Experimentation on humans and nonhumans

In this article, I argue that it is wrong to conduct any experiment on a nonhuman which we would regard as immoral were it to be conducted on a human, because such experimentation violates the basic moral rights of sentient beings. After distinguishing the rights approach from the utilitarian approach, I delineate basic concepts. I then raise the classic “argument from marginal cases” against those who support experimentation on nonhumans but not on humans. After next replying to six important objections against that argument, I contend that moral agents are logically required to accord basic moral rights to every sentient being. I conclude by providing criteria for distinguishing ethical from unethical experimentation.     

Real World Justice

Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to lifelong severe poverty with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. We citizens of the rich countries are conditioned to think of this problem as an occasion for assistance. Thanks in part to the rationalizations dispensed by our economists, most of us do not realize how deeply we are implicated, through the new global economic order our states have imposed, in this ongoing catastrophe. My sketch of how we are so implicated follows the argument of my book, World Poverty and Human Rights, but takes the form of a response to the books critics.     

The Cosmopolitan Imperative: Global Justice Through Accountable Integration

Cosmopolitan political theorists hold that our obligations to distribute resources to others do not halt at state borders, but most do not advocate a restructuring of the global system to achieve their distributive aims. This article argues that promoting democratically accountable economic and political integration between states would be the most effective way to enable cosmopolitan, or routine, tax-financed, trans-state distributions. Movement toward a more integrated global system should encourage the view that larger sets of persons have interests in common that should be protected and promoted in common. Democratically accountable integration also should enable those within less-affluent states to more vigorously press trans-state distributive claims. The still-evolving E.U. is examined as a partial model for the integrated alternative in other geographic regions, as well as, in the much longer term, for some form of democratic global government capable of ensuring that any person born anywhere would have access to adequate resources and life opportunities.A version of this paper was presented at the global justice mini-conference at the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division) annual meeting, Pasadena, California, 26–29 March 2004. Some of the arguments in this article were introduced in Luis Cabrera, Political Theory of Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Case for the World State (London: Routledge, 2004), Chapter 4. They have been revised and further developed for this article. I would like to thank for their generous comments Jamie Mayerfeld, James A. Caporaso and Mika LaVaque-Manty.     

Fairness

The main body of this paper assesses a leading recent theory of fairness, a theory put forward by John Broome. I discuss Broome's theory partly because of its prominence and partly because I think it points us in the right direction, even if it takes some missteps. In the course of discussing Broome's theory, I aim to cast light on the relation of fairness to consistency, equality, impartiality, desert, rights, and agreements. Indeed, before I start assessing Broome's theory, I discuss two very popular conceptions of fairness that contrast with his. One of these very popular conceptions identifies fairness with the equal and impartial application of rules. The other identifies fairness with all-things-considered moral rightness.     

Message from the Indigenous Peoples Pre-Assembly Meeting

This is the message from the meeting of Indigenous Peoples held before the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which met in Karlsruhe, Germany, in August–September 2022. The Indigenous Peoples Pre-Assembly Meeting gathered participants from 40 different Indigenous nations who called on the WCC and its member churches to support them in their journeys to recover their God-given identities, stating in the message that “the road to reconciliation leads through restoration of justice, because without justice, we cannot stand as equals.”     

The Evaluation of Parental Fitness in Termination of Parental Rights Cases: A Functional-Contextual Perspective

This article highlights issues involved in carrying out evaluations for termination of parental rights cases and suggests caution for mental health professionals doing such evaluations. It argues that current models of parenting that come from the child development and child maltreatment fields are too narrow in their focus to act as a foundation for such evaluations and are often based on research with select groups in our society making them open to bias. Similarly, it is argued that traditional assessment measures are limited in their utility for responding to the kinds of relational and basic care questions asked in such evaluations. A functional-contextual model is offered as an alternative with examples of potentially useful measurement strategies. With such a frame as a starting point, the field might progress to providing more useful information to courts. Future research directions to improve this practice arena are discussed.     

Methods for overcoming methodological problems in the measurement of client satisfaction in a clinical psychology practice

This study surveyed client satisfaction with an outpatient service in clinical psychology at a university-based clinic in New Zealand. In an effort to collect honest opinions rather than grateful testimonials from clients, special consideration was given to the methodology used. In the absence of guidelines on how to analyze client satisfaction data, a variety of techniques was developed. These methods and analyses are reviewed and recommendations made with regard to future use.     

The engineer’s moral right to reputational fairness

This essay explores the issue of the moral rights of engineers. An historical case study is presented in which an accomplished, loyal, senior engineer was apparently wronged as a result of actions taken by his employer in pursuit of legitimate business interests. Belief that the engineer was wronged is justified by showing that what happened to him violated what can validly be termed one of his moral rights as an engineer: the right to reputational fairness. It is then argued that, this right notwithstanding, under certain circumstances it is morally permissible for employers to override it. The paper concludes by identifying two complementary facets of this right, discussing its scope, and indicating what is required of employers obliged to respect it in two types of action contexts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1993. I am indebted to Stephanie J. Bird, Taft Broome, Deborah Johnson, Carl Mitcham, Walter Vincenti, Vivian Weil, and Caroline Whitbeck for helpful critical comments. Professor of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management and, by courtesy, of Civil Engineering, and in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, School of Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, 94305-2120.     

In Defense of the Responsibility to Protect

This essay responds to Esther Reed's recent critique of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle in this journal. It argues that Reed fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents R2P. Her critique of R2P would have served well as a critique of the earlier concept of humanitarian intervention had it been penned in the late 1990s. But most of the problems and dangers that Reed identifies are in reality the very problems and dangers that R2P seeks to overcome, and I suggest that it does overcome them quite successfully. R2P does not impose Western ideals on the rest of the world, weaken the legal restrictions on the use of force, or promote abusive interventionism. Rather, it offers a bold but carefully constructed framework that holds the promise of promoting the protection of vulnerable populations from mass atrocities.     

A THEORETICAL APPRECIATION OF THE ETHIC OF SOLIDARITY IN POLAND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER

The remarkable movement known as Solidarity recently celebrated its twenty‐fifth anniversary in Poland. This essay provides a theoretical appreciation of the values and principles that guided and undergirded the movement, which greatly contributed to the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. This systematic overview of the ethic of the Solidarity movement fills a lacuna in the field of ethics because ethicists who are interested in the concept of solidarity have largely overlooked the Polish experience of the 1980s. This essay attempts to describe the key ingredients of the Polish ethic of solidarity by analyzing both Polish treatises on the subject and accounts of events on the ground. It elaborates conceptual categories and describes characteristic features of the movement in order to provide a phenomenological account of the nature of solidarity embodied in Poland during this era. These categories and characteristics include unity among differences, the foundation of hope at the movement's roots, self‐sacrifice and heroism, promoting the equality and dignity of all, the centrality of participation, the affirmation of “bread and freedom,” an option for the poor, and the insistence on life in truth. Although this essay does not attempt to demonstrate the relevance of this “thick” ethic of solidarity to capitalist, democratic societies today, by way of conclusion it raises questions pertaining to the contemporary significance of the Polish ethic of solidarity.