Universal Law and Poverty Relief
AbstractIn this article, I examine what Kant ’s Formula of Universal Law requires of an individual agent in situations of great need, e.g.: if you can easily help a drowning child, or if you know of a famine situation in another country. I first explain why I do not simply apply the standard interpretation of how one can derive concrete duti es from Kant’s Universal Law formulation of the Categorical Imperative. I then glean an alternative procedure from Kant’s texts and give the reasons for using that interpretation. Finally, I apply the alternative procedure to situations of great need. – According to the interpr...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 19, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Hope for the Evolutionary Debunker: How Evolutionary Debunking Arguments and Arguments from Moral Disagreement Can Join Forces
AbstractFacts about moral disagreement and human evolution have both been said to exclude the possibility of moral knowledge, but the question of how these challenges interact has largely gone unaddressed. The paper aims to present and defend a novel version of the evolutionary “debunking” argument for moral skepticism that appeals to both types of considerations. This argument has several advantages compared to more familiar versions. The standard debunking strategy is to argue that evolutionary accounts of moral beliefs generate skeptical implications because they at tribute those beliefs to factors that are unrelate...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 19, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
In the Shadow of Rawls: Egalitarianism Today
AbstractTwo recent collections of papers —Social Equality: On What It Means to Be Equals, edited by Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert, and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer (Fourie et al.2015) andThe Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice, edited by George Hull (Hull2015) —demonstrate well the wide diversity of perspectives on egalitarianism within political theory today. But there are unifying themes amidst all this diversity. In particular, these collections make plain the extent to which contemporary egalitarianism in all forms is indebted to Rawls. This debt is reflected, for example, in the luck egalitarianism/...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 19, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Russell Blackford: The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the Future of Liberalism
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 9, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
#MeToo & amp; the role of Outright Belief
AbstractIn this paper, I provide an account of the wrong that is done to women when everyday people fail to believe allegations of sexual assault made by women. I argue that an everyday person wrongs both the accuser and women causally distant from the accuser when they fail to believe the accuser ’s allegation. First, I argue that there are responses that we, as everyday members of society, owe to victims of sexual assault. A condition enabling everyday people to respond in the way owed to victims is that they have anoutright belief that the accuser was assaulted. Actively suspending judgement about whether a crime occu...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 8, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Global Poverty and Kantian Hope
AbstractDevelopment economists have suggested that thehopes of the poor are a relevant factor in overcoming poverty. I argue that Kant ’s approach to hope provides an important complement to the economists’ perspective. A Kantian account of hope emphasizes the need for the rationality of hope and thereby guards against problematic aspects of the economists’ discourse on hope. Section 1 introduces recent work on hope in develo pment economics. Section 2 clarifies Kant’s question “What may I hope?” and presents the outlines of his answer. Crucially, hope is rational if it is rational totrust in the structures of ...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 7, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Deliberation and the Problems of Exclusion and Uptake: The Virtues of Actively Facilitating Equitable Deliberation and Testimonial Sensibility
AbstractIn this paper, I suggest that one of the ways in which problems of exclusionfrom deliberation and uptakewithin deliberation can be ameliorated is to develop a more robust account of the deliberative virtues that socially privileged speakers/hearers ought to cultivate. Specifically, privileged speakers/hearers ought to cultivate the virtue ofactively facilitating equitable and inclusive deliberative exchanges (which includes a cluster of virtues, including the practice of silence and of listening) and the deliberative virtue of training their ‘testimonial sensibility’ to correct for prejudicial judgments about o...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 2, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Guest Editors ’ Introduction: Special Issue “Moral Phenomenology and Moral Philosophy”
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - March 1, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Tie-breaks and Two Types of Relevance
AbstractSometimes we must choose between competing claims to aid or assistance, and sometimes those competing claims differ in strength and quantity. In such cases, we must decide whether the claims on each opposing side can be aggregated. Relevance views argue that a set of claims can be aggregated only if they are sufficiently strong (compared to the claims with which they compete) to be morally relevant to the decision. Relevance views come in two flavours: Local Relevance and Global Relevance. This paper presents a trilemma for both. Namely, that neither view can capture our intuition in tie-break cases, without forfei...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - February 28, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Informed Consent, Error and Suspending Ignorance: Providing Knowledge or Preventing Error?
AbstractThe standard account of informed consent has recently met serious criticism, focused on the mismatch between its implications and widespread intuitions about the permissibility of conducting research and providing treatment under conditions of partial knowledge. Unlike other critics of the standard account, we suggest an account of the relations between autonomy, ignorance, and valid consent that avoids these implausible implications while maintaining the standard core idea, namely, that the primary purpose of the disclosure requirement of informed consent is to prevent autonomy-undermining ignorance. The problem w...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - February 26, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Blame for me and Not for Thee: Status Sensitivity and Moral Responsibility
AbstractIn our day-to-day lives, we form responsibility judgements about one another – but we are imperfect beings, and our judgments can be mistaken. This paper suggests that we get things wrong not merely by chance, but predictably and systematically. In particular, these miscues are common when we are dealing with large gaps in social status and power. That is, when we form jud gements about those who are much more or less socially powerful than ourselves, it is increasingly likely that “epistemic distorters” will reliably disrupt our reasoning. In response to this situation, I argue for the introduction of a new ...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - February 4, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Common Knowledge: A New Problem for Standard Consequentialism
AbstractThis paper reveals a serious flaw in the consequentialist solution to the inefficacy problem in moral philosophy. The consequentialist solution is based on expected utility theory. In current philosophical literature, the debate focuses on the empirical plausibility of the solution. Most philosophers consider the cases of collective actions as of the same type as a horse-racing game, where expected utility theory is adequate to solve the choice problem. However, these cases should be considered as of the same type as a coordination game, where the assumption of common knowledge is also required. However, the assump...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - February 2, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Myisha Cherry: The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Antiracist Struggle
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 23, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Joseph Heath: Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 22, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Editorial
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 18, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
