Search Results

Do Children Have Rights?

James Griffin

in The Moral and Political Status of Children

Based upon an analysis of the development of the human rights tradition, the language of human rights is best reserved for beings capable of agency. Less restrictive conceptions of rights, such as ... More

Based upon an analysis of the development of the human rights tradition, the language of human rights is best reserved for beings capable of agency. Less restrictive conceptions of rights, such as those that link rights to the protection of needs, leads to a proliferation of rights of a kind that dilutes the normative importance of rights. Denying that infants have rights need not diminish the moral significance of their claims to care. The absence of a right need not signal diminished moral importance.Less

Objections and Conceptions of Moral Equivalence

F. M. Kamm

in Morality, Mortality Volume II: Rights, Duties, and Status

The first section of Ch. 3 is concerned with objections and alternatives to the arguments and analyses presented in the first two chapters on the moral equivalence of killing and letting die. Two ... More

The first section of Ch. 3 is concerned with objections and alternatives to the arguments and analyses presented in the first two chapters on the moral equivalence of killing and letting die. Two issues are dealt with first: the issue of self‐ownership and the negative/positive rights distinction, and the issue of per se moral differences only sometimes making a difference in kill and let‐die cases depending on contexts. The relation that there might be between the killing/letting‐die distinction and the intention/foresight distinction (whose moral significance is described by the Doctrine of Double Effect) is considered. Particular attention is paid to the objections Shelly Kagan has made to the author's proposals and to the alternative views on positive and negative agency that Warren Quinn developed. The second section of the chapter returns to examine the stronger and weaker notions of per se moral equivalence, their differential relation to the moral equivalence of cases, and what they reveal about explanation in ethics and aesthetics.Less

Variation

Shelly Kagan

in The Geometry of Desert

This chapter examines different forms of variation. It first studies the concept of comparative bell motion, which features comparative desert lines that have various orientations. It then discusses ... More

This chapter examines different forms of variation. It first studies the concept of comparative bell motion, which features comparative desert lines that have various orientations. It then discusses comparative skylines that result from disregarding all points of the comparative desert lines except for the peaks, and considering the line that is composed of only the peaks. The next section looks at variation in the amount of good carried out when comparative desert is satisfied, which may depend on the moral significance of the people involved and not on the size of the gap in what is absolutely deserved. It also identifies two ways where certain comparative desert lines might differ. This chapter ends with a discussion of what might happen if only one feature of desert lines is accepted, and introduces the act of sliding up.Less

Political Non-Ranking Biocentrism

Anna Wienhues

in Ecological Justice and the Extinction Crisis: Giving Living Beings their Due

This chapter discusses political non-ranking biocentrism, the most defensible account of such sort in the context of justice. For this, the political constitutes a qualification and non-ranking is a ... More

This chapter discusses political non-ranking biocentrism, the most defensible account of such sort in the context of justice. For this, the political constitutes a qualification and non-ranking is a specification of the biocentric focus. The chapter begins by explaining the political approach to biocentrism. It then turns to how the author understands biocentrism more generally. This is by no means a defence or full description of biocentrism, but the elaboration on a few grounding premises. Finally, the chapter explains why a non-ranking version of biocentrism that does not construct a hierarchy of moral significance is the most convincing account of such sort and considers what implications such a political non-ranking biocentrism has for theorising about justice.Less

Speciesism

Paola Cavalieri

in The Animal Question: Why Non-Human Animals Deserve Human Rights

Despite bioethical discussions of its moral irrelevance, membership in the species Homo sapiens is still appealed to as a criterion for access to superior moral status. Along the lines of the authors ... More

Despite bioethical discussions of its moral irrelevance, membership in the species Homo sapiens is still appealed to as a criterion for access to superior moral status. Along the lines of the authors who have equated ”speciesism” with racism and sexism, I challenge this view on several grounds. I claim that biological characteristics cannot carry direct moral weight. I maintain that species membership cannot be referred to as a mark of a more complex mental endowment because some nonparadigmatic human beings are not so endowed. Finally, I argue that relational defenses of the moral relevance of species membership are either prejudiced or circular.Less

Moral and Political Consequences

Ken Young and Warner R. Schilling

in Super Bomb: Organizational Conflict and the Development of the Hydrogen Bomb

This chapter examines the controversy's real or assumed moral and political aspects. Moral repugnance inflected the scientific judgments of Oppenheimer's General Advisory Committee, triggering ... More

This chapter examines the controversy's real or assumed moral and political aspects. Moral repugnance inflected the scientific judgments of Oppenheimer's General Advisory Committee, triggering discussion of the relative moral significance of thermonuclear bombing, the use of the atomic bomb, and the mass urban bombing campaigns of 1942–1945. More immediate concerns centered on the impact a decision to develop thermonuclear weapons might have on the pattern of international relations. Given a paucity of intelligence, the effects on the Soviet Union's own weapons program, and thereby on the United States' vulnerability, could only be guessed at. The chapter thus considers if the development of the Super would restore the status quo ante-1949 or lead to a thermonuclear arms race and ultimate stalemate—or even the end of the world.Less

Consciousness and the Real Self

Neil Levy

in Consciousness and Moral Responsibility

This chapter begins the substantive work of establishing that consciousness is a necessary condition of moral responsibility by examining the “real self” account of moral responsibility associated ... More

This chapter begins the substantive work of establishing that consciousness is a necessary condition of moral responsibility by examining the “real self” account of moral responsibility associated with Angela Smith, Nomy Arpaly, and others. On this account, agents are responsible for actions that express their real selves. This chapter argues that such expression requires consciousness, because only when the agent is conscious of the facts which give to her actions their moral significance are those facts assessed for conflict and consistency with the attitudes that make her the agent she is. I claim that this rules out moral responsibility for actions performed by agents who experience pathologies of agency, but also those of ordinary agents who just happen not to be conscious of the facts that give to their actions their moral significance.Less

Is the Medium a (Moral) Message?

Noël Carroll

in Engaging the Moving Image

This chapter addresses a question concerning the moral significance of the television medium. By “medium” here, the author is not referring to television as a business that churns out countless ... More

This chapter addresses a question concerning the moral significance of the television medium. By “medium” here, the author is not referring to television as a business that churns out countless stories. Rather, he is referring specifically to the historically standard image, especially in regard to fiction, and to the ways in which it is typically elaborated by structures like editing, camera movement, narrative forms, and the like. Moreover, he is concerned with the moral status of the television image as such, irrespective of the elements that make up an image. Though the distinction between form and content may be historically outmoded and ultimately unsatisfactory, the author aims to, at least, provisionally demarcate his domain of interest by initially adopting the distinction and by saying that this chapter is about the putative moral significance of television from the viewpoint of some of its typical formal features—or, at least, from the viewpoint of a number of its formal features that are alleged to be typical.Less

Moral Status and Moral Significance

Ingmar Persson

in Rethinking Moral Status

This chapter discusses the relations between moral status (or standing) and what the author calls moral significance. Something has moral significance just in case it morally counts for its own sake, ... More

This chapter discusses the relations between moral status (or standing) and what the author calls moral significance. Something has moral significance just in case it morally counts for its own sake, or is something that must be taken into consideration in itself when moral judgments about what ought or ought not to be done are made. The chapter argues that the moral status of something is dependent on what is morally significant about it. Nothing can have moral status if there is not anything morally significant about it. On the other hand, something can be morally significant, even though it does not have moral status. The notion of moral significance is then the more fundamental notion and the notion of moral status could be dispensed with. In fact, it would simplify and clarify matters if it were dispensed with.Less

Credo: Credo virtutem nec unam nec omnipotentam

Gopal Sreenivasan

in Emotion and Virtue

This chapter focuses on the role that emotion plays in virtue, emphasizing that acting virtuously is the central and most important dimension of virtue. It analyses the centrality of roles in virtue ... More

This chapter focuses on the role that emotion plays in virtue, emphasizing that acting virtuously is the central and most important dimension of virtue. It analyses the centrality of roles in virtue as a matter of their being tied to virtuous action, which is more central than every role in virtue that is not tied to virtuous action. It also discusses reference to virtue in other traditions that serves to emphasize the moral significance of certain ways of being, instead of doing. The chapter concentrates on two virtues: compassion and courage, and two emotions: sympathy and fear. It argues that having a modified sympathy trait is indispensable to being a reliably correct judge of which action require compassion in a practical situation.Less

A Reappraisal of the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing

David K. Chan

in Action, Ethics, and Responsibility

This chapter presents the examples commonly used to support the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA) and then shows that they do not sufficiently provide a foundation for the doctrine. The DDA ... More

This chapter presents the examples commonly used to support the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing (DDA) and then shows that they do not sufficiently provide a foundation for the doctrine. The DDA justifies a moral distinction between doing something to bring about harm and doing nothing to prevent harm, defending this distinction on the basis of an account of positive and negative rights. The chapter argues in opposition of the deontological ethics supported by the DDA, which posits that although it is justified to allow one person to die so that one can save a larger number of people, it is not permissible to kill one person to achieve the same purpose, by supporting the notion that it can be justified to minimize harm by killing a smaller number of people, in preference to letting a greater number die. The moral significance of the distinction between killing and letting people die is also argued here.Less

The Consciousness Thesis

Neil Levy

in Consciousness and Moral Responsibility

This chapter describes the scientific basis for the claim that consciousness is epiphenomenal, stemming from the work of Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner. It argues that the perceived challenge to ... More

This chapter describes the scientific basis for the claim that consciousness is epiphenomenal, stemming from the work of Benjamin Libet and Daniel Wegner. It argues that the perceived challenge to responsibility is misplaced: it does not matter whether or not Libet and Wegner are right. The real question turns on the role that information plays in our cognition, not on questions concerning the timing of our conscious states. I then define the thesis to be defended in more detail: that consciousness of the facts that give to our actions their moral significance is a necessary condition of moral responsibility for those acts. It is emphasized that the consciousness at issue is an informational state, not phenomenal consciousness.Less

Ordering Moral Deliberations

Robert A. Burt

Frank Iacobucci (ed.)

in Justice and Empathy: Toward a Constitutional Ideal

This chapter points out that judges are not the only actors through whom democratic values founded on empathic mutual respect and accountability can be promoted. At the center of this study is the ... More

This chapter points out that judges are not the only actors through whom democratic values founded on empathic mutual respect and accountability can be promoted. At the center of this study is the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the passage of which was threatened by a Southern filibuster that could be ended by a favorable vote for cloture. It turned out that one senator from Alaska was key to the favorable vote; his vote was cast in a most dramatic way, as he was ultimately persuaded by his realization of the moral significance of what was at issue. The chapter notes that the senator was not commanded by party leaders to vote but left alone to reflect on the matter—he was persuaded by his conscience to do the right thing.Less