Death by non-feeding: Not in the baby's best interests

It has recently been suggested that doctors have a duty to act in their patient's best interest and that this duty demands that life-sustaining treatment—including food and fluids—should sometimes be withheld or withdrawn and the patient allowed to die. In this article, the author explores the scope of the ‘best interests principle’ in the context of treatment decisions for seriously handicapped newborn infants. She argues that those who hold that it is permissible to starve or dehydrate an infant to death are mistaken to think that this course of action is in the infant's best interests. While it may be true that there are times whendeath is, everything considered, in an infant's best interests, a slow and distressingmethod of bringing death about is not. Since death by dehydration and starvation is not benign, the withholding of food and fluids is generally not in an infant's best interests. The author concludes by suggesting thatwhenever the withdrawal or non-employment of life-sustaining means imposes a heavy burden on the infant, the ‘best interests principle’ would demand that the infant be killed rather than allowed to die.     

Ross and the particularism/generalism divide

W. D. Ross is commonly considered to be a generalist about prima facie duty but a particularist about absolute duty. That is, many philosophers hold that Ross accepts that there are true moral principles involving prima facie duty but denies that there are any true moral principles involving absolute duty. I agree with the former claim: Ross surely accepts prima facie moral principles. However, in this paper, I challenge the latter claim. Ross, I argue, is no more a particularist about absolute duty than a utilitarian or a Kantian is. While this conclusion is interesting in its own right, it is also important, I argue, because it prevents us from overlooking Ross's criterion of moral obligation and because it may have implications on the broader debate between particularists and generalists.     

The Market for Bodily Parts: Kant and duties to oneself

ABSTRACT The demand for bodily parts such as organs is increasing, and individuals in certain circumstances are responding by offering parts of their bodies for sale. Is there anything wrong in this? Kant had arguments to suggest that there is, namely that we have duties towards our own bodies, among which is the duty not to sell parts of them. Kant's reasons for holding this view are examined, and found to depend on a notion of what is intrinsically degrading. Rom Harré's recent revision of Kant's argument, in terms of an obligation to preserve the body's organic integrity, is considered. Harré's view does not rule out all acts of selling, but he too ultimately depends on a test of what is intrinsically degrading. Both his view and Kant's are rejected in favour of a view which argues that it does make sense to speak of duties towards our own bodies, grounded in the duty to promote the flourishing of human beings, including ourselves. This provides a reason for opposing the sale of bodily parts, and the current trend towards the market ethic in health care provision.     

Shedding Dialectical Tiers: A Social-Epistemic View

Is there a duty to respond to objections in order to present a good argument? Ralph Johnson argues that there is such a duty, which he refers to as the “dialectical tier“ of an argument. I deny the (alleged) duty primarily on grounds that it would exert too great a demand on arguers, harming argumentation practices. The valuable aim of responding to objections, which Johnson 's dialectical tier is meant to satisfy, can be achieved in better ways, as argumentation is a social-epistemic activity.     

Informed consent and the disclosure of risks of treatment: The Supreme Court of Canada Decides

The requirement for disclosure of risks of treatment as part of informed consent came before the Supreme Court of Canada in two 1980 cases. The Court found the duty of disclosure of risks to be based in negligence and not battery. The scope of the duty is not to be determined by medical evidence alone and requires the physician to disclose the nature of the proposed treatment, its gravity, any material risks and any special or unusual risks as well as answering in a reasonable way all specific questions asked by the patient. Whether the patient would have decided differently if all the information were known is an objective test, based on what the reasonable person in the patient's particular circumstance would do.     

Kant,Oppression, and the Possibility of Nonculpable Failures to Respect Oneself

I argue that Kant's ethical framework cannot countenance a certain kind of failure to respect oneself that can occur within oppressive social contexts. Kant's assumption that any person, qua rational being, has guaranteed epistemic access to the moral law as the standard of good action and the capacity to act upon this standard makes autonomy an achievement within the individual agent's power, but this is contrary to a feminist understanding of autonomy as a relational achievement that can be thwarted by the systematic attack on autonomy that occurs within oppressive social conditions. Insofar as Kant's negative duty of self‐respect is unable to accommodate the ways immersion in oppressive social environments can warp an individual's understanding of what she is owed and capable of as a moral agent, it perpetuates the cruelty of unjust social systems in the guise of respecting individual autonomy. I conclude by considering Carol Hay's argument that those who are oppressed have an obligation to themselves to resist their own oppression, in order to explore how this limitation in how Kant conceives of the duty to respect the self may reach expression in contemporary ethical theory inspired by Kant.     

Cognitive Self‐Enhancement as a Duty to Oneself: A Kantian Perspective

Recently some bioethicists and neuroscientists have argued for an imperative of chemical cognitive enhancement. This imperative is usually based on consequentialist grounds. In this paper, the topic of cognitive self‐enhancement is discussed from a Kantian point of view in order to shed new light on the controversial debate. With Kant, it is an imperfect duty to oneself to strive for perfecting one's own natural and moral capacities beyond one's natural condition, but there is no duty to enhance others. A Kantian approach does not directly lead to a duty of chemical cognitive self‐enhancement, but it also does not clearly rule out that this type of enhancement can be an appropriate means to the end of self‐improvement. This paper shows the benefits of a Kantian view, which offers a consistent ideal of self‐perfection and teaches us a lesson about the crucial relevance of the attitude that underlies one's striving for cognitive self‐improvement: the lesson of treating oneself as an end in itself and not as mere means to the end of better output.     

Forgiveness and Moral Development

Forgiveness is clearly an important aspect of our moral lives, yet surprisingly Kant, one of the most important authors in the history of Western ethics, seems to have very little to say about it. Some authors explain this omission by noting that forgiveness sits uncomfortably in Kant’s moral thought: forgiveness seems to have an ineluctably ‘elective’ aspect which makes it to a certain extent arbitrary; thus it stands in tension with Kant’s claim that agents are autonomous beings, capable of determining their own moral status through rational reflection and choice. Other authors recognise that forgiveness plays a role in Kant’s philosophy but fail to appreciate the nature of this duty and misrepresent the Kantian argument in support of it. This paper argues that there is space in Kant’s philosophy for a genuine theory of forgiveness and hopes to lay the grounds for a correct interpretation of this theory. I argue that from a Kantian perspective, forgiveness is not ‘elective’ but, at least in some cases, morally required. I claim that, for Kant, we have an imperfect duty of virtue to forgive repentant wrongdoers that have embarked on a project of self-reflection and self-reform. I develop a novel argument in support of this duty by drawing on Kant’s theory of rational agency, the thesis of radical evil, Kant’s theory of moral development, and the formula of humanity. However, it must be noted that this is a conditional duty and Kant’s position also entails that absence of repentance on the part of the wrongdoer should be taken as evidence of a lack of commitment to a project of self-reflection and self-reform. In such cases, Kant claims, we have a perfect duty to ourselves not to forgive unrepentant wrongdoers. I argue that this duty should be understood as one of the duties of self-esteem, which involves the duty to respect and recognise our own dignity as rational beings.     

A Direct Kantian Duty to Animals

Kant's view that we have only indirect duties to animals fails to capture the intuitive notion that wronging animals transgresses duties we owe to those animals. Here I argue that a suitably modified Kantianism can allow for direct duties to animals and, in particular, an imperfect duty to promote animal welfare without unduly compromising its core theoretical commitments, especially its commitments concerning the source and nature of our duties toward rational beings. The basis for such duties is that animal welfare, on my revised Kantian view, is neither a conditioned nor unconditioned good, but a final and nonderivative good that ought to be treated as an end‐in‐itself. However, this duty to promote animal welfare operates according to a broadly consequentialist logic that both accords well with our considered judgments about our duties to animals and explains differences between these duties and duties owed to rational agents.     

Concerning a Moral Duty to Cheat in Games

Stimulated by Hugh Upton's recent article in this journal, in which he argues that there can be a moral duty to cheat in games, I attempt to examine his claims. Much of what he writes revolves around examples from two sports, cricket and rugby, and with differing connections to those games' rules. While the example from cricket is said to involve a breach of the spirit of that game, it is contravention of the written rules of rugby on which the latter part of Upton's case focuses. Given limited space I concentrate on the cricketing example, but several of the points I make about that apply also to when rule-breaking itself is involved. My conclusions express doubts about whether a case for a moral duty to cheat in games has been established.     

Style and responsibility: Medicine in postmodernity

To what extent can postmodern developments be observed in modern medicine and which theories of postmodern philosophy can we draw on with regard to medicine's theoretical problem? This article explores these questions with special emphasis on the epistemological status of medicine, the concept of disease, and the anthropological model. It is examined whether medicine's inherent duty to act can be questioned in the light of the plurality that characterizes postmodernity. It is concluded that, according to postmodern philosophy, medicine should be characterized by a justified variety of paradigms. Cooperation within the variety must continue to be guaranteed, always in favor of the constitutive moral duty of medicine.     

Avoiding Vice and Pursuing Virtue: Kant on Perfect Duties and ‘Prudential latitude’

To fulfill a perfect duty an agent must avoid vice, yet when an agent refrains from acting on a prohibited maxim she still must do something. I argue that the setting of morally required ends ought to consistently inform an agent's judgment regarding what is to be done beyond compliance with perfect, negative duties. Kant's assertion of a puzzling version of latitude of choice within his discussion of perfect duties motivates and complicates the case I make for a more expansive interpretation of the duty to pursue virtue.     

Legal and Ethical implications of HIV and Duty to Warn For Counselors: Does Tarasoff Apply?

The Tarasoff decision has been used as a benchmark in the professional literature for arguments on a counselor's duty to warn individuals who are sexually intimate with a client diagnosed as having HIV infection. Implications of the current application of Tarasoff principles to those cases are considered and conclusions are drawn that question such an application. The counseling profession's ethical standards related to these issues and the professional literature are reviewed with regard to current legislative and case law. Potential alternate courses of action that would be indicated by a broad application of Tarasoff are presented.     

WHAT ABOUT ISAAC?: Rereading Fear and Trembling and Rethinking Kierkegaardian Ethics

In this essay I offer a reading of Fear and Trembling that responds to critiques of Kierkegaardian ethics as being, as Brand Blanshard claims, “morally nihilistic,” as Emmanuel Levinas contends, ethically violent, and, as Alasdair MacIntyre charges, simply irrational. I argue that by focusing on Isaac's singularity as the very condition for Abraham's “ordeal,” the book presents a story about responsible subjectivity. Rather than standing in competition with the relation to God, the relation to other people is, thus, inscribed into this very relation. Fear and Trembling, I contend, advocates a bidirectional responsibility that is constitutive of subjectivity itself and, as such, actually resonates with certain aspects of Levinasian ethics. I conclude by suggesting that Abraham's ordeal is not due to the conflict between a nonreligious duty and the duty to God, but instead reflects a tension that is internal to the life of faith itself.     

Kant on International Distributive Justice1

This paper concentrates on the way Kant's distinction between duties of right and duties of virtue operates at the interstate level. I argue that his Right of Nations (V ölkerrecht) can be interpreted as a duty to establish a kind of interstate distributive justice (that is, as a duty to secure states in their independence and territorial possessions), which is called for to secure domestic distributive justice and to protect individuals' freedom and private property. Or at least this is ‘ideal theory’ for, as I specify, this cosmopolitan linkage is compromised by Kant's endeavour to accomodate the existence of non-republican states.     

Guilt feelings and the intelligibility of moral duties

G.E.M. Anscombe argued that we should dispense with deontic concepts when doing ethics, if it is psychologically possible to do so. In response, I contend that deontic concepts are constitutive of the common moral experience of guilt. This has two consequences for Anscombe's position. First, seeing that guilt is a deontic emotion, we should recognize that Anscombe's qualification on her thesis applies: psychologically, we need deontology to understand our obligations and hence whether our guilt is warranted. Second, the fact that guilt is a deontic moral emotion debunks Anscombe's claim that deontic concepts are a relic of the Western, religious past: guilt feelings–hence the idea of moral duty as well–can be found in cultures without an ethics of divine command. Modern moral philosophers' interest in oughts and obligations is not an academic hobbyhorse, but a vital concern arising out of a primeval human emotion.     

Rationales for organ donation: Charity or duty?

Media appeals encouraging people to sign organ donor cards suggest that donating one's own organs after death or donating the organs of a deceased family member is an act of charity, i.e., something which it would be meritorious for people to do but not wrong to avoid. This paper argues to the contrary that posthumous organ donation is a moral duty, a duty of the type that rests at the base of recently enacted state “Good Samaritan” laws which require a witness to an emergency situation to render aid to the victim(s) when this can be done at minimal cost/risk to the potential rescuer.     

Kant on Duty in the Groundwork

Barbara Herman offers an interpretation of Kant??s Groundwork on which an action has moral worth if the primary motive for the action is the motive of duty. She offers this approach in place of Richard Henson??s sufficiency-based interpretation, according to which an action has moral worth when the motive of duty is sufficient by itself to generate the action. Noa Latham criticizes Herman??s account and argues that we cannot make sense of the position that an agent can hold multiple motives for action and yet be motivated by only one of them, concluding that we must accept a face-value interpretation of the Groundwork where morally worthy actions obtain only when the agent??s sole motive is the motive of duty. This paper has two goals, one broad and one more constrained. The broader objective is to argue that interpretations of moral worth, as it is presented in the Groundwork, depend on interpretations of Kant??s theory of freedom. I show that whether we can make sense of the inclusion of nonmoral motives in morally worthy actions depends on whether the ??always causal framework?? is consistent with Kant??s theory of freedom. The narrow goal is to show that if we adopt an ??always causal?? framework for moral motivation, then Herman??s position and her critique of the sufficiency-based approach fail. Furthermore, within this framework I will specify a criterion for judging whether an action is determined by the motive of duty, even in the presence of nonmoral motives. Thus, I argue Latham??s conclusion that we must accept a face-value interpretation is incorrect.     

Is Not Doing the Washing Up Like Draft Dodging? The Military Model for Resisting a Gender Based Labour Division

I will examine a version of Bubeck's and Robeyns' proposals for ‘care duty’ which looks at the ways in which care work is analogous to defence work, and what the implications are for the best models in terms both of distributive justice and serving the common good. My own analysis will differ from Bubeck's and Robeyns' in two respects. First I will apply their arguments to all aspects of care including housework. This will mean making a case for housework counting as a form of care work as it is not usually regarded as such, and in particular, would probably be excluded from Robeyns' own account as she follows Bubeck's earlier characterisation of care as involving face‐to‐face interaction. Secondly, I will explore various ways in which care, and especially housework, could and has been distributed by appealing to a number of military models, concluding that the best gender‐just distribution of care requires a style of care experience modelled on universal military service. I will consider a number of objections to my view before concluding that not doing one's share of the housework could indeed come to be regarded as not doing one's duty as a citizen.     

The compossibility of impossibilities and ars obligatoria

In this paper I present a new approach to the so called ars obligatoria of the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. In standard medieval disputations an opponent attacks a thesis defended by the respondent. Some thirteenth-century authors distinguish two duties that the respondent has. First, he must grant whatever seems to be true. Second, he must grant whatever follows from what he has already granted. When the first duty is overridden by the specific duty to defend a false thesis (which is the main requirement of ars obligatoria), the second duty becomes the logical duty of keeping the set of one's answers consistent. A natural result of this model is the development of a concept of possibility based on the syntactic concept of formally correct inference, and not on any semantic considerations