenomenon that some acts are supererogatory when performed on behalf of (...) a stranger but obligatory when performed on behalf of a loved one. This paper offers a novel view of associative duties, according to which such duties arise because relationships serve as indirect intensifiers of moral reasons: they decrease the cost to the agent that certain acts imply, and this increases the relative weight of the reasons that speak in favour of the act in an all-things-considered judgement. This reconciles moral egalitarianism and associative duties in a promising way: the moral worth of a person always generates the same moral reasons, but due to differences in the cost to the agent, these reasons sometimes amount to obligations and sometimes do not. (shrink)

Although disproportionate housework and care responsibilities ascribed to mothers and wives have been found to greatly impact women’s self-employment, less is known about how family-level labor structures may shape daughters’ entrepreneurship. Family business scholarship has shed partial light on this question by showing that household hierarchies and gender norms impede daughters’ recognition and inheritance within family firms in the United States. Drawing on interviews with 32 women microenterprise owners in Zacatecas, Mexico, this article builds on previous research by suggesting (...) that gendered mechanisms and labor structures may in fact position daughters to inherit businesses or business-related resources such as skills, financial capital, and property from their parents. Daughters acquire these assets by virtue of contributing to their parents’ enterprises as part of their childhood chores and maintaining a continued attachment to these businesses into adulthood. Daughters’ job prospects aside from inheritance were found to further shape their perceptions of business succession and inform their decision about whether to take over the family enterprise. Such acquisitions can be said to comprise instances of “gendered inheritance,” in which gendered institutions largely understood as disadvantaging women also may position them to attain valuable assets. (shrink)

This article argues that congregations should be seen as grassroots public moral agents, on the ground working to bring what they discern as God's preferred future into being. Deliberations among congregations of all social backgrounds are a way of doing ethics "polycentrically," without a dominant center. Because cultural and social boundaries are permeable and people in various social groups can imaginatively enter the worlds of people unlike themselves, they can engage those perspectives morally on an equal footing. The essay addresses (...) ethicists' participation in congregations' moral deliberation and action, and concludes with a plea for theological ethicists to consider congregations in their work. (shrink)

I propose and defend a novel view called “de se consequentialism,” which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it demonstrates—contra Doug Portmore, Mark Schroeder, Campbell Brown, and Michael Smith, among others—that agent-neutral consequentialism is consistent with agent-centered constraints. Second, it clarifies the nature of agent-centered constraints, thereby meriting attention from even dedicated nonconsequentialists. Scrutiny reveals that moral theories in general, whether consequentialist or not, incorporate constraints by assessing states in a first-personal guise. Consequently, de se consequentialism enacts constraints through the (...) very same feature that nonconsequentialist theories do. (shrink)

I first argue that there is no problem about how to justify partialities (though there is a difficulty in justifying impartialities). Then I consider the role of consent in justifying rights and duties, using voluntary associations as a case in which consent has an important but limited role in doing so, a role determined and circumscribed by evaluative considerations. The values explain why consent can bind and bind one to act as one does not wish to do and even (...) as one judges to be ill advised. That opens the way to an explanation of how value considerations relate to non-voluntary membership in socially constituted groups, generating rights and duties that to a considerable extent are independent of the individual’s aims and preferences. -/- . (shrink)

We know that Homo sapiens will not exist forever. Given this, how should our species end? What are the reasons, if any, to delay our extinction? In this paper, I show that the pre-eminent reasons which favour prolonging the existence of the species are partial: they will arise from the particular attachments and projects of the final few generations. While there may also be impartial reasons to prolong the species, these reasons are liable, with time, to reverse their valence: (...) we can be reasonably confident that they will ultimately recommend hastening the demise of the species. Consequently, it is likely that our descendants will eventually face a difficult -- possibly tragic -- conflict, between partial duties that recommend living on, and an impartial duty to extinguish the species. (shrink)

David Miller offers us a sophisticated account of how we can reconcile global obligations and duties to co?nationals. In this article I focus on four weaknesses with his account such as the following two. First, there remains considerable unclarity about the strength of the positive duties we have to non?nationals and how these measure up relative to other positive duties, such as the ones Miller believes we have to co?nationals to implement civil, political, or social rights. Second, (...) just how responsibilities for enacting our global commitments will be assigned still needs further development. A unifying theme of my criticisms concerns Miller?s account of how we are to mediate responsibilities to fellow?nationals and the partiality we may defensibly show co?nationals. In the final section I sketch an alternative way of conceptualizing our duties to fellow?nationals and duties to non?nationals, which can give more systematic advice about the partiality we may defensibly show co?nationals. (shrink)

Distinguishing between reasonable partiality and reasonable impartiality makes a difference in resolving the serious clashes between priority for compatriots versus cosmopolitan global duties. Defenders of a priority for compatriots have to acknowledge two strong moral constraints: states have to fulfil all their special, domestic and trans-domestic duties, and associative duties are limited by distributive constraints resulting from the moral duty to fight poverty and gross global inequalities. In the recent global context, I see four main problems for (...) liberal-nationalist defenders of priority for compatriots: (i) Reasonable particularists often forget that associative duties for compatriots compete with many sub-national and trans-domestic associative duties. (ii) They tend to forget that associative national duties compete with other, strong special (contractual, reparative) obligations regarding not only citizens and residents inside nation-states but also trans-domestic obligations across state borders. (iii) They do not properly discuss the problem of unallocated duties in addressing global poverty and insecurity. (iv) The design of supra-national and global mediating institutions, and the crafting of policies to remedy the misallocation of duties and to coordinate the required state activities is an urgent task neglected by liberal nationalists. In the recent context, reasonable partialitys bias towards partiality is most unwelcome and morally dubious. Reasonable impartialitys bias towards cosmopolitanism helps to stimulate a drastic shift in obligations and stimulates productive trans-national institutional design. (shrink)