Luck and Oppression

Oppression can be unjust from a luck egalitarian point of view even when it is the consequence of choices for which it is reasonable to hold persons responsible. This is for two reasons. First, people who have not been oppressed are unlikely to anticipate the ways in which their choices may lead them into oppressive conditions. Facts about systematic phenomena (like oppression) are often beyond the epistemic reach of persons who are not currently subject to such conditions, even when they possess adequate information about the particular consequences of their choices. Second, people may be (much) less responsible for remaining in oppressive conditions, even if they are responsible for entering circumstances of oppression. Oppression that results from a person’s choice may cause or contribute to dramatic changes in that person, and these changes may be sufficient to undermine the person’s responsibility for the results of her earlier choice.     

Does any aspect of mind survive brain damage that typically leads to a persistent vegetative state? Ethical considerations

Recent neuroscientific evidence brings into question the conclusion that all aspects of consciousness are gone in patients who have descended into a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Here we summarize the evidence from human brain imaging as well as neurological damage in animals and humans suggesting that some form of consciousness can survive brain damage that commonly causes PVS. We also raise the issue that neuroscientific evidence indicates that raw emotional feelings (primary-process affects) can exist without any cognitive awareness of those feelings. Likewise, the basic brain mechanisms for thirst and hunger exist in brain regions typically not damaged by PVS. If affective feelings can exist without cognitive awareness of those feelings, then it is possible that the instinctual emotional actions and pain "reflexes" often exhibited by PVS patients may indicate some level of mentality remaining in PVS patients. Indeed, it is possible such raw affective feelings are intensified when PVS patients are removed from life-supports. They may still experience a variety of primary-process affective states that could constitute forms of suffering. If so, withdrawal of life-support may violate the principle of nonmaleficence and be tantamount to inflicting inadvertent "cruel and unusual punishment" on patients whose potential distress, during the process of dying, needs to be considered in ethical decision-making about how such individuals should be treated, especially when their lives are ended by termination of life-supports. Medical wisdom may dictate the use of more rapid pharmacological forms of euthanasia that minimize distress than the de facto euthanasia of life-support termination that may lead to excruciating feelings of pure thirst and other negative affective feelings in the absence of any reflective awareness.     

Embryos, individuals, and persons: an argument against embryo creation and research

One strategy for arguing that it should be legally permissible to create human embryos, or to use of spare human embryos, for scientific research purposes involves the claim that such embryos cannot be persons because they are not human individuals while twinning may yet take place. Being a human individual is considered to be by most people a necessary condition for being a human person. I argue first that such an argument against the personhood of embryos must be rationally conclusive if their destruction in public places such as laboratories is to be countenanced. I base this argument on a popular understanding of the role that the notion of privacy plays in abortion law. I then argue that such arguments against personhood are not rationally conclusive. The claim that the early embryos is not a human individual is not nearly as obvious as some assert.     

The Social Bearing of Nature

The claim is that some collective entities can be thought of as part of the moral realm by virtue of their status as objects of moral concern. Collectivities are defined in terms of irreducibly corporate action and distinctive conditions of persisting identity. Their lack of sentience does not preclude moral concern, and their raison d'êtremay render moral concern for them appropriate. Recent attempts by Pettit, McMahon, and Broome to limit the moral realm to individuals are considered. They are rebutted on the grounds that they rest heavily on pre-existing moral intuitions; they ascribe a stronger thesis than is necessary to the sponsors of the moral significance of non-individuals; and they wrongly assume that what has value for individuals must have value becauseit has value for individuals. Collectivities can have moral importance even if they lack the intrinsicmoral importance attaching to human beings, and substantial consequences follow from that fact. In particular, routine appeals to the distinctness of persons become more problematic when collectivities, themselves composed entirely of persons, have independent moral significance which needs to be taken into account. That will affect both assessment of moral consequences and the process of moral decision-making.     

Behavioral equipoise: a way to resolve ethical stalemates in clinical research

Randomized trials depend on clinicians feeling that they are morally justified in allowing their patients to be randomized across treatment arms. Typically such justification rides on what has been called "clinical equipoise"--when there is disagreement of opinion among the community of experts about whether one treatment is better than another, then physicians can ethically enter their patients into a clinical trial, even if individual physicians are not at equipoise. Recent debates over prominent studies, however, illustrate that controversy can be easily created rather than dispelled by trials, with many clinicians choosing not to use the proven therapy until they receive more convincing evidence of its superiority. In such situations, we propose that a new standard of equipoise be used to guide decisions about the ethical justifications for research trials--a standard of behavioral equipoise. Under behavioral equipoise, a trial is potentially justifiable if it addresses behavioral resistance to prior scientific evidence.     

The explanatory power of the substance view of persons.

The purpose of this essay is to offer support for the substance view of persons, the philosophical anthropology defended by Patrick Lee in his essay. In order to accomplish this the author (1) presents a brief definition of the substance view; (2) argues that the substance view has more explanatory power in accounting for why we believe that human persons are intrinsically valuable even when they are not functioning as such (e.g., when on is temporarily comatose), why human persons remain identical to themselves over time, and why it follows from these points that the unborn are human persons; and (3) responds to two arguments that attempt to establish the claim that the early human being is not a unified substance until at least fourteen days after conception.     

THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: RACHEL CARSON'S VIEWS OF ANIMALS

Abstract The publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a compelling blend of stories, natural history, human values, and biological facts, in 1962 was instrumental in launching the modern environmental movement. We consider Carson's attitude toward animals in Silent Spring and in her other writings. Carson favored responsible stewardship and was more of an animal welfarist and environmentalist/conservation biologist who privileged ecosystems and species than an animal activist who privileged individuals, and she did not advocate an animal‐rights agenda. There is clear tension in Carson's writings. Often she seems troubled by attempting to come across as a moderate and practical scientist, and some of her words, when considered out of context, could lead one to label her as an animal‐rightist. While some of Carson's writing favors human‐centered interests, she did not believe that only humans counted. Her warnings about silent springs must be taken seriously, perhaps even more seriously than when they were penned more than four decades ago. Carson was a passionate and extremely influential activist and if a world of persons like her were in charge of our global environmental policies, we and our fellow animals would be in much better shape than we currently are.     

INEQUALITY,INCENTIVES AND THE INTERPERSONAL TEST

This article defends three claims: (1) even if Rawls' difference principle permits incentives to induce talented people to be more productive, it does not follow that it permits inequalities; (2) the difference principle, when adequately specified, may in some circumstances permit incentives and allow that the worst off are not made as well off as they could be; and (3) an argument for incentives might pass Cohen's interpersonal test even if it is unsound and might not pass it even if it is sound. 1     

In Defence of Backyard Chickens

Suppose that animals have rights. If so, may you go down to your local farm store, buy some chicks, raise them in your backyard, and eat their eggs? You wouldn't think so. But we argue, to the contrary, that you may. Just as there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate a slave, even if that means paying into a corrupt system, so there are circumstances in which it's permissible to liberate chickens by buying them. Moreover, we contend that restrictions on freedom of movement can be appropriate for chickens, but not humans, because of the obvious differences between the interests of healthy, adult humans versus those of chickens who have been bred for human use. We also argue that egg consumption is permissible based on the plausible assumption that no one's rights are violated in their consumption, and so while there may sometimes be morally preferable uses for eggs, you do nothing unjust in eating them. If we're right, then the rights view doesn't imply that veganism is obligatory; rather, it implies that the constraints on how we source animal products, though highly demanding, are not so demanding that they can't be met.     

When authoritarianism meets religion: Sacrificing others in the name of abstract deontology

Authoritarianism is a stable construct in terms of individual differences (social attitudes based on personality and values), but its manifestations and behavioral outcomes may depend on contextual factors. In the present experiment, we investigated whether authoritarianism is sensitive to religious influences in predicting rigid morality. Specifically, we investigated whether authoritarians, after supraliminal religious priming, would show, in hypothetical moral dilemmas, preference for impersonal societal norms even at the detriment of interpersonal, care‐based prosociality toward proximal persons and acquaintances in need. The results confirmed the expectations, with a small effect size for the religious priming × authoritarianism interaction. In addition, these results were specific to participants' authoritarianism and not to their individual religiosity. The interaction between authoritarian dispositions and religious ideas may constitute a powerful combination leading to behaviors that are detrimental for the well‐being and the life of others, even proximal people, in the name of abstract deontology. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The capacity to appoint a proxy and the possibility of concurrent proxy directives

With the projected increase in the number of persons with dementia (who eventually lose their capacity to give informed consent to treatment and research), third-party decision-making will become even more common than it is today. We argue that, because there are situations in which an appointed proxy is preferred over a de facto surrogate, it is ethically important to understand the capacity of persons with dementia to delegate their decision-making authority regarding treatment and research decisions.In this paper, focusing mainly on the research consent context, we examine the idea that persons suffering from neurodegenerative disorders may retain significant abilities-including sufficient capacity for delegating one's authority for giving consent to research-even if they are not capable of giving independent consent themselves. We first propose a rationale for assessing the capacity to appoint a proxy and then describe a novel interview instrument for assessing the capacity to appoint a proxy for research consent.     

Entity, Identity and Unity

I propose a fourfold categorisation of entities according to whether or not they possess determinate identity-conditions and whether or not they are determinately countable. Some entities – which I call ‘individual objects’ – have both determinate identity and determinate countability: for example, persons and animals. In the case of entities of a kind K belonging to this category, we are in principle always entitled to expect there to be determinate answers to such questions as ‘Is x the same K as y?’ and ’How many Ks are there satisfying condition C?’, even if we may sometimes be unable in practice to discover what these answers are. But other entities apparently lack either determinate identity, or determinate countability, or both. In these terms I try to explain certain important ontological differences between familiar macroscopic objects and various rather more esoteric entities, such as the ‘particles’ of quantum physics, quantities of material stuff, and tropes or property instances. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

More dead than dead: perceptions of persons in the persistent vegetative state

Patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS) may be biologically alive, but these experiments indicate that people see PVS as a state curiously more dead than dead. Experiment 1 found that PVS patients were perceived to have less mental capacity than the dead. Experiment 2 explained this effect as an outgrowth of afterlife beliefs, and the tendency to focus on the bodies of PVS patients at the expense of their minds. Experiment 3 found that PVS is also perceived as “worse” than death: people deem early death better than being in PVS. These studies suggest that people perceive the minds of PVS patients as less valuable than those of the dead – ironically, this effect is especially robust for those high in religiosity.     

Harnessing members' positive mood for team-directed learning behaviour and team innovation: The moderating role of perceived team feedback

This study examines the role of individual team members' positive mood and perceived team feedback for their team-directed learning behaviour. Results obtained in a sample of 186 members from 27 work teams showed that positive mood was positively associated with team-directed learning behaviour if individual members perceived that the feedback they received was based on the performance of the team as a whole, but not if they perceived such team feedback to be lacking. Moreover, teams were found to be more innovative to the extent that their members, on average, engaged in team-directed learning behaviour to a greater extent. These results offer new insights into the micro-foundations of team learning. Our findings explicate why the contributions of individual members to their team's learning may differ and suggest that, if managed effectively, members' positive mood may be an important resource in facilitating team learning.     

Responsibility for Future Climate Justice: The Direct Responsibility to Mitigate Structural Injustice for Future Generations

In this article we argue that duties towards future generations are situated on the collective level and that they should be understood in terms of collective responsibility for structural injustice. In the context of climate change, it seems self-evident that our moral duties pertain not only to the current generation but to future generations as well. However, conceptualizing this leads to the non-identity problem: future persons cannot be harmed by present-day choices because they would not have existed if other choices had been made. Recently, Charlotte Franziska Unruh has proposed a solution that places the duties not on the individual level but on the collective level. The current generation has a responsibility for future generations as a whole. This solution is promising, but we argue that it problematically overlooks the existence of unjust relations within the contemporary collective, as we all contribute differently to bringing future generations into existence. Therefore, we propose to graft Iris Marion Young's Social Connection Model, which is concerned with structural injustice, on to the discussion of responsibility for future generations. Our proposal incorporates the strengths of Unruh's arguments, while also allowing for a differentiated responsibility based on different implications in unjust structures.     

Dental anxiety in the elderly

Abstract

This review of the literature shows that dental anxiety in the elderly has been estimated at a much lower level than that found in the general population. However, it is thought that the problem may have been underestimated because older persons may have masked their feelings by minimizing their needs for dental treatment. It is suggested that dentists need to address the special needs of the older dental patients if they wish to have them utilize their services. Older persons' needs can be met only with a greater understanding and tolerance of ageing processes than has been shown in the past. The decrease of dental anxiety with age found in cross-sectional studies needs to be confirmed by longitudinal studies.     

Person and consciousness.

My interlocuter is Locke with his reduction of person to personal consciousness. This reduction is a main reason preventing people from acknowledging the personhood of the earliest human embryo, which lacks all personal consciousness. I show that Catholic Christians who live the sacramental life of the Church have reason to think that they are, as persons, vastly more than what they experience themselves to be, for they believe that the sacraments work effects in them as persons that can only be believed but that cannot be experienced within themselves in this life. I also show that Christians and non-Christians alike have an experience of moral good and evil in themselves that implies that they are, as moral persons, far more than they find in their conscious self-presence. It is, therefore, natural to think that if my being a person so far exceeds my consciousness, I may well have once existed as person even before the awakening of consciousness.     

What Harmony Could and Could Not Be

The notion of harmony has played a pivotal role in a number of debates in the philosophy of logic. Yet there is little agreement as to how the requirement of harmony should be spelled out in detail or even what purpose it is to serve. Most, if not all, conceptions of harmony can already be found in Michael Dummett's seminal discussion of the matter in The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. Hence, if we wish to gain a better understanding of the notion of harmony, we do well to start here. Unfortunately, however, Dummett's discussion is not always easy to follow. The following is an attempt to disentangle the main strands of Dummett's treatment of harmony. The different variants of harmony as well as their interrelations are clarified and their individual shortcomings qua interpretations of harmony are demonstrated. Though no attempt is made to give a detailed alternative account of harmony here, it is hoped that our discussion will lay the ground for an adequate rigorous treatment of this central notion.     

An integrated approach to estimating suicide risk

It is ironic that if we had a perfect predictive instrument we would not be able to recognize it because it could never be validated by its critical outcome criterion. Though some exceptions could occur, we would be obliged to take all available measures to prevent a suicidal outcome in cases where suicide was predicted. After the crisis we could have no way of knowing with certainty whether the person would have suicided or not. Even if we accepted the reality that people are not either 0% or 100% likely to suicide, and developed a perfect scale to estimate degree of risk, we would still be unable to validate it in individual cases. If it indicated "moderate" risk of 2.5-5.0%, for example, and no intervention were offered, we would have to observe one suicide in every 20-40 persons assessed at this level of risk to demonstrate its validity. The key to assessment is obtaining information, primarily regarding present or anticipated pain and the threshold of pain tolerance in the individual involved. Since different persons communicate in a variety of ways--verbal, nonverbal, symbolic, metaphoric, etc., eclecticism in approach is essential. For some clinicians communication will be facilitated most by one style; for others, a different method would be most effective. Thus, the "best" approach is the one that works best given the unique characteristics of the persons involved and under the conditions existing at the time. My own bias is that every assessment, whatever the approach, must include some form of direct inquiry regarding suicidal intent, and that the final decision in this regard must be a subjective and intuitive judgment. Contrary to possible assumptions in the legal world, accurate assessment does not necessarily mean safety. It can serve as a guide to the degree of risk that may be involved in a treatment program, but even low risk management measures may have an adverse outcome without implications of negligence or carelessness. There has been no mention here of biological markers of suicide, which are of much current interest but still in an investigational stage. Similarly, rational suicide has not been mentioned, though our aging population and the status of AIDS are making this issue progressively more important. The principles involved in assessment of risk are the same as with other forms of suicide, however. Finally, we can only presume that more precise assessment will operate to reduce suicidal deaths.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)