In contemporary debates about the nature of bioethics there is a widespread view that bioethical decision making should involve certain knowledge of and respect for cultural diversity of persons to be affected. The aim of this article is to show that this view is untenable and misleading. It is argued that introducing the idea of respect for cultural diversity into bioethics encounters a series of conceptual and empirical constraints. While acknowledging that cultural diversity is something that decision makers in bioethical (...) contexts should try to understand and, when possible, respect, it is argued that this cultural turn ignores the typically normative role of bioethics and thus threatens to undermine its very foundations. (shrink)

This article discusses the view that bioethics should become ‘‘culturally sensitive’’ and give more weight to various cultural traditions and their respective moral beliefs. It is argued that this view is implausible for the following three reasons: it renders the disciplinary boundaries of bioethics too flexible and inconsistent with metaphysical commitments of Western biomedical sciences, it is normatively useless because it approaches cultural phenomena in a predominantly descriptive and selective way, and it tends to justify certain types of discrimination.

Sex reassignment surgery is a therapy for gender dysphoria standardly provided only upon a psychiatric authorization. Transgender scholars criticize this practice as unjustified medicalization and stigmatization of transsexual people. By demanding that sex reassignment surgery is not classified as therapy, they imply it should be classified as some kind of a biomedical enhancement. It is argued in this article that this reclassification is empirically and morally implausible because sex reassignment surgery is incompatible with two major views of enhancement. It is (...) incompatible with the nontherapeutic view because it does not improve or augment, above average, any physical or mental trait or function. It is incompatible with the welfarist view because this view, contrary to the transgender scholars’s demands, is compelled to retain the standard practice of providing sex reassignment surgery in order to ensure the optimal balance between its availability, beneficence, and possible harmfulness. (shrink)

Integrative bioethics is a brand of bioethics conceived and propagated by a group of Croatian philosophers and other scholars. This article discusses and shows that the approach encounters several serious difficulties. In criticizing certain standard views on bioethics and in presenting their own, the advocates of integrative bioethics fall into various conceptual confusions and inconsistencies. Although presented as a project that promises to deal with moral dilemmas created by modern science and technology, integrative bioethics does not contain the slightest normativity (...) or action-guiding capacity. Portrayed as a scientific and interdisciplinary enterprise, integrative bioethics displays a large number of pseudoscientific features that throw into doubt its overall credibility. (shrink)

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are expected to improve road traffic safety and save human lives. It is also expected that some AVs will encounter so-called dilemmatic situations, like choosing between saving two passengers by sacrificing one pedestrian or choosing between saving three pedestrians by sacrificing one passenger. These expectations fuel the extensive debate over the ethics settings of AVs: the way AVs should be programmed to act in dilemmatic situations and who should decide about the nature of this programming in the (...) first place. In the article, the ethics settings problem is analyzed as a trilemma between AVs with personal ethics setting (PES), AVs with mandatory ethics setting (MES) and AVs with no ethics settings (NES). It is argued that both PES and MES, by being programmed to choose one human life over the other, are bound to cause serious moral damage resulting from the violation of several principles central to deontology and utilitarianism. NES is defended as the only plausible solution to this trilemma, that is, as the solution that sufficiently minimizes the number of traffic fatalities without causing any comparable moral damage. (shrink)

This article argues that various deviations from the basic principles of the scientific ethos – primarily the appearance of pseudoscience in scientific communities – can be formulated and explained using specific models of game theory, such as the prisoner’s dilemma and the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. The article indirectly tackles the deontology of scientific work as well, in which it is assumed that there is no room for moral skepticism, let alone moral anti-realism, in the ethics of scientific communities. Namely, on (...) the basis of the generally accepted dictum of scientific endeavor as the pursuit of knowledge exclusively for knowledge’s sake, scientifically »right« behavior is seen to be clearly defined and distinguishable from scientifically »wrong« behavior. After elucidating the basic principles of game theory, the article illustrates – by using imaginary and real cases, as well as some views from the philosophyof biology (the units of selection debate) – how this sort of reasoning could be applied in an analysis of the functioning of science. (shrink)

Hugh LaFollette has proposed that in order to prevent statistically expected harm that many parents inflict on their children prospective parents should be licensed. This article evaluates his proposal by looking at various facts, statistical data and probability estimates related to sex differences in human mating and parenting behaviour provided by evolutionary psychology. It is suggested that these evolutionary considerations create a serious stalemate between certain basic moral principles to which LaFollette subscribes, thus rendering the entire proposal morally impracticable. It (...) is also argued along similar lines that parental licensing would endanger some of the most personal and intimate human relationships that, in LaFollette’s view, are essential for developing one’s capacity for impartial morality. (shrink)

Doctoral dissertations in philosophy in Croatia (1880-1989).

Review of Igor Kardum's book Evolucija i ljudsko ponašanje (Evolution and Human Behavior).

According to the ‘mating intelligence’ theory by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, human morality is a system of sexually selected traits which serve as costly signals to the other sex about one’s fitness and readiness to take care for possible offspring. Starting from the standard prediction of evolutionary psychology that sexual selection produces psychological sex differences in human mating strategies, ‘mating intelligence’ theory is analyzed for its compatibility with several psychological theories about sex differences in moral traits like moral reasoning, judgment (...) and orientation. It is argued that the ‘mating intelligence’ theory, as a theory about the the evolution of morality, comes too dangerously close to being unfalsifiable because it embodies some auxiliary hypotheses and vague definitions which make it practically immune to every possible empirical finding concerning sex differences in human moral traits. (shrink)

According to the ‘mating intelligence’ theory by evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller, human morality is a system of sexually selected traits which serve as costly signals to the other sex about one’s fitness and readiness to take care for possible offspring. Starting from the standard prediction of evolutionary psychology that sexual selection produces psychological sex differences in human mating strategies, ‘mating intelligence’ theory is analyzed for its compatibility with several psychological theories about sex differences in moral traits like moral reasoning, judgment (...) and orientation. It is argued that the ‘mating intelligence’ theory, as a theory about the the evolution of morality, comes too dangerously close to being unfalsifiable because it embodies some auxiliary hypotheses and vague definitions which make it practically immune to every possible empirical finding concerning sex differences in human moral traits. (shrink)

U članku se argumentira da se suvremena evolucijska etika, u mjeri u kojoj preuzima sociobiološke strategije naturaliziranja ljudskog morala, suočava s nekim ozbiljnim konceptualnim i eksplanatornim poteškoćama. Konceptualna se poteškoća sastoji u uvidu da “moral” nije isto što i “altruizam”, već obuhvaća više specifičnih elemenata uslijed kojih ga se smatra upravo moralom, a ne evolucijskim ili psihološkim altruizmom. Eksplanatorna se poteškoća sastoji u uvidu da korektno konceptualizirani fenomen morala nije moguće uklopiti u standardna sociobiološka objašnjenja bez ugrožavanja nekih osnovnih pretpostavki (...) tih objašnjenja, prije svega pretpostavke“genskog selekcionizma” i pretpostavke “evolucijski stabilnih strategija” . Osnovni argument glasi da ne možemo zadržati i korektan pojam ljudskog morala i ključne pretpostavke sociobioloških objašnjenja.In the article it is argued that contemporary evolutionary ethics – to the extent it accepts sociobiological strategies of naturalizing human morality – faces some serious conceptual and explanatory difficulties. Conceptual difficulty consists in recognizing that “morality” is not the same as “altruism”, but rather comprises several specific elements which distinguish it from both evolutionary and psychological altruism. Explanatory difficulty consists in recognizing that the phenomenon of morality appropriately conceptualized cannot be incorporated into standard sociobiological explanations without endangering some basic assumptions of those explanations, primarily the assumption of “gene selectionism”, as well as the assumption of “evolutionarily stable strategies” . The basic argument is that one cannot retain both the appropriate concept of human morality and key assumptions of sociobiological explanations. (shrink)

In the article it is argued that contemporary evolutionary ethics – to the extent it accepts sociobiological strategies of naturalizing human morality – faces some serious conceptual and explanatory difficulties. Conceptual difficulty consists in recognizing that “morality” is not the same as “altruism”, but rather comprises several specific elements which distinguish it from both evolutionary and psychological altruism. Explanatory difficulty consists in recognizing that the phenomenon of morality appropriately conceptualized cannot be incorporated into standard sociobiological explanations without endangering some basic (...) assumptions of those explanations, primarily the assumption of “gene selectionism”, as well as the assumption of “evolutionarily stable strategies”. The basic argument is that one cannot retain both the appropriate concept of human morality and key assumptions of sociobiological explanations. (shrink)

This article argues that various deviations from the basic principles of the scientific ethos – primarily the appearance of pseudoscience in scientific communities – can be formulated and explained using specific modelsof game theory, such as the prisoner’s dilemma and the iterated prisoner’s dilemma. The article indirectly tackles the deontology of scientific work as well, in which it is assumed that there is no room for moral skepticism, let alone moral anti-realism, in the ethics of scientific communities. Namely, on the (...) basis of the generally accepted dictum of scientific endeavor as the pursuit of knowledge exclusively for knowledge’s sake, scientifically »right« behavior is seen to be clearly defined and distinguishable from scientifically »wrong« behavior. After elucidating the basic principles of game theory, the article illustrates – by using imaginary and real cases, as well as some views from the philosophyof biology – how this sort of reasoning could be applied in an analysis of the functioning of science.U članku se tvrdi da se različite devijacije od osnovnih načela etosa znanosti – prije svega pojava pseudoznanosti u znanstvenim zajednicama – mogu formulirati i objasniti pomoću specifičnih modela teorije igara kao što su zatvorenikova dilema i ponovljena zatvorenikova dilema. Članak se, prema tome, neizravno bavi i deontologijom znanstvenoga rada, pri čemu je ključna pretpostavka da u etici znanstvenih zajednica nema mjesta moralnom skepticizmu, a kamoli moralnom antirealizmu: naime, znanstveno »ispravno« ponašanje smatra se jasno definiranim i razlučivim od znanstveno »pogrešnog« ponašanja na osnovi općeprihvaćene maksime znanstvenoga rada kao potrage za znanjem isključivo radi znanja. Nakon izlaganja osnovnih načela teorije igara, pokazuje se – koristeći se imaginarnim i zbiljskim slučajevima, kao i nekim stavovima iz filozofije biologije – kako bi se ovu vrstu razmišljanja moglo primijeniti u analizi funkcioniranja znanosti. (shrink)

A critical review of Frans de Waal's book on evolution of morality (Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).