Information about the environment is captured in human biological systems on a variety of interacting levels – in distributions of genes, linguistic particulars, concepts, methods, theories, preferences, and overt behaviors. I investigate some of the basic principles which govern such a hierarchy by constructing a comparatively simple three-level selection model of bee foraging preferences and behaviors. The information-theoretic notion of ''''mutual information'''' is employed as a measure of efficiency in tracking a changing environment, and its appropriateness in epistemological applications is (...) discussed at some length. In particular, information accumulated in mid-level preference distributions exhibits suggestive properties for the purposes of naturalistic epistemology. It also appears that the novelty of scientific objects and representations and the rapidity of scientific change relative to genetic change need present no obstacle to the use of such models in explanations of scientific progress and the reliability of scientific judgement. (shrink)

The article defends the no-harm principle as an intuitively plausible and a common-sense way to justify individual emitters’ duties to take more radical steps in the fight against climate change. The appearance of climate change as requiring large-scale collective action should not lead us astray with respect to the fundamental moral nature of the problem: individual emitters who knowingly sustain and foster the carbon intensive ways of acting also bear personal moral responsibility for the foreseeable climate-related harm (...) and acquire in line with the no-harm principle a direct personal duty to contribute to the efforts of preventing the harm. The article examines more closely the so-called collectivistic approach, according to which emitters’ responsibilities are primarily collective, and argues that without individualistic grounds of emitters’ personal moral responsibility for the harm the collectivistic approach fails to provide unstructured emitters with sufficient reason to act together and fulfil their correlative duty of effective harm prevention. The article argues that since an emitter's personal moral responsibility warrants others to expect her personal engagement in the efforts of effective harm prevention and can justify blame if she fails, identifications of personal responsibility may also significantly increase unstructured emitters’ collective capability of remedying the climate crisis. (shrink)

This article provides theoretical foundations to the widespread intuition that an individual duty to reduce one's carbon emissions should not be overly demanding, and should leave some space to personal life-projects. It does so by looking into the moral structure of aggregative problems such as climate change, and argues that contributing to climate change is less wrong than causing the same amount of harm in paradigm cases of harm-doing. It follows that strong agent-relative reasons, such as consideration of (...) the agent's most important life-projects, are likely sometimes to outweigh the reasons for refraining from contributing to climate change, especially when there is no alternative course of action. This, however, does not mean that individual carbon-emitters are off the hook, since a lot can be done to reduce carbon emissions without jeopardising one's most important life-projects. (shrink)

When translated into concrete policy, any allocation of emissions leads to the attribution of emissions rights based on distributive justice. Consequently, the distributive justice approach legitimizes the corresponding amount of emissions. If a certain level of emissions can receive emissions rights, provided they are compatible with a certain emissions budget, to allocate emissions rights when the dangerous concentration level has been overshot could understate the need to preserve the functioning of a “balanced” climate system. From the perspective of Foucault’s archaeology (...) of knowledge, and with the purpose of assessing the epistemology of climate justice, it will be possible to question the possible importation of the mode of production of norms of social law into climate mitigation justice. Additionally, it will be questioned whether the amount of anthropogenic emissions rights can be provided by “the laws of nature” and whether and how the no‑harm principle can contribute to the epistemological relevance of the narrative of climate justice. (shrink)

This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral judgments in bioethics? Is the sacred law, the Shari'a, which is regarded as an integral part of Islamic ethics, the only recognized source of ethical judgments in Islam? What is the role of human experience/intuitive reasoning in moral justification? This chapter explores these questions and their answers.

From over 2000 years ago the ideal expressed in the Hippocratic Oath has encouraged doctors never knowingly to do harm: primum non nocere. Over 25 years ago the management writer Peter Drucker proposed it as the basis of a management ethic, ‘the right rule for the ethics managers need, the ethics of responsibility’.1 He argued then that the rule had wide scope encompassing for instance executive compensation, management rhetoric and the management of business impacts. In 2000 the United Nations (...) Global Compact embodied a Principle 7 enjoining ‘a precautionary approach to environmental challenges’ as defined in Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration. But what can such precautionary injunctions mean in practice? And what of conflicts with other values? Robin Attfield lays out the key questions he argues need to be asked about the Precautionary Principle if it is to be taken seriously and acted upon soundly. His focus is on the management of vulnerable resources — specifically planetary ecosystems — with whose management knowingly or otherwise we are all concerned. (shrink)

According to the Harm Principle, roughly, the state may coerce a person only if it can thereby prevent harm to others. Clearly, this principle depends crucially on what we understand by harm. Thus, if any sort of negative effect on a person may count as a harm, the Harm Principle will fail to sufficiently protect individual liberty. Therefore, a more subtle concept of harm is needed. I consider various possible conceptions and (...) argue that none gives rise to a plausible version of the Harm Principle. Whether we focus on welfare, quantities of welfare or qualities of welfare, we do not arrive at a plausible version of this principle. Instead, the concept of harm may be moralized. I consider various ways this may be done as well as possible rationales for the resulting versions of the Harm Principle. Again, no plausible version of the principle turns up. I also consider the prospect of including the Harm Principle in a decision-procedure rather than in a criterion of rightness. Finally, in light of my negative appraisal, I briefly discuss why this principle has seemed so appealing to liberals. (shrink)

This article demonstrates a priori cosmopolitan values of restraint and harm limitation exist to establish a cosmopolitan “no-harm” duty in warfare, predating utilitarianism and permeating modern international humanitarian law. In doing so, the author exposes the atemporal and ahistorical nature of utilitarianism which introduces chaos and brutality into the international legal system. Part 2 conceptualises the duty as derived from the “no-harm” principle under international environmental law. Part 3 frames the discussion within legal pluralism and cosmopolitan (...) ethics, arguing that divergent legal jurisdictions without an international authority necessitates a “public international sphere” to mediate differences leading to strong value-commitment norm-creation. One such norm is the “no-harm” duty in warfare. Part 4 traces the duty to the Stoics, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, African traditional culture, Hinduism, and Confucianism. Parts 5 and 6 explain how the duty manifests in principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law. (shrink)

Effective infectious disease control may require states to restrict the liberty of individuals. Since preventing harm to others is almost universally accepted as a legitimate (prima facie) reason for restricting the liberty of individuals, it seems plausible to employ a mid‐level harm principle in infectious disease control. Moral practices like infectious disease control support – or even require – a certain level of theory‐modesty. However, employing a mid‐level harm principle in infectious disease control faces at (...) least three problems. First, it is unclear what we gain by attaining convergence on a specific formulation of the harm principle. Likely candidates for convergence, a harm principle aimed at preventing harmful conduct, supplemented by considerations of effectiveness and always choosing the least intrusive means still leave ample room for normative disagreement. Second, while mid‐level principles are sometimes put forward in response to the problem of normative theories attaching different weight to moral principles, employing a mid‐level harm principle completely leaves open how to determine what weight to attach to it in application. Third, there appears to be a trade‐off between attaining convergence and finding a formulation of the harm principle that can justify liberty‐restrictions in all situations of contagion, including interventions that are commonly allowed. These are not reasons to abandon mid‐level theorizing altogether. But there is no reason to be too theory‐modest in applied ethics. Morally justifying e.g. if a liberty‐restriction in infectious disease control is proportional to the aim of harm‐prevention, promptly requires moving beyond the mid‐level harm principle. (shrink)

Much time has been spent arguing about the soundness of But in the philosophical literature there is no single such principle; there are many harm principles. And many objections pressed against are objections to only some of these principles. The first half of this paper draws a number of distinctions between harm principles. It then argues that each harm principle is compatible with many other principles that impose limits on the law, including but not limited (...) to other harm principles. The second half of the paper applies the lessons of the first to a number of prominent objections to That principle has been accused of a) being underinclusive; b) misrepresenting the reasons why many act-types ought to be legally proscribed; c) permitting lawmakers to treat people as mere means of achieving their ends; and d) being overinclusive. The paper argues that one harm principle survives all four objections. (shrink)

This article advocates employing John Stuart Mill's harm principle to set the boundary for unregulated free speech, and his Greatest Happiness Principle to regulate speech outside that boundary because it threatens unconsented-to harm. Supplementing the harm principle with an offense principle is unnecessary and undesirable if our conception of harm integrates recent empirical evidence unavailable to Mill. For example, current research uncovers the tangible harms individuals suffer directly from bigoted speech, as well (...) as the indirect harms generated by the systemic oppression and epistemic injustice that bigoted speech constructs and reinforces. Using Mill's ethical framework with an updated notion of harm, we can conclude that social coercion is not justified to restrict any harmless speech, no matter how offensive. Yet certain forms of speech, such as bigoted insults, are both harmful and fail to express a genuine opinion, and so do not deserve free speech protection. (shrink)

One of the goals of medicine is to improve well-being, in line with the principle of beneficence. Likewise, scientists claim that the goal of human embryonic stem cell research is to find treatments for diseases. In hESC research, stem cells are harvested from a 5-day-old embryo. Surplus embryos from infertility treatments or embryos created for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells are used in the research, and in the process the embryos get destroyed. The use of human embryos (...) for research purpose raises ethical concern. In this context, the religious leaders play the role to be the moral compass and “reality check” to engage with the public. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Health has outlined the Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Therapy, reflecting on Islamic principles. Since there has not been much focus on the viewpoints of other faiths in Malaysia, this study attempts to explore the ethical guiding principles deliberated by religious leaders from the Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic traditions and identify if there is a common ground between the mainstream religious views and principles of medical ethics, in relation to hESC research. Eleven religious leaders representing the Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic traditions were interviewed. Interestingly, though reasoning of religious leaders came from different angles, their underlying concerns revolve around the values of “do no harm” and “intention to save lives”. These values are also the key principles in medical ethics. The findings are applied to answer the question as to whether religious and medical guiding principles can co-exist and complement in ethical decision-making, without compromising the values. (shrink)

Neste artigo, apresento uma solução possível para o clássico problema da aparente incompatibilidade entre o Princípio da Maior Felicidade de John Stuart Mill e seu Princípio da Liberdade, argumentando que na esfera "concernente aos outros" os julgamentos de experiência e o conhecimento acumulado através da história têm força moral e legal, enquanto na esfera "autoconcernente" os julgamentos dos experientes têm apenas valor prudencial, e a razão para isto é a ideia que cada um de nós é um juiz, melhor do (...) que qualquer outra pessoa, para decidir o que nos causa dor e que tipo de prazer preferimos (o assim chamado argumento epistemológico). Considerando que o Princípio da Maior Felicidade não é nada mais do que o agregado da felicidade de cada pessoa, levando em consideração o argumento epistemológico concluiríamos que, deixando as pessoas livres até mesmo para causar dano a elas mesmas, ainda estaríamos maximizando a felicidade, e então ambos os princípios (O Princípio da Maior Felicidade e o Princípio da Liberdade) poderiam ser compatíveis. In this article I present a possible solution for the classic problem of the apparent incompatibility between Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle and his Principle of Liberty arguing that in the other-regarding sphere the judgments of experience and knowledge accumulated through history have moral and legal force, whilst in the self-regarding sphere the judgments of the experienced people only have prudential value and the reason for this is the idea according to which each of us is a better judge than anyone else to decide what causes us pain and which kind of pleasure we prefer (the so-called epistemological argument). Considering that the Greatest Happiness Principle is nothing but the aggregate of each person's happiness, given the epistemological claim we conclude that, by leaving people free even to cause harm to themselves, we still would be maximizing happiness, so both principles (the Greatest Happiness Principle and the Principle of Liberty) could be compatible. (shrink)

Several liberal philosophers and penal theorists have argued that the state has a reason to prohibit acts that harm individuals. But what is harm? According to one specification of harm, a person P is harmed by an act (or an event) a iff, as a result of a, P is made worse off in terms of well-being. One central question here involves the baseline against which we assess whether someone is ‘worse off’. In other words, when a (...) person is harmed he is worse off, certainly—but what is worse off a variation from? A central part of the paper critically discusses different answers to this question based on versions of what we can call: the temporal baseline, the baseline from mankind and the counterfactual baseline. Essentially, it will be argued that the counterfactual baseline leaves us with a better understanding of harming than the other baselines discussed. The final part of the paper will describe some of the implications of our investigation for the application and evaluation of the view that harm matters in the justification of which type of acts should be criminalized by the state. The overall conclusion of the paper is that adherents of a view like the harm principle face a dilemma. Either they can accept the counterfactual baseline but then, they can do without the harm principle. Or they can reject the counterfactual baseline—but then they will have to formulate an alternative baseline which, as will be shown in the paper, is no easy task. (shrink)

New reproductive technologies allow parents some choice over their children. Various moral principles have been suggested to regulate such choices. This article starts from a discussion of Julian Savulescu's Principle of Procreative Beneficence, according to which parents ought to choose the child expected to have the best quality of life, before combining two previously separate lines of attack against this principle. First, it is suggested that the appropriate moral principles of guiding reproductive choices ought to focus on general (...) wellbeing rather than prioritizing that of the child and, second, that they ought to be non-maximizing. Though neither of these suggestions is entirely novel, combining them results in a new, and arguably more plausible, principle to regulate procreative choices, which I call the Principle of Generalized Procreative Non-Maleficence. According to this principle, the primary obligation on parents is not to cause harm to other people through their reproductive choices. (shrink)

This paper argues that the rules that constitute a market protect autonomy and increase welfare in healthcare. Markets do the former through protecting rights to self-ownership and a cluster of rights that protect its exercise. Markets protect welfare by organizing and protecting trades. In contrast, prohibition destroys legitimate markets, giving rise to so-called black markets that harm both the autonomy and well-being of agents. For example, a fee-for-service medical system is a highly developed and specialized market. It is individuals (...) working together, through the division of labor, to provide mutual insurance. This coordination, and the benefits it makes possible, is not possible without injunctions against harm. Prohibitions on harm are not mere ethical niceties, they are practice rules for both healthcare and markets. Placing the doctor within a healthcare market actually reinforces the doctor’s moral obligation, and the legal enforcement of that obligation, not to harm. Similarly, markets reinforce patient rights to self-determination through legal and institutional enforcement of the harm principle in the form of the protection of certain basic welfare rights to life, bodily integrity, property, trade, and contract. Since the establishment of markets protects agent autonomy and welfare, and prohibition directly harms the same, there are strong reasons for establishing markets to protect trade in precisely those areas where autonomy and well-being are most vulnerable to exploitation, for example, the trade in human kidneys. (shrink)

Douglas Diekema influentially argues that interference with parental decisions is not in fact guided by the child’s best interests, but rather by a more permissive standard, which he calls the harm principle. This article first seeks to clarify this alternative position and defend it against certain existing criticisms, before offering a new criticism and alternative. This ‘harm principle’ has been criticized for (i) lack of adequate moral grounding, and (ii) being as indeterminate as the best interest (...) standard that it seeks to replace. I argue that these are not serious problems. I take Diekema’s negative point to be right—our actual standard for intervention is not literally the best interests of the child—but I disagree with his proposed replacement. First, Diekema’s proposed harm threshold should be more carefully distinguished from Mill’s harm principle. Second, there is no reason to assume that the standard for permissible intervention coincides with the threshold for harm (or serious harm). Thus, I propose that the best alternative to the best interests standard is not a harm principle, but rather a sufficiency threshold between adequate (or ‘good enough’) and inadequate (or ‘substandard’) parenting. (shrink)

Screening for asymptomatic disease is a routine aspect of contemporary public health practice. However, it is also controversial, because it leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment, with many arguing that programmes are “ineffective,” i.e., the “costs” outweigh the “benefits.” This paper explores a more fundamental objection to screening programmes: that, even if they are effective, they are ethically impermissible because they breach the principle of non-maleficence. In so doing, it suggests a new approach to the ethics of risk, justifying a (...) concern with how policies affect individuals’ absolute ex-ante prospects. Part 1 sets up the tension between screening and non-maleficence. Part 2 introduces and motivates a novel interpretation of the non-maleficence principle, “ex-ante Do No Harm,” which resolves this tension. Part 3 defends and clarifies this principle by discussing its relationship to the ex-ante Pareto principle. Part 4 discusses the worry that risk estimates are too “subjective.”. (shrink)

The legalisation of euthanasia creates a certain tension when it is compared with those traditional medical principles that seem to embody respect for the sanctity of life. It also creates a real need for us to explore what we mean by harm in relation to dying patients. When we consider that we must train physicians so that they not only understand ethical issues but also show the virtues in their clinical practice, it becomes important for us to strive to (...) train them in virtue rather than mere knowledge. We can only do this by conveying a real sense of the needs of the patient and an ability to relate to patients as people not problems. Such attitudes take shape in a training programme in which practical situations are explored and discussed and the limits of scientific medical responses to those challenges are exposed. Keywords: bioethics education, euthanasia, moral judgment, training, virtue CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This essay explores the unique perspective of medical students regarding the ethical challenges of providing full disclosure to patients and their families when medical mistakes are made, especially when such mistakes lead to tragic outcomes. This narrative underscores core precepts of the healing profession, challenging the health care team to be open and truthful, even when doing so is uncomfortable. This account also reminds us that nonabandonment is an obligation that assumes accountability for one’s actions in the healing relationship and (...) that apologizing for mistakes can serve to heal. It argues that even medical students have an obligation to speak up when actions violate their moral beliefs, even if this means confronting a superior. Ethical principles cannot be abandoned in fear of adverse evaluation or failure to conform. Healthcare workers have an obligation to address mistakes made around the time of a patient’s death with the patient’s family. This responsibility trumps any selfish desire to avoid unpleasant feelings of guilt or regret. Such events often bring closure to already anguished relatives and spouses, and may help to facilitate the grieving process. This includes pressing forward the need to apologize to patients and/or their families when mistakes are made and when decisions are made that lead to poor outcomes for the patient, even when benevolently intended. (shrink)

J.S. Mill argues against licensing or forced medical examinations of prostitutes even if these would reduce harm, for two reasons: the state should not legitimize immoral conduct; and coercing prostitutes would violate Mill's harm principle as they do not risk causing non-consensual harm to others, their clients do. There is nothing puzzling about Mill opposing coercive restrictions on self-regarding immoral conduct while also opposing state support of that conduct. But why does Mill oppose restrictions on prostitutes’ (...) liberty if those restrictions could prevent harm to third parties? Mill's position is not puzzling once we recognize that his harm principle is not a harm-prevention principle that warrants restrictions on liberty to prevent harm no matter who caused it (as David Lyons famously argued) but instead warrants restrictions on liberty only of individuals who are the morally relevant cause of that harm. Mill's discussion of prostitution shows he prioritizes both individuality and moral progress over harm reduction. (shrink)

At the outset of World War I - the "Great War" - Freud supported the Austro-Hungarian Empire for which his sons fought. But the cruel truths of that bloody conflict, wrought on the psyches as much as the bodies of the soldiers returning from the battlefield, caused him to rethink his stance and subsequently affected his theory: Psychoanalysis, a healing science, could tell us much about both the drive for war and the ways to undo the trauma that war inherently (...) breeds, but its principles could just as easily serve the enemy's desires to inculcate its own brand of "truth." Even a century later, psychoanalysis can still be used as much for the justifications of warfare and propaganda as it is for the defiance of and resistance to those same things. But it is in the investigation of the motives and methods behind these uses that psychoanalysis proves its greatest strength. To wit, this edited collection presents published and unpublished material by analysts, writers, and activists who have worked at the front lines of psychic life and war from various stances. Set at a point of tension and contradiction, they illustrate the paradoxical relation of psychoanalysis as both a site of resistance and healing and a necessary aspect of warmaking, propaganda, and militarism. In doing so, we venture from the home front - from the trauma of returning veterans to the APA's own complicity in CIA "black sites" - across international borders - from the treatment of women in Latin American dictatorships to the resistance to occupation in Palestine, from mind control to an ethics of responsibility. Throughout, a psychoanalytic sensibility deconstructs the very opposition that it inhabits, and seeks to reestablish psychoanalysis as the healing discipline it was conceived to be. (shrink)

Team reflexivity has gained increasing research attention as an effective response to the core challenge of constant learning, innovation, and adaptation in teams due to changing circumstances. Under the right conditions, empirical studies have found that team reflexivity can improve team performance, team learning, team innovation, team creativity, and team member well-being. Thus, research shows that team reflexivity is an effective means to improve teamwork and team outcomes. This book addresses the problem that team reflexivity research is focused too narrowly (...) on improving these empirical team outcomes while neglecting the importance of normative principles and values in good teamwork, such as the do no harm principle. Therefore, this book proposes that the team reflexivity concept needs broader reframing and deeper reflection to realize normative principles and values in teams as a precondition for good teamwork, e.g., do no harm. It further presents two team reflexivity tools and applies them in the cases of burnout prevention and speaking up freely in teams to illustrate the point of this book: Do no harm in teams requires team reflexivity, and vice versa, team reflexivity requires do no harm. (shrink)

Moral norms are the rules of morality, those that people actually follow, and those that we feel people ought to follow, even when they don’t. Historically, the social sciences have been primarily concerned with describing the many forms that moral norms take in various cultures, with the emerging implication that moral norms are mere arbitrary products of culture. Philosophers, on the other hand, have been more concerned with trying to understand the nature and source of rules that all cultures ought (...) to follow, with relatively little regard for what people actually do. The tension between the two approaches has to do with whether there are any standards higher than the whims of culture in determining right and wrong. Typically, the social sciences say “no”, pointing at the diversity of moral beliefs. Most philosophers (along with people of moral conviction) feel that there must be some deeper source of morality than the trends and fads of culture. Unfortunately, the nature and source of such standards has remained something of a mystery. Recent work on the evolution of norms has changed this picture dramatically. (shrink)

A central aim within criminal justice ethics is to give a plausible justification concerning which type of acts ought to be criminalized by the state. One of the principles of criminalization which has been presented and critically discussed in the philosophical literature is the Offense Principle. The primary aim of this paper is to argue that unless a rather special and implausible objective list theory of well-being is accepted, the Offense Principle should be subsumed in the Harm (...) Principle. (shrink)

Using a new method, we examined whether incidental perception of need-rewarding (positive) objects unintentionally prepares motor action. Participants who varied in their level of need for water were presented with glasses of water (and control objects) that were accompanied by go and no-go cues that required a response (key-press) or withholding a response. Importantly, if need-rewarding objects unintentionally prepare action, presentation of no-go cues should lead to motor inhibition of these prepared motor impulses. Consistent with this hypothesis, results showed that (...) participants relatively high in need for water (and hence, who perceive water as a rewarding, positive object) were slower to react to a successive action probe after withholding a response during perception of water than during perception of the control object, suggesting motor inhibition of unintentionally prepared motor impulses. We propose that incidental perception of need-rewarding objects unintentionally potentiates preparation of motor action to these objects. (shrink)

Empirical research has discovered that experimental subjects in ultimatum bargaining situations generally fail to play the decision-theoretic optimum strategy, and instead play something between that strategy and a fair split. In evolutionary dynamics, fair division and nearly fair division strategies often go to fixation and weakly dominated strategies can do quite well. Computer simulations were done using three different ultimatum bargaining games as determinates of fitness. (1) No tendency toward the elimination of weakly dominated strategies was observed, with or without (...) mutation. (2) Strategies making fair demands had sizable basins of attraction. (3) In a system where five different demands can be made, demands closest to (approximately) 91% had the largest basins of attraction. (4) If the strategies have thresholds for acceptable demands, rather than individuated responses to each demand, the apparent optimum demand may be quite low: 64% for one set of trials. (shrink)

In legal decisions standpoints can be supported by formal and also by substantive interpretative arguments. Formal arguments consist of reasons the weight or force of which is essentially dependent on the authoritativeness that the reasons may also have: In this connection one may think of linguistic and systemic arguments. On the other hand, substantive arguments are not backed up by authority, but consist of a direct invocation of moral, political, economic, or other social considerations. Formal arguments can be analyzed as (...) exclusionary reasons: The authoritative character excludes—in principle—substantial counterarguments. Formal arguments are sometimes used to conceal value judgements based on substantial arguments. This paper deals with reconstructing problems regarding this strategic use of formal arguments in legal decisions, with a focus on linguistic argumentation. (shrink)

The evolution of economic altruism is one of the most vigorous areas of study at the intersection of biology, economics, and philosophy. The basic problem is easily understood. Biological organisms, be they people or paramecia, have ample opportunity to confer benefits on others at relatively low cost to themselves. If conferring such benefits becomes common, the overall productivity of the population in which it occurs is increased. Presumably, there is no advantage to refusing such benefits, but it is also the (...) case that there is considerable advantage to pursuing a strategy according to which such benefits are accepted, but not conferred. In populations where individuals interact at random with others and when individuals play pure strategies (i.e., they always confer or do not confer benefits), the inevitable outcome is that altruistic behavior is driven to extinction. (Axelrod 1984) Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that self-sacrificing behavior is common in nature. (Sober and Wilson 1998) Consequently, individuals must not be interacting at random. The pressing question is then: what patterns of non-random interaction are responsible for the prevalence of altruistic behavior, and more theoretically, what sorts of plausible mechanisms exist that could generate the right kind of non- 1 The research reported here was supported by Canada ????? grant # ????? and the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia. (shrink)

Philosophers spend a lot of time worrying about rules. We worry about how one ought to live, about the rules of justification for beliefs and actions, about what it would be like if the rules of reason were rigorously followed, about what the rules are for scientific enquiry, about which rules govern the meaning of signs and the intentions of agents, and so on. Sometimes, we argue that there are no such rules as most of us want to believe there (...) are, rules which apply to all of us collectively and to each of us individually, which are beyond our ability to change, and whose violation is in some simple sense wrong. To this we often respond that without such rules we are all made somehow less, that our normative deliberations are a sham, or even that the whole business of living becomes somehow pointless. (shrink)

According to the counterfactual comparative account, an event harms a person if and only if it makes things worse for her. Cases of overdetermination and preemption pose a serious challenge to CCA since, in these cases, although it is evident that people are harmed, there are no individual events that harm them. However, while there are no individual events that make people worse off in cases of overdetermination and preemption, there are pluralities of events that do so. In light (...) of this feature of these cases, several philosophers have suggested that it is these pluralities that do the harming. In this article, I will argue that although the most prominent accounts of plural harm – e.g., Neil Feit’s account – fare better than one might initially think, they fail to deal adequately with a number of intriguing cases of preemption first introduced by Alastair Norcross. I will also introduce a new view on plural harm and argue that this view, apart from dealing with the cases of overdetermination and preemption that the other accounts of plural harm handle, also deals adequately with Norcross’s cases. (shrink)

According to the counterfactual comparative account, an event harms a person if and only if it makes things worse for her. Cases of overdetermination and preemption pose a serious challenge to CCA since, in these cases, although it is evident that people are harmed, there are no individual events that harm them. However, while there are no individual events that make people worse off in cases of overdetermination and preemption, there are pluralities of events that do so. In light (...) of this feature of these cases, several philosophers have suggested that it is these pluralities that do the harming. In this article, I will argue that although the most prominent accounts of plural harm – e.g., Neil Feit’s account – fare better than one might initially think, they fail to deal adequately with a number of intriguing cases of preemption first introduced by Alastair Norcross. I will also introduce a new view on plural harm and argue that this view, apart from dealing with the cases of overdetermination and preemption that the other accounts of plural harm handle, also deals adequately with Norcross’s cases. (shrink)

Este ensayo presenta una panorámica general y un análisis de la visión que sustenta el empleo de los métodos cualitativos, incluyéndose su aplicación a la investigación en Administración. Bajo los planteamientos de un monismo metodológico, la aportación de conclusiones no generalizables y de subjetividad inherente de tales métodos se considera limitada; mientras que para los adherentes al constructivismo y al pluralismo, es de gran valía en la exploración de la profundidad de los fenómenos de estas disciplinas. En sí, prevalece en (...) el medio una falta de consensos incluso con respecto a qué son los métodos cualitativos y qué son las técnicas cualitativas de investigación, derivada del uso indistinto que dan algunos autores a esos términos; lo que aunado a la cantidad y diversidad de métodos cualitativos crea dificultades para comprender qué es en realidad la investigación cualitativa.This essay presents a general outlook and an analysis of the rationale behind the use of qualitative methods, including their being applied in research in Management. According to the views of methodological monism, the contribution of the conclusions which these methods yield, which are essentially subjective and not susceptible of being generalized, is considered too limited; while for advocates of constructivism and pluralism they are valuable in probing the depth of the phenomena of these disciplines. In fact, a lack of consensus prevails in these areas even in connection with what are qualitative methods and what are qualitative research techniques, associated to an indistinct use of these terms by some authors; which together with the number and diversity of qualitative methods makes it difficult to understand what actually is qualitative research. (shrink)

��Is moral judgment accomplished by intuition or conscious reasoning? An answer demands a detailed account of the moral principles in question. We investigated three principles that guide moral judgments: (a) Harm caused by action is worse than harm caused by omission, (b) harm intended as the means to a goal is worse than harm foreseen as the side effect of a goal, and (c) harm involving physical contact with the victim is worse than harm (...) involving no physical contact. Asking whether these principles are invoked to explain moral judgments, we found that subjects generally appealed to the first and third principles in their justifications, but not to the second. This finding has significance for methods and theories of moral psychology: The moral principles used in judgment must be directly compared with those articulated in justification, and doing so shows that some moral principles are available to conscious reasoning whereas others are not. (shrink)

Moral norms are the rules of morality, those that people actually follow, and those that we feel people ought to follow, even when they don’t. Historically, the social sciences have been primarily concerned with describing the many forms that moral norms take in various cultures, with the emerging implication that moral norms are mere arbitrary products of culture. Philosophers, on the other hand, have been more concerned with trying to understand the nature and source of rules that all cultures ought (...) to follow, with relatively little regard for what people actually do. The tension between the two approaches has to do with whether there are any standards higher than the whims of culture in determining right and wrong. Typically, the social sciences say “no”, pointing at the diversity of moral beliefs. Most philosophers (along with people of moral conviction) feel that there must be some deeper source of morality than the trends and fads of culture. Unfortunately, the nature and source of such standards has remained something of a mystery. Recent work on the evolution of norms has changed this picture dramatically. (shrink)

Magali Année “Plato's Sound Language against the Harm done to Language”, The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, vol. V, Issue 2, 2021. « “Je (ne) dirai (pas)” : D’Oukalégôn à ἀλέγω : penser l’apotropaïsme linguistique en Grèce ancienne », L’Homme 237, 2021, p. 75-108. Marc Baratin Priscien, Grammaire, livres XI, XII, XIII – Les hybrides (participe et pronom). Texte latin, traduction introduite et annotée, Groupe Ars Grammatica éd., Paris, Vrin, 2020, 345 p. « Où en est la traduc...

I focus on the question as to what rationale could possibly underlie the doctrine of double effect or related principles. I first briefly review the correct critiques of the claim that people who intend some evil as a means to a good must be “guided by evil,” and that this is allegedly always wrong. I then argue that Quinn’s claim that violations of the DDE express certain negative attitudes of the agent and that agents violating the DDE must make an (...) additional morally problematic presumption regarding their victims is mistaken. Tadros claims that an agent violating the means principle must force his victims to adopt his goals. I demonstrate that the difference Tadros tries to construe between an agent inflicting intended harm and an agent inflicting merely foreseen harm is non-existent. Sarch’s official rationale for the DDE also fails to distinguish harming as a means from side-effect harming, and reformulations of his rationale that suggest themselves run into severe problems. Walen’s defense of the means principle in terms of the “restricting claims principle” and Øverland’s appeal to “moral obstacles” are susceptible to counter-examples and appear to be question-begging. Recently, Walen has offered a revised formulation of his Restricting Claims Principle, claiming that it overcomes counter-examples and explains the means principle. I will argue that it contradicts the means principle and does not overcome the counter-examples. Thus I conclude that so far we are still left without a reasonable rationale for the DDE or related principles. (shrink)

In this article I argue that governments are justified in addressing the potential for human induced climate damages on the basis of future generations' rights to bodily integrity and personal property. First, although future generations' entitlements to property originate in our present entitlements, the principle of self-ownership requires us to take 'reasonable care' of the products of future labour. Second, while Parfit's non-identity problem has as yet no satisfactory solution, the present absence of an equilibrium between theory and intuitions (...) justifies a precautionary approach, i.e. treating climate damage as a wrongful harm. In addition, a supplementary consideration is described as arising from transcendental needs. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:John Stuart Mill's harm principle holds that an individual's freedom can only be restricted to prevent harm to others. However, there is an important ambiguity between a strong version, which limits legitimate interference to self-defense and therefore prohibits society from protecting third parties (those who are not its members), and a narrow version, which grants any society universal jurisdiction to prevent nonconsensual harms, no matter who is harmed. Mill sometimes appeals to the strong harm principle (...) to preclude interference, but elsewhere endorses measures (including humanitarian foreign intervention and animal cruelty laws) to protect third parties, suggesting that he subscribes only to the weak harm principle. This ambiguity regarding who it is that society has standing to protect has important implications for the scope of individual freedom. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to map the relationships of various moral arguments for action on climate change to each other in a particular case rather than to explore any single argument in depth or to make any abstract claims about the priorities among the arguments themselves. Specifically, it tries to show that “historical responsibility”, that is, responsibility for past emissions, is very important, although not quite in the way usually argued, but that it is not by itself determinative. (...) Other, independent considerations also greatly matter, although it happens that as a matter of fact all considerations strongly tend to converge towards the same conclusions about which states are responsible to act in order to slow climate change. “Historical responsibility” is shown to involve both contribution to, or causation of, climate change and benefit from climate change. Other factors that play roles in this case are ability to pay, the no-harm principle, and the duty to preserve the physical pre-conditions of human life. (shrink)

In this article, responding to assertions that the principle of double effect has no place in legal analysis, I explore the overlap between double effect and negligence analysis. In both, questions of culpability arise in situations where a person acts with no intent to cause harm but where reasonable foreseeability of unintended harm exists. Under both analyses, the determination of whether such conduct is permissible involves a reasonability test that balances that foreseeable harm against the good (...) intended by the actor's conduct. In both, absent a finding that the foreseeable harm is unreasonable in light of that intended good, no liability will be imposed upon the actor. Even conceding, however, such general similarity between double effect and negligence analysis - disagreement over the proper interpretation of the reasonability criterion at play in negligence poses an additional challenge for the attempt to correlate negligence with double effect. Economic efficiency interpretations of negligence, for example, purportedly based on the Learned Hand Formula and the RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF THE LAW OF TORTS, propose that culpability depends upon a utilitarian balancing of good effects of conduct (utility) versus its harmful foreseeable consequences (magnitude of risk of injury). Based on such an interpretation of negligence, however, contrasts between actors' states of mind, and normative differences between kinds of goods and harms, ultimately fade into the background and become irrelevant as essential conditions for properly assessing liability. This article elaborates and defends the view that double effect analysis lies at the heart of negligence theory. Part I elucidates in more detail the principle of double effect and describes its prima facie operation in negligence analysis. Part II considers and rejects the economic efficiency interpretation that has been offered as a theory of negligence, overcoming the challenge that such an interpretation presents for the effort to locate double effect analysis in the law. Part III illustrates and confirms the overlap between double effect and negligence by consideration of a series of case applications. The Article proposes that the weighing of conflicting values in double effect analysis and negligence is not achieved - as proposed by law and economics theory with respect to negligence - by imposing a consequentialist-utilitarian reduction of all value to a single concept of good and eliminating the relevance of traditional state of mind distinctions between intention and foreseeability. Instead, each mode of analysis recognizes that distinct culpability determinations flow naturally and plausibly from an appreciation of the traditional legal distinctions made between various types of goods and harms, and upon whether such goods and harms come about as result of an actor's intention or mere foreseeability. Keywords: Double effect, negligence, intention, foreseeability, choice, law and economics, utilitarianism, consequentialism, weighing of values. (shrink)

:Many critics of bioenhancement go to considerable lengths to establish the existence of reasons against pursuing bioenhancements but do little to establish the absence of reasons in favor. This suggests that they accept what Allen Buchanan has called the conclusive reasons view. According to this view, our reasons against bioenhancement are obviously decisive, so there is no need to balance them against countervailing reasons. Buchanan criticizes the CRV by showing that the reasons most commonly adduced against bioenhancement are not decisive, (...) or, at least, not obviously so.In this article, I suggest that both Buchanan and the authors to whom he is responding underestimate the strength of the case for the CRV. There are, I argue, harm-based reasons against bioenhancement that provide stronger support to the CRV than the reasons that have most often been adduced by critics of enhancement. However, I then argue that even these harm-based reasons are not obviously decisive. Thus, I ultimately agree with Buchanan about the falsity of the CRV, though I disagree with him about the reasons for its falsity. (shrink)

Principles are investigated that allow one to establish a preference ordering between possible actions based on the question of whether the acting agent himself or other agents will benefit or be harmed by the consequences of an action. It is shown that a combination of utility maximization, an altruist principle, and weak negative utilitarianism yields an ordering that seems to be intuitively appealing, although it does not necessarily reflect common everyday evaluations of actions.

This essay argues against the commonly held view that "ought" implies "can" in the domain of morality. More specifically, I contest the notion that nobody should ever be held morally responsible for failing to avoid the infliction of any harm that he or she has not been able to avoid through all reasonably feasible precautions in the carrying out of some worthwhile activity. The article explicates the concept of a moral right in order to show why violations of moral (...) rights can occur even when no one has acted wrongfully in any fashion. In so doing, it will effectively be maintaining that strict liability (i.e., liability irrespective of the presence or absence of culpability) exists in morality as well as in law. When we take account of the distinction between exoneration and extenuation, we can see that scrupulously thorough precautions are never sufficient to constitute an excuse in morality. Having made that point with some extended examples, the article goes on to consider a number of possible objections - objections that lead into discussions of some basic distinctions within moral philosophy and some central principles within deontic logic. (shrink)

A popular strategy for meeting over-determination and pre-emption challenges to the comparative counterfactual conception of harm is Derek Parfit’s suggestion, more recently defended by Neil Feit, that a plurality of events harms A if and only if that plurality is the smallest plurality of events such that, if none of them had occurred, A would have been better off. This analysis of ‘harm’ rests on a simple but natural mistake about the relevant counterfactual comparison. Pluralities fulfilling these conditions (...) make no difference to the worse for anyone in the over-determination cases that prompted the need for revising the comparative conception of harm to begin with. We may choose to call them harmful anyway, but then we must abandon the idea that making a difference to the worse for someone is essential to harming. I argue that we should hold on to the difference-making criterion and give up the plural harm principle. I offer an explanation of why Parfit’s and Feit’s plural harm approach seems attractive. Finally, I argue that the consequences of giving up the plural harm principle and holding on to the simple comparative counterfactual analysis of harm are less radical than we may think, in relation to questions about wrongness and responsibility. (shrink)