In Intricate Ethics, Kamm questions the moral importance of some non-consequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of ...

Anthropologists have provided rich field descriptions of the norms and conventions governing behavior and interactions in small-scale societies. Here, we add a further dimension to this work by presenting hypothetical moral dilemmas involving harm, to a small-scale, agrarian Mayan population, with the specific goal of exploring the hypothesis that certain moral principles apply universally. We presented Mayan participants with moral dilemmas translated into their native language, Tseltal. Paralleling several studies carried out with educated subjects living in large-scale, developed nations, (...) the Mayan participants judged harms caused as the means to a greater good as more forbidden than harms caused as a side-effect (i.e., side-effect bias). However, unlike these other populations living in large-scale societies, as well as a more educated and less rural Mayan comparison group, the target rural Mayan participants did not judge actions causing harm as worse than omissions (i.e., omission bias). A series of probes targeting the action-omission distinction suggest that the absence of an omission bias among the rural Mayan participants was not due to difficulties comprehending the dilemmas, using the judgment scale, or in attributing a greater causal role for actions over omissions. Thus, while the moral distinction between means and side-effect may be more universal, the moral distinction between actions and omission appears to be open to greater cross-cultural variation. We discuss these results in light of issues concerning the role of biological constraints and cultural variation in moral decision-making, as well as the limitations of such experimental, cross-cultural research. (shrink)

In Intricate Ethics, Kamm questions the moral importance of some non-consequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of other distinctions. The first section discusses nonconsequentialist ethical theory and the trolley problem; the second deals with the notions of moral status and rights; the third takes up the issues of responsibility and complicity and the possible moral significance of distance; and the fourth section analyzes the views of others in the non-consequentialist and consequentialist camps.

Anti-natalism is the view that it is (almost) always wrong to bring people (and perhaps all sentient beings) into existence. This view is most famously defended by David Benatar (1997, 2006). There are, however, other routes to an anti-natal conclusion. In this respect, Seana Shiffrin’s paper, “Wrongful Life, Procreative Responsibility, and the Significance of Harm” (1999), has been rather neglected in the natal debate. Though she appears unwilling to conclude that procreation is always wrong, I believe that she in (...) fact puts forth a case for anti-natalism no less compelling than Benatar’s. My overall aim here is to demonstrate the force of her argument by defending a Shiffrin-esque route to anti-natalism from a powerful objection. This objection appeals to the common belief that because most people endorse their creation, procreation often is all-things-considered permissible. I will show how this objection fails, and why Shiffrin’s rationale for anti-natalism, as I will be representing it, ought to be taken seriously. (shrink)

This thesis takes up a rights-based perspective to discuss a number of issues related to the problem of permissible harm. It appeals to a person’s capacity to shape her life in accordance with her own ideas of the good to explain why her death can be bad for her, and why each of us should have primary say over what may be done to her. The thesis begins with an investigation of the badness of death for the person (...) who dies. If death is bad for us, this helps explain the wrongness of killing. The thesis defends the deprivation account—i.e. the idea that death is bad for us when and because it deprives us of good life—against two Epicurean challenges. It adds that death is also bad when and because it thwarts our agency. Next, the thesis deals with the logic of our moral rights to non-interference. It proposes a conception of rights according to which the stringency of our rights derives from and is justified by the rational aspect of our human nature. It argues that this conception of moral rights solves the paradox of deontology. While our rights to non-interference are stringent, they are not absolute. The thesis considers two possible exceptions to the general rule that it is impermissible to harm an innocent person against her consent. First, using an actual case from WWII, it investigates the circumstances under which a government may expose some parts of its population to an increased risk of harm in order to decrease the risk to others. Second, it considers the permissibility of self-defence against an innocent threat. It argues that the potential victim of an innocent threat has a justice-based reason to treat her own interests as on a par with those of the threat. (shrink)

In Helen Frowe’s book, Defensive Killing, she argues that some cases of seemingly futile self-defense are actually instances of justifiable defense of the victim’s honor. This paper explores Frowe’s claim, first by isolating the central cases and then by examining her rejection of punitive reasons. From there, the paper examines Frowe’s understanding of “defense of honor,” ultimately suggesting that Frowe’s conception is best construed as action that has expressive, but not defensive, value. From there, I turn to two more general (...) puzzles. First, what if the defender mistakenly believes that she can successfully defend and acts for that reason, but the reason that actually supports her action is not one she is acting in light of? And, second, how ought we to understand the interests of an aggressor who has forfeited his rights? (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

This paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable (...) to defensive harm ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so. (shrink)

There is a moral phenomenon of “Secondary Permissibility” in which an otherwise morally impermissible option is made morally permissible by the presence of another option. In this paper I explain how this phenomenon works and argue that understanding how it works suggests a new model for the structure of the ethics of harming.

Philosophers have had trouble defending the common sense view that it is permissible to impose significant cost on an innocent person who is about to harm you to prevent the harm from occurring. In this paper, I argue that such harm can be justified if one pays attention to the moral significance of imposing a cost on others. The constraint against harming people who give rise to cost by their presence or movements is weaker than the (...) constraint against harming bystanders. Moreover, I argue that people who give rise to cost have a duty to take on some of that cost to help protect the person under threat. (shrink)

Nicholas Agar argues, that enhancement technologies could be used to create post-persons—beings of higher moral status than ordinary persons—and that it would be wrong to create such beings.1 I am sympathetic to the first claim. However, I wish to take issue with the second.Agar's second claim is grounded on the prediction that the creation of post-persons would, with at least moderate probability, harm those who remain mere persons. The harm that Agar has in mind here is a kind (...) of meta-harm: the harm of being made more susceptible to being permissibly harmed—more liable to harm. Agar suggests that, if post-persons existed, mere persons could frequently be permissibly sacrificed in order to provide benefits to the post-persons. For instance, perhaps they could be permissibly used in lethal medical experiments designed to develop medical treatments for post-persons. By contrast, he suggests that mere persons typically cannot be permissibly sacrificed to provide benefits to other mere persons. He thus claims that mere persons would be more liable to sacrifice if post-persons existed than they are in the absence of post-persons. The creation of post-persons would make them worse off in at least this one respect.Agar then argues that, since this meta-harm imposed on mere persons would not be compensated, it would be wrong to create post-persons. It is here that I believe his argument begins to go awry. According to the concept of compensation that Agar deploys , a harm imposed on X is compensated just in …. (shrink)

Many think that it would be wrong to defend an individual from attack if he competently and explicitly refuses defensive intervention. In this paper, I consider the extent to which the preferences of victims affect the permissibility of defending groups or aggregates. These cases are interesting and difficult because there is no straightforward sense in which a group can univocally consent to or refuse defensive intervention in the same way that an individual can. Among those who have considered this question, (...) the dominant view is that that consent imposes only an extremely weak constraint on defending groups. I argue that this is mistaken and defend a much more robust requirement. Indeed, on the account that I develop there are cases in which the refusal of a single member of a victim is enough to make it impermissible to defend a much larger group. At the heart of my account is the idea that consent functions as an internal component of the broader requirement that defensive harms be proportionate: if a victim validly refuses defensive intervention, the fact that defence will benefit him cannot be used to justify harming innocents as the lesser-evil. An important implication of this view is that what constitutes sufficient consent from the members of a victim group will vary on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

This paper discusses whether the collateral harm of imprisonment to the close family members and children of prison inmates may give rise to special moral obligations towards them. Several collateral harms, including decreased psychological wellbeing, financial costs, loss of economic opportunities, and intrusion and control over their private lives, are identified. Two competing perspectives in moral philosophy are then applied in order to assess whether the harms are permissible. The first is consequentialist and the second is deontological. It (...) is argued that both of them fails and therefore it is hard to defend the position that allowing for these harms would be morally permissible, even for the sake of the overall aims of incarceration. Instead, it is argued that these harms imply that imprisonment should only be used as a last resort. Where it is necessary, it should give rise to special moral obligations. Using the notion of residual obligation, these obligations are defended, categorized and clarified. (shrink)

The risks of harm to nonhuman primates, and the absence of benefits for them, are critically important to decisions about nonhuman primate research. Current guidelines for review and practice tend to be permissive for nonhuman primate research as long as minimal welfare requirements are fulfilled and human medical advances are anticipated. This situation is substantially different from human research, in which risks of harms to the individual subject are typically reduced to the extent feasible. A risk threshold is needed (...) for the justification of research on nonhuman primates, comparable to the way risk thresholds are set for vulnerable human subjects who cannot provide informed consent. Much of the laboratory research conducted today has inadequate standards, leading to common physical, psychological, and social harms. (shrink)

It is typically wrong to act in a way that foreseeably makes some impending harm worse. Sometimes it is permissible to do so, however, if one also offsets the harm increasing action by doing something that decreases the badness of the same harm by at least as much. This chapter argues that the standard deontological constraint against doing harm is not compatible with the permissibility of harm increases that have been offset. Offsetting neither prevents (...) one's other actions from doing harm nor ensures that the harm those actions do is made permissible by any of the constraint's familiar provisos. To make sense of offsetting, the old constraint against doing harm should be replaced with a new constraint against making unoffset harm increases. The chapter discusses how to formulate the new constraint so that it can handle both the offsetting cases that the old constraint gets wrong as as well as the non-offsetting cases that the old constraint gets right. Adopting this constraint against unoffset harm increases may have important implications both for theoretical questions about the sources of deontological constraints as well as for practical questions, such as whether buying carbon offsets can make emitting carbon dioxide permissible. (shrink)

Doctors hold coexisting ethical duties to avoid causing deliberate harm to their patients (non-maleficence), to act in patients’ best interests (beneficence), to respect patients’ right to self-determination (autonomy) and to ensure that costs and benefits are fairly distributed among patients (justice). In the context of non-directed altruistic kidney donations (NDAKD), doctors’ duties of autonomy and justice are in tension with those of non-maleficence and beneficence. This article examines these competing duties across three scenarios in which general practitioners (GPs) could (...) promote NDAKD to healthy adults. In the first—when a healthy adult patient prompts the GP to discuss NDAKD—the GP is ethically obligated to counsel the patient about NDAKD to respect their autonomy, yet this does not constitute any form of promotion of NDAKD. In the remaining scenarios, healthy adult patients are unaware of the possibility of NDAKD. In the second, it is ethically permissible for GPs to indirectly raise awareness of NDAKD among healthy adults by displaying recruitment campaign material to non-specified groups of patients in their waiting rooms. In the third, it is ethically impermissible for GPs to directly promote NDAKD to individual healthy adults by raising the possibility of NDAKD with such individuals. The major counterarguments raised against this position are problems with kinds of counselling that fail to reach expected professional standards, rather than problems with the ethical claims made in this article. (shrink)

Across a variety of situations, people strongly condemn plagiarizers who steal credit for ideas, even when the theft in question does not appear to harm anyone. Why would people react negatively to relatively harmless acts of plagiarism? In six experiments, we predict and find that these negative reactions are driven by people's aversion toward agents who attempt to falsely improve their reputations. In Studies 1–3, participants condemn plagiarism cases that they agree are harmless. This effect is mediated by the (...) extent to which participants perceive the plagiarizer to have falsely benefitted from plagiarizing. In Studies 4–5, we demonstrate that this effect is not explained solely by participants’ negative response to lies or violations of permission. In Study 6, participants condemn a plagiarism case in which the idea's original author actually benefits, providing the strongest evidence that people condemn plagiarism for reasons beyond perceived harm. We discuss how this work connects to broader questions of intellectual property and impression management. (shrink)

Activists and progressive governments sometimes interfere in the working conditions of sweatshops. Their methods may include boycotts of the products produced in these facilities, bans on the import of these products or tariffs imposed by the home country, and enforcing the host country’s laws that aim at regulating sweatshops. Some argue that such interference in sweatshop conditions is morally wrong since it may actually harm workers. The reason is that the enterprise that runs the sweatshop may choose to lay (...) off some workers as the result of effective interference in order to maintain their profit at the desired level. If successful, this argument would prohibit any interference in sweatshop conditions on moral grounds. In this article, I argue in dissent and build a contractualist argument in favor of the moral permissibility of interference in sweatshops. I base my argument on an ex ante interpretation of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism. (shrink)

Certain states in the Global North have responded to refugees seeking safety on their territories through harmful practices of border violence, detention, encampment and containment that serve to prevent and deter refugee arrivals. These practices are ostensibly justified through an appeal to a right to control borders. This paper therefore assesses whether these harmful practices can indeed be morally justified by a state’s right to control borders. It analyses whether Christopher Heath Wellman’s account of a state’s right to freedom of (...) association, which represents the most restrictive account of a state’s right to control borders available in the literature, can extend to justify current harmful practices against refugees. If not, then no available justification will be able to do so, and thus contemporary harmful practices used against refugees cannot be justified by a state’s right to control borders. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to the (infamous) causal impotence objection to the standard arguments for ethical vegetarianism. The paper defends a non-consequentialist response to this objection, one that draws on an account of the principle of non-maleficence inspired by Ross.

This paper outlines an account of the ethics of lying, which accommodates two main ideas about lying. The first of these, Anti-Deceptionalism, is the view that lying does not necessarily involve intentions to deceive. The second, Anti-Absolutism, is the view that lying is not always morally wrong. It is argued that lying is not wrong in itself, but rather the wrong in lying is explained by different factors in different cases. In some cases such factors may include deceptive intentions on (...) the part of the liar. In other cases, where such intentions are not found, the wrong in lying may be explained by other factors. Moreover, it is argued that the interaction between considerations against lying and considerations against telling the truth are sensitive to the practical interests of those lied to. When the topic of the lie in question matters little to the victim's rational decision making, the threshold for when considerations against telling the truth can outweigh considerations against lying are lowered. This account is seen to explain why lying to avoid little harm is sometimes permissible, and sometimes not. (shrink)

Theoretical defenses of the principle of double effect (pde) due to Quinn, Nagel and Foot are claimed to face severe difficulties. But this leaves those of us who see something in the case-based support for the pde without a way of accounting for our judgments. This article proposes a novel principle it calls the mismatch principle, and argues that the mismatch principle does better than the pde at accounting for our judgments about cases and is also theoretically defensible. However, where (...) the pde makes claims about the permissibility of actions, the mismatch principle makes claims only about the evaluation of agents; and where the pde explains the cases in terms of intending harm, the mismatch principle explains them in terms of a quite different feature of the agent's will. (shrink)

In _The Morality of Defensive Force_, Quong defends a powerful account of the grounds and conditions under which an agent may justifiably inflict serious harm on another person. In this paper, I examine Quong's account of the necessity constraint on permissible harming—the RESCUE account. I argue that RESCUE does not succeed. Section 2 describes RESCUE. Section 3 raises some worries about Quong's conceptual construal of the right to be rescued and its attendant duties. Section 4 argues that RESCUE (...) does not deliver the verdicts that Quong wants. In those sections, I assume that the attacker is culpable for the threat he poses. Section 5 considers cases where the attacker, though responsible for the wrongful threat he poses and therefore liable to defensive force, has an epistemic justification for acting as he does and thus is not morally culpable. In his discussion of necessity, Quong does not explicitly deal with such cases. I suggest that RESCUE does not operate in the same way when attackers are mistaken as when they are morally culpable. (shrink)

In Justice for People on the Move, Gillian Brock constructs an elaborate normative framework, based on human rights practice, to assess how states must treat international migrants in order to legitimate exclusionary claims to self-determination. In this discussion piece, I argue that this framework cannot always satisfactorily explain when and why it is impermissible for legitimate states to remove irregular migrants from their territory (i.e. deport them). I show that Brock’s intuitions about at least one of her own paradigm cases (...) – the removal of long-settled immigrants whose irregular immigration was tacitly approved at the time – are not accommodated by her own framework. However, Brock also acknowledges that deportation is often harmful to persons and that this is morally problematic. Although this concern with harm is not systematically elaborated in Brock’s discussion, I think it should be. I suggest that a purely harm-based framework is fully able to negotiate Brock’s moral worries about deportation and outline the cornerstones of such a framework, stressing that harm in deportation may count as permissible only if it satisfies the joint desiderata of necessity and proportionality. I conclude by giving a sense of how one of Brock’s paradigm cases – the tacit-approval case – could be assessed within this framework, arguing that such an analysis would likely bolster Brock’s intuitions about this case whilst satisfactorily explaining if and why exactly the deportation practice in question cannot permissibly be pursued by legitimate states. (shrink)

Recent research has relied on trolley-type sacrificial moral dilemmas to study utilitarian versus nonutili- tarian modes of moral decision-making. This research has generated important insights into people’s attitudes toward instrumental harm—that is, the sacrifice of an individual to save a greater number. But this approach also has serious limitations. Most notably, it ignores the positive, altruistic core of utilitarianism, which is characterized by impartial concern for the well-being of everyone, whether near or far. Here, we develop, refine, and validate (...) a new scale—the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale—to dissociate individual differences in the ‘negative’ (permissive attitude toward instrumental harm) and ‘positive’ (impartial concern for the greater good) dimensions of utilitarian thinking as manifested in the general population. We show that these are two independent dimensions of proto-utilitarian tendencies in the lay population, each exhibiting a distinct psychological profile. Empathic concern, identification with the whole of humanity, and concern for future generations were positively associated with impartial beneficence but negatively associated with instrumental harm; and although instrumental harm was associated with subclinical psychopathy, impartial beneficence was associated with higher religiosity. Importantly, although these two dimensions were independent in the lay population, they were closely associated in a sample of moral philosophers. Acknowledging this dissociation between the instrumental harm and impartial beneficence components of utilitarian thinking in ordinary people can clarify existing debates about the nature of moral psychology and its relation to moral philosophy as well as generate fruitful avenues for further research. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between two central topics in moral and political philosophy: the moral legitimacy of authority and the ethics of causing harm. Each of these has been extensively discussed in isolation, but relatively little work has considered the implications of certain views about authority for theories of permissible harming, and vice versa. As I aim to show, reflection on the relationship between these two topics reveals that certain common views about, respectively, the justification of (...) class='Hi'>harm and the moral limits of authority require revision. The paper proceeds as follows. Sections 1 and 2 clarify the question to be addressed and set out two main claims that I will defend. Sections 3-5 argue for the first claim. Sections 6-9 defend the second. Section 10 concludes. (shrink)

The Code of Federal Regulations permits harmful research on children who have not agreed to participate, but I will argue that it should be no more permissive of harmful research on such children than of harmful research on adults who have not agreed to participate. Of course, the Code permits harmful research on adults. Such research is not morally problematic, however, because adults must agree to participate. And, of course, the Code also permits beneficial research on children without needing their (...) explicit agreement. This sort of research is also not problematic, this time because paternalism towards children may be justifiable. The moral problem at the center of this paper arises from the combination of two potential properties of pediatric research, first that it might be harmful and second that its subjects might not agree to participate. In Section 2 of this article I explain how the Code permits harmful research on non-agreeing children. Section 3 contains my argument that we should no more permit harmful research on non-agreeing children than on non-agreeing adults. In Section 4, I argue that my thesis does not presuppose that pediatric assent has the same moral force that adult consent does. In Section 5, I argue that the distinction between non-voluntary and involuntary research is irrelevant to my thesis. In Section 6, I rebut an objection based on the power of parental permission. In Section 7 I suggest how the Code of Federal Regulations might be changed. (shrink)

Much philosophical attention has been paid to the question of whether, and why, one may divert a runaway trolley away from where it will kill five people to where it will kill one. But little attention has been paid to whether the reasons that ground a permission to divert thereby ground a duty to divert. This paper defends the Requirement Thesis, which holds that one is, ordinarily, required to act on lesser-evil justifications for harming for the sake of others. Cases (...) in which we have lesser-evil justifications of harming for the sake of others are rescue cases. Ordinarily, an agent is under a duty to rescue unless doing so imposes too great a cost on her, or violates someone else's rights. When neither of these defeating conditions obtain, one is required to rescue even if this involves causing harm to innocent people. (shrink)

The justification for harm reduction as an approach to drug use and addiction is seen by many to be consequentialist in form and it has been claimed that as a deontologist Kant would reject harm reduction. I argue this is wrong on both counts. A more nuanced understanding of harm reduction and Kant shows them compatible. Kant’s own remarks about intoxication reinforce this. Moreover, there is a Kantian argument that harm reduction is not only morally (...) class='Hi'>permissible but more consistent with the Kantian duty of respect for autonomy than mandatory abstinence approaches. (shrink)

According to International Humanitarian Law and many writing on just war theory, combatants who foresee that their actions will harm or kill innocent non-combatants are required to take some steps to reduce these merely foreseen harms. However, because often reducing merely foreseen harms place burdens on combatants – including risk to their lives – this requirement has been criticised for requiring too much of combatants. One reason why this might be the case is that combatants have duties to each (...) other and to their compatriots, such as duties to keep them safe, which are weighty enough to override their duties to foreign non-combatants. In this article, I argue that arguments against the requirement to limit merely foreseen harms which rely on combatants' associative duties fail to establish that it is permissible for combatants to prioritise their own safety over the reduction of merely foreseen harms. Although the argument based on associative duties might work in individual cases, factors peculiar to the situation of combatants mean that such justifications are not normally available to them. (shrink)

As reproductive genetic technologies advance, families have more options to choose what sort of child they want to have. Using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), for example, allows parents to evaluate several existing embryos before selecting which to implant via in vitro fertilization (IVF). One of the traits PGD can identify is genetic deafness, and hearing embryos are now preferentially selected around the globe using this method. Importantly, some Deaf families desire a deaf child, and PGD–IVF is also an option for (...) them. Selection for genetic deafness, however, encounters widespread disapproval in the hearing community, including mainstream philosophy and bioethics. In this paper I apply Elizabeth Barnes’ value-neutral model of disability as mere-difference to the case of selecting for deafness. I draw on evidence from Deaf Studies and Disability Studies to build an understanding of deafness, the Deaf community, and the circumstances relevant to reproductive choices that may obtain for some Deaf families. Selection for deafness, with deafness understood as mere-difference and valued for its cultural identity, need not necessitate impermissible moral harms. I thus advocate that it is sometimes morally permissible to select for deafness in one’s child. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that mere causal contribution to harm is morally significant on two counts: a) innocent aggressors have a duty to bear additional costs to help protect their potential victims, as compared to the duty innocent bystanders are expected to bear, and correspondingly; b) it is permissible to use more force against innocent aggressors, as used in self-defense and defense of others, than innocent bystanders. The paper has two parts. First I aim to demonstrate the (...) intuitive plausibility of this proposal and what I call “the asymmetrical fair share procedure.“ According to this procedure, innocent aggressors have a duty to take on a fair share of the harm if dividing it is possible, and a fair share of the risk of being harmed if redistribution of harm is impossible. In the second part, I develop a contractual account explaining why mere contribution is morally significant. (shrink)

This paper sketches elements of a theory of the ethics of autonomised harming: the phenomenon of delegating decisions about whether and whom to harm to artificial intelligence (AI) in self-driving cars and autonomous weapon systems. First, the paper elucidates the challenge of integrating non-human, artificial agents, which lack rights and duties, into our moral framework which relies on precisely these notions to determine the permissibility of harming. Second, the paper examines how potential differences between human agents and non-human, artificial (...) agents might bear on the permissibility of delegating life-and death decisions to AI systems. Third, and finally, the paper explores a series of resulting complexities. These include the challenge of weighing autonomous systems’ promise to reduce harm against the intrinsic value of rectificatory justice as well as the peculiar possibility that delegating harmful acts to AI might render ordinarily impermissible acts permissible. By illuminating what happens when we extend normative theory beyond its traditional boundaries, this discussion offers a starting point for assessing the moral permissibility of delegating consequential decisions to non-human, artificial agents. (shrink)

Mill’s harm principle is commonly supposed to rest on a distinction between self-regarding conduct, which is not liable to interference, and other-regarding conduct, which is. As critics have noted, this distinction is difficult to draw. Furthermore, some of Mill’s own applications of the principle, such as his forbidding of slavery contracts, do not appear to fit with it. This article proposes that the self-regarding/other-regarding distinction is not in fact fundamental to Mill’s harm principle. The sphere of protected liberty (...) includes not only self-regarding conduct, but also actions that affect only consenting others. On the other hand, the occasional permissibility of interfering with self-regarding conduct can plausibly be explained by reference to the agent’s consent. Thus, the more important distinction appears to be that between consensual and non-consensual harm, rather than that between the self-regarding and non-self-regarding action. That is, interference can be justified in order to prevent non-consensual harms, but not to prevent consensual harms. It is argued that the harm principle, thus reformulated, both captures Mill’s intentions and is a substantively plausible position. (shrink)

Consider three cases: -/- Turn: A trolley is about to kill five innocent strangers. You can turn the trolley onto me, saving the five and killing me. -/- Hurl: A trolley is about to kill five innocent strangers. You can hurl me at the trolley, saving the five and paralyzing me. -/- TurnHurl: A trolley is about to kill five innocent strangers. You can turn the trolley onto me, saving the five and killing me. You can instead hurl me at (...) the trolley, saving the five and paralyzing me. -/- Most find the following four claims intuitively plausible: -/- (1) It is permissible to turn the trolley onto me in Turn. (2) It is impermissible to hurl me at the trolley in Hurl. (3) It is impermissible to turn the trolley onto me in TurnHurl. (4) It is permissible to hurl me at the trolley in TurnHurl. -/- But how does turning go from permissible to impermissible, and hurling from impermissible to permissible, when both alternatives are available? I argue that such “secondary permissibility” claims are explained by contrastive consent. Even if I do not consent to being harmed, it is likely I’ll consent to being hurled at the trolley rather than being turned onto. (shrink)

In the article ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’ arguments are made in favour of the moral permissibility of intentionally killing newborn infants, under particular conditions. Here we argue that their arguments are based on an indefensible view of personhood, and we question the logic of harm and interest that informs their arguments. Furthermore, we argue that the conclusions here are so contrary to ordinary moral intuitions that the argument and conclusions based upon it—including those which defend more (...) mainstream methods of abortion—should be treated with immediate suspicion. (shrink)

Two new documents from the Committee on Bioethics of the American Academy of Pediatrics expand the terrain for parental decision making, suggesting that pediatricians may override only those parental requests that cross a harm threshold. These new documents introduce a broader set of considerations in favor of parental authority in pediatric care than previous AAP documents have embraced. While we find this to be a positive move, we argue that the 2016 AAP positions actually understate the importance of informed (...) and voluntary parental involvement in pediatric decision making. This article provides a more expansive account of the value of parental permission. In particular, we suggest that an expansive role for parental permission may reveal facts and values relevant to their child's treatment, encourage resistance to suboptimal default practices, improve adherence to treatment, nurture children's autonomy, and promote the interests of other family members. (shrink)

The non-identity problem concerns actions that affect who exists in the future. If such an action is performed, certain people will exist in the future who would not otherwise have existed: they are not identical to any of the people who would have existed if the action had not been performed. Some of these actions seem to be wrong, and they seem to be wrong in virtue of harming the very future individuals whose existence is dependent on their having been (...) performed. The problem arises when it is argued that the actions do not harm these people—because the actions do not make them worse off than they would otherwise be.1 Consider: Radioactive Waste Policy: We are trying to decide whether to adopt a permissive radioactive waste policy. This policy would be less inconvenient to us than our existing practices. If we enact the newly-proposed policy, then we will cause there to be radioactive pollution that will cause illness and suffering. However, the policy will have such significant effects on public policy and industry functioning, that different people will exist in the future depending on whether we enact the policy. Two things should be emphasized. First, the illness and suffering caused will be very serious: deformed babies, children with burns from acid rain, and adults dying young from cancer. Second, the policy will affect who will exist in the future because our present practices invade people’s everyday lives, for example by affecting recycling practices in the home; these practices will change if the policy is adopted. Furthermore, whether we adopt the policy will determine which plants are built where, what jobs are available, and what trucks are on the road. These effects will create small differences in everyone’s lives which ultimately affect who meets whom and who conceives with whom, or at least when people conceive. This affects who exists in the future. (shrink)

We frequently engage in activities that impose a risk of serious harm on innocent others in order to realise trivial benefits for ourselves or third parties. Many moral theories tie the evidence-relative permissibility of engaging in such activities to the size of the risk that an individual agent imposes. I argue that we should move away from such a reliance on quantified individual risks when conceptualising morally permissible risk imposition. Under most circumstances of interest, a conscientious reasoner will (...) identify a gap between the factors they deem potentially relevant to the riskiness of an agent’s behaviour, and the factors they are reasonably able to quantify. This then leads a conscientious reasoner to conclude that they cannot, in good faith, come up with a quantitative risk estimate that is genuinely tailored to the agent’s particular situation. Based on this, I argue that principles of morally permissible risk imposition fail to provide us with practical guidance if they ask us to take into account our agent-specific risks in a quantified manner. I also argue that principles of permissible risk imposition which appeal to quantified individual risks implausibly imply that it is frequently indeterminate whether engaging in some risky activity is morally permissible. For both of these reasons, I contend that principles of morally permissible risk imposition should make no reference to quantified individual risks. They should instead acknowledge that any quantitative estimates that an agent might usefully be able to consider will likely not be tailored to the agent’s idiosyncratic situation. (shrink)

Robots that incorporate the function of apologizing have emerged in recent years. This paper examines the moral permissibility of making robots apologize. First, I characterize the nature of apology based on analyses conducted in multiple scholarly domains. Next, I present a prima facie argument that robot apologies are not permissible because they may harm human societies by inducing the misattribution of responsibility. Subsequently, I respond to a possible response to the prima facie objection based on the interpretation that (...) attributing responsibility to a robot is analogous to having an attitude toward fiction. Then, I demonstrate that there are cases of robot apologies where the prima facie objection does not apply, by considering the following two points: (1) apology-related practices found in our human-to-human apologies, and (2) a difference in the degree of harm caused by robot failures and the resulting apologies. Finally, given the current norms governing our apology-related practices, I argue that some instances of making robots apologize are permissible, and I propose conducting critical robotics research questioning the validity of such norms. (shrink)

Distance and morality. I argue that in "Faminine Ethics: the Problem of Distance in Morality and Singer's Ethical Theory" Frances Kamm fails to produce a pair of cases in which a moral difference is present that is not attributable to factors other than distance. I also point out that Kamm's attempts at explaining why distance could possibly matter in morality fall far short. I conclude that there is no reason for us to believe that distance matters in morality and offer (...) an explanation for why it might nevertheless appear to us that it does---there are numerous factors, normally correlated with distance, that are of great moral significance. In the process I offer a few methodological remarks. ;The problem of numbers. I argue that John Taurek's conclusion in "Should the Numbers Count?" remains a viable alternative to the standard view of the role of numbers in morality. I claim that Taurek brings up valid concerns regarding the standard view, and that the objections that have so far been raised against Taurek's position are by far insufficient to remove it from contention. I then point out and try to address several problems, including the problem of very large numbers, which should be a concern to anyone who is sympathetic to Taurek's views. I do not claim to have the answers, but I suggest a direction in which one may look for a solution. ;The return of the trolley. I examine several purported solutions to the Trolley Problem and find them all severely deficient. In light of the systematic failure of efforts to solve the Trolley Problem, I suggest that perhaps no solution has been found because there is no solution to find. I proceed to give a positive argument for the claim that diverting the trolley is not morally permissible and try to give an explanation of how the intuitions of the majority could have been so deeply mistaken. Since my proposed "solution" relies heavily on the making/allowing distinction, I conclude with a discussion of that distinction and a defense of its moral significance. (shrink)

This paper discusses Nicholas Agar's argument in Humanity's End, that it can be morally permissible for human beings to prevent the coming into existence of morally enhanced people because this can harm the interests of the unenhanced humans. It contends that Agar's argument fails because it overlooks the distinction between morally permissible and morally impermissible harm. It is only if the harm to them would be of the morally impermissible kind that humans are provided with (...) a reason to prevent the coming into existence of enhanced people. But if their enhancement includes moral enhancement, it is unlikely that the enhanced people will cause morally impermissible harm. (shrink)

“The Trolley Problem” is the name Judith Jarvis Thomson has given to a difficult problem in moral philosophy and legal theory. The problem arises by considering a series of cases, all of which involve a choice of evils. Many, but not all of these cases, involve an out-of-control trolley about to run over a group of five people. In each case we are asked for our intuitive judgment as to whether it would be permissible to save the five people (...) at risk when doing so would require the death of, or the imposition of a high risk of death on, another human being. (shrink)

Failures are sometimes, but not always, causally relevant to events. For instance, the failure of the sprinkler was causally relevant to the house fire. However, the failure of the dam upstream to break (thus inundating the house with water) was not. Similarly, failures to prevent harms are sometimes, but not always, morally wrong. For instance, failing to save a nearby drowning child is morally wrong. Yet, you are also in some sense “allowing” someone on another continent to drown right now, (...) and this seems permissible. Here, I argue that these two issues are connected. Roughly, I argue that it is prima facie morally wrong to fail to prevent a particular harm if and only if one’s omission is causally relevant to that harm’s occurrence. The result is that, contrary to what Peter Singer claims, failing to donate to famine relief is not morally equivalent to failing to rescue a drowning child in a shallow pond. (shrink)