Cultural appropriation and oppression

Philosophical Studies - In this paper, I present an outline of the oppression account of cultural appropriation and argue that it offers the best explanation for the wrongfulness of the varied and...     

RIGHT ACT, VIRTUOUS MOTIVE

Abstract: The concepts of virtue and right action are closely connected, in that we expect people with virtuous motives to at least often act rightly. Two well-known views explain this connection by defining one of the concepts in terms of the other. Instrumentalists about virtue identify virtuous motives as those that lead to right acts; virtue-ethicists identify right acts as those that are or would be done from virtuous motives. This essay outlines a rival explanation, based on the "higher-level" account of virtue defended in the author's Virtue, Vice, and Value . On this account rightness and virtue go together because each is defined by a (different) relation to some other, more basic moral concept. Their frequent coincidence is therefore like a correlation between A and B based not on either's causing the other but on their being joint effects of a single common cause.     

Rethinking Procreation: Why it Matters Why We Have Children

Attempts to explain the intuitive wrongfulness in alleged ‘wrongful life’ cases commonly do so by attributing harmful wrongdoing to the procreators in question. Such an approach identifies the resulting child as having been, in some sense, culpably harmed by their coming into existence. By contrast, and enlarging on work elsewhere, this paper explores the relevance of procreative motivation, rather than harm, for determining the morality of procreative conduct. I begin by reviewing the main objection to the harm‐based approach, which arises out of Derek Parfit's analysis of the non‐identity problem and its implications for preconception cases. Most attempts to avoid the non‐identity objection adopt either an impersonal harm approach or draw on some version of a metaphysical modal counterpart theory to defend a person‐affecting harm account. But here I develop an alternative view. The proposed account construes the wrongness in the considered cases as ‘evil’ rather than harm, and the type of evil in question as being of a non‐grievance, welfare‐connected, collective kind. Understanding the wrongness in this way offers a basis for the view that it matters morally why we procreate, and not just whether or how we do so.     

Exploitation in biomedical research

This essay analyzesexploitation in biomedical research in terms ofthree basic elements: harm, disrespect, orinjustice. There are also degrees ofexploitation, ranging from highly exploitationto minimally exploitation. Althoughexploitation is prima facie wrongful,some exploitative research studies are morallyjustified, all things considered. The reasonan exploitative study can still be ethical isthat other moral considerations, such as theautonomy of the research subject or the socialbenefits of research, may sometimes justifystudies that are minimally exploitative. Calling a research project exploitative doesnot end the debate about the merits of thestudy but invites one to ask additionalquestions about how the study is exploitative,and whether the study is justifiablenevertheless.     

Over-Determined Harms and Harmless Pluralities

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.     

Similarity as threat: A motivational explanation of self–other similarity judgment asymmetry

People tend to judge others to be more similar to themselves than themselves are to others. This self–other similarity judgment asymmetry was often explained by a cognitive model. However, some findings were inconsistent with this model, implying that there might be complementary processes underlying such asymmetry. Although a motivational explanation has been proposed to account for the asymmetry, little evidence has been accumulated to verify this explanation and differentiate it from the cognitive model. The current research tested both the core assumption of the motivational explanation as well as a hypothesis derived only from it. Results suggest that the perception of oneself as being similar to others was more threatening to people's uniqueness than the perception of others as being similar to oneself. Individuals with high need for uniqueness exhibited greater asymmetry than did individuals with low need. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Together in Need: Relational Selfhood,Vulnerability to Harm,and Enriching Attachments

Connections between one's own welfare and that of others abound if we pause to look for them, although philosophical theories of selfhood have only very recently begun to incorporate these connections. This essay draws on recent work on need to argue that one of the strongest expressions of these connections is to be found in the relational needs that they can generate. While paying heed to needs that arise from the relational nature of selfhood at large, this essay pays particular attention to what I call “transpersonal needs”: needs that occur when one's experience of the needs of others gives rise to certain needs of one's own. I argue that the best criterion for defining need is vulnerability to harm, but this does not mean that having a need is something that is purely harmful. Having certain needs can also enrich one's life. Further, while every need entails a corresponding vulnerability to harm, some of these potential harms are more detrimental to one's welfare than others, with some relational needs standing among those that can result in the greatest harm if unanswered.     

Are animal models predictive for humans?

It is one of the central aims of the philosophy of science to elucidate the meanings of scientific terms and also to think critically about their application. The focus of this essay is the scientific term predict and whether there is credible evidence that animal models, especially in toxicology and pathophysiology, can be used to predict human outcomes. Whether animals can be used to predict human response to drugs and other chemicals is apparently a contentious issue. However, when one empirically analyzes animal models using scientific tools they fall far short of being able to predict human responses. This is not surprising considering what we have learned from fields such evolutionary and developmental biology, gene regulation and expression, epigenetics, complexity theory, and comparative genomics.     

Fickle consent

Why is consent revocable? In other words, why must we respect someone's present dissent at the expense of her past consent? This essay argues against act-based explanations and in favor of a rule-based explanation. A rule prioritizing present consent will serve our interests the best, in light of our interests in having flexibility over our consent and in minimizing the possibility of error in people's judgments about whether we consent.     

Smuggled into Existence: Nonconsequentialism, Procreation, and Wrongful Disability

The wrongful disability problem arises whenever a disability-causing, and therefore (presumptively) wrongful, procreative act is a necessary condition for the existence of a person whose life is otherwise worth living. It is a problem because it seems to involve no harm, and therefore no wrongful treatment, vis-à-vis that person. This essay defends the nonconsequentialist, rights-based, account of the wrong-making features of wrongful disability. It distinguishes between the person-affecting restriction, roughly the idea that wrongdoing is always the wronging of some person, and the harm principle, the idea that all wrongings are harmings. It argues, first, that the harm principle should be rejected, in light of offending intuitions in salient examples. Rejection of the harm principle is not only independently plausible, but also paves the way for a nonconsequentialist diagnosis of wrongful disability. This diagnosis conceives of wrongdoing as a failure to express adequate respect for the humanity or personhood inherent in the person created. The paper defends a theory of humanity-respecting rights that accommodates plausible intuitions about satisficing and fairness, without resorting to consequentialist premises that lead to well-known impossibility results and paradoxes.     

Deconstructing the Doctrine of Double Effect

This paper examines the doctrine of double effect as it is typically applied. The difficulty of distinguishing between what we intend and what we foresee is highlighted. In particular, Warren Quinn's articulation of that distinction is examined and criticised. It is then proposed that the only credible way that we can be said to foresee that a harm will result and mean something other than that we intend it to result, is if we are not certain that that harm will result. The ramifications of this are explored. The paper concludes with a moral evaluation of a variety of cases that have harmful outcomes. It is recommended both that we abandon the doctrine of double effect and that we cease to describe cases with harmful outcomes in a dishonest way.     

Rescuing Fair-Play as a Justification for Punishment

The debate over whether ‘fair-play’ can serve as a justification for legal punishment has recently resumed with an exchange between Richard Dagger and Antony Duff. According to the fair-play theorist, criminals deserve punishment for breaking the law because in so doing the criminal upsets a fair distribution of benefits and burdens, and punishment rectifies this unfairness. Critics frequently level two charges against this idea. The first is that it often gives the wrong explanation of what makes crime deserving of punishment, since the wrongfulness of murder is not primarily about unfairness. The second is that it implies that all crimes deserve the same degree of punishment, because all crimes create the same degree of unfairness. These objections are viewed as revealing fatal flaws in the theory. Although Dagger attempts to meet these objections by drawing on political theory, Duff responds that this still draws upon the wrong kind of resources for meeting these objections. This paper argues that these two objections rest on a crucial mistake that has been overlooked by both the defenders and critics of fair-play. This mistake results from failing to distinguish between what justifies punishment as a response to crime (which requires a common element to all crime) and what justifies attaching particular penalties to crimes (which requires making distinctions in the severity of crime). The arguments presented will give reasons to consider fair-play as a viable justification for legal punishment.     

KILLING, SELF-DEFENSE, AND BAD LUCK

This essay argues on behalf of a hybrid theory for an ethics of self-defense understood as the Forfeiture-Partiality Theory. The theory weds the idea that a malicious attacker forfeits the right to life to the idea that we are permitted to prefer one's life to another's in cases of involuntary harm or threat. The theory is meant to capture our intuitions both about instances in which we can draw a moral asymmetry between attacker and victim and cases in which we cannot. I develop the theory by attending to instances of intentional, villainous harm and instances of involuntary danger—the latter of which are a matter of bad luck. I call some bad luck cases "Interpersonal Lottery Conflicts." These cases refer to potentially lethal conflicts into which parties are thrown as victims of circumstance. Although neither party has a moral advantage over another, that fact does not preclude permissible self-defense.     

Limits on risks for healthy volunteers in biomedical research

Healthy volunteers in biomedical research often face significant risks in studies that offer them no medical benefits. The U.S. federal research regulations and laws adopted by other countries place no limits on the risks that these participants face. In this essay, I argue that there should be some limits on the risks for biomedical research involving healthy volunteers. Limits on risk are necessary to protect human participants, institutions, and the scientific community from harm. With the exception of self-experimentation, limits on research risks faced by healthy volunteers constitute a type of soft, impure paternalism because participants usually do not fully understand the risks they are taking. I consider some approaches to limiting research risks and propose that healthy volunteers in biomedical research should not be exposed to greater than a 1% chance of serious harm, such as death, permanent disability, or severe illness or injury. While this guideline would restrict research risks, the limits would not be so low that they would prevent investigators from conducting valuable research. They would, however, set a clear upper boundary for investigators and signal to the scientific community and the public that there are limits on the risks that healthy participants may face in research. This standard provides guidance for decisions made by oversight bodies, but it is not an absolute rule. Investigators can enroll healthy volunteers in studies involving a greater than 1% chance of serious harm if they show that the research addresses a compelling public health or social problem and that the risk of serious harm is only slightly more than 1%. The committee reviewing the research should use outside experts to assess these risks.     

Affect,artificial intelligence,and internal space

Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) affectless? This essay explores a small fragment from the early history of AI when questions about affect became pressing. It focuses on biographical and intellectual data about Walter Pitts, one of the important early practitioners of cybernetics. The essay addresses two interlocking difficulties in early AI: (1) it points to the harm caused to a science that establishes itself by inhibiting the affective capacities of the mind; and (2) it ponders the melancholic effects of a research milieu that, contemptuously, rejects knowledge of internal psychological space.     

On Black Women, “In Defense of Transracialism,” and Imperial Harm

This essay is a response to the events surrounding Hypatia's publication of “In Defense of Transracialism.” It does not take up the question of “transracialism” itself, but rather attempts to shed light both on what some black women may have experienced following from the publication of the article and on how we might understand this experience as harm. It also suggests one way for feminist journals to reduce the likelihood of similar harms occurring in the future. I begin by describing a discussion that occurred in my classroom that bears some resemblance to the much larger debate that emerged around Hypatia. Next, I elaborate a concept of imperial harm. I then address how this concept comes to be relevant to the experience of black women within the discipline of philosophy in general, before briefly describing how academic feminism (including feminist philosophy) has served as a particular site of imperial harm for black women. Finally, touching on the idea of expressive harm, I conclude with an appeal for the adoption of more feminist publication ethics.     

THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION AND MODERNITY: WILLIAM CAVANAUGH'S THEOPOLITICAL IMAGINATION AND CHARLES TAYLOR'S MODERN SOCIAL IMAGINATION1

This essay argues that William Cavanaugh's ‘Theopolitical Imagination’ uncovers some of the possibilities latent within the Catholic imagination. While his critique of modernity is often persuasive, this essay questions whether Cavanaugh's assessment of modernity can be complemented by a more differentiated approach. What Charles Taylor provides is both a bolstering of Cavanaugh's thesis about the power of the imagination and an alternative: that there is a way of thinking about the relationship between the Church and modernity other than in dialectical terms – namely a ‘Ricci reading’ of modernity.