Moral Permissibility Research Articles

Ought implies can, asymmetrical freedom, and the practical irrelevance of transcendental freedom

AbstractIn this paper, I demonstrate that Kant's commitment to an asymmetry between the control conditions for praise and blame is explained by his endorsement of the principle Ought Implies Can (OIC). I argue that Kant accepts only a relatively weak version of OIC and that he is hence committed only to a relatively weak requirement of alternate possibilities for moral blame. This suggests that whether we are transcendentally free is irrelevant to questions about moral permissibility and moral blameworthiness.

The painful implications of four-dimensionalism

Summary This paper introduces two conceptions of persons and their pain(s). The “Naive Cartesian View” holds that persons are atomic, synchronically and diachronically unified entities that directly exemplify pain. While the “Four-dimensionalist View” holds that persons are non-atomic entities, whose pains are directly exemplified by their person-stages and only derivatively exemplified by the person. Two forms of “Four-dimensionalist View” are developed: “Cartesian Four-Dimensionalism”, and “Stage Four-Dimensionalism”. Against “Cartesian Four-Dimensionalism”, I argue that it (i) requires us to deny the moral permissibility of voluntarily chosen pains (ii) to believe that there more harms in the world than we thought, and (iii) it raises difficulties for our understanding of redemptive and pedagogical pains. Against “Stage Four-Dimensionalism”, I argue that it denies commonsense truths about punishment, compensation, and temporal neutrality, and well-being. The “Naive Cartesian View” avoids these difficulties, so we have reason to prefer it, and a metaphysical theory consistent with it.

Two Arguments for Objectivism about Moral Permissibility

ABSTRACT Is what we’re morally permitted to do grounded in our subjective situation? Subjectivists maintain that it is. Objectivists deny this. I shall offer two arguments for Objectivism about moral permissibility.

Christian thought and the moral permissibility of nuclear weapons

The moral permissibility of possessing and employing nuclear weapons is something with which Christians have long wrestled. At least three distinct approaches exist to addressing the use of nuclear weapons within broader Christian thought. The three explored here are those of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, and of extreme Christian Apocalypticists. Although these approaches are each rooted in Christian principles, each exhibits unique strengths and weaknesses and leads to a different conclusion. Instead, Prudential Christian Realism is suggested as an approach worthy of discussion given today’s global security environment.

Редактирование генома человека: правовые ограничения, моральные дозволения или религиозные запреты?

Создание технологии редактирования генома CRISPR-Cas9, открывшей возможности «совершенствования» физических и когнитивных характеристик человека, резко актуализировало проблему глобальных правовых гарантий безопасного технологического развития в данной области. В настоящее время международное регулирование геномных исследований и технологий осуществляется в основном посредством разного рода рекомендаций и деклараций, которые выражают консенсус, достигаемый в рамках морального дискурса. Трудности перевода регулирования на правовой уровень наглядно демонстрирует опыт европейской Конвенции о защите прав и достоинства человека в связи с применением достижений биологии и медицины. Положенная в основу Конвенции естественно-правовая доктрина, для которой характерно отождествление права и морали (в светских версиях юснатурализма) либо права, морали и религии (в религиозных учениях), в немалой степени предопределяет ее недостаточный регулятивный потенциал. Между тем нормы права, морали и религии – это сущностно разные по своей природе регуляторы со своими специфическими принципами, которые конкурируют в пространстве отношений, складывающихся в сфере биомедицины. Выработка оптимального баланса между этими нормативными системами требует надлежащего философско-правового обеспечения. Применительно к наиболее дискуссионной проблеме развития геномных технологий, связанной с возможностью наследуемой модификации генома человека, такой баланс может быть выстроен на базе синтеза русской религиозно-философской концепции всеединства и идеи прав будущих поколений, выражающей правовой принцип формального равенства в отношениях между поколениями как звеньями поступательного развития человеческого рода, единого в своей социально-биологической основе.

"The Law Is Just Words After All": Torture, Truth, and Language in the Post-9/11 US and Percival Everett's The Water Cure

Through a reading of Percival Everett's experimental novel, The Water Cure, this essay argues for the need to interrogate the law as literature and language if we are to understand the moral permissibility of torture in the changed cultural and political understandings of war since 9/11. Working from the premise that the law and literature, through language and narrative, create social worlds and are worldmaking, this essay analyzes what happens to the law and narrative when the law writes torture into being. When confronted with the practice of torture, the novel ceases to be worldmaking and instead enacts the world unmade.

The Practice of Pharmaceutics and the Obligation to Expand Access to Investigational Drugs.

Do pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to expand access to investigational drugs to patients outside the clinical trial? One reason for thinking they do not is that expanded access programs might negatively affect the clinical trial process. This potential impact creates dilemmas for practitioners who nevertheless acknowledge some moral reason for expanding access. Bioethicists have explained these reasons in terms of beneficence, compassion, or a principle of rescue, but their arguments have been limited to questions of moral permissibility, leaving for future research the question of whether expanded access is morally obligatory. We take up this further question and argue that pharmaceutical companies have a moral obligation to expand access. Our defense is not based on beneficence, compassion, or rescue, but instead on a reciprocal moral expectation resulting from existing social commitments that help ensure a robust pharmaceutical practice within the broader healthcare system. Our aim is to give this obligation, along with several others, a coherent and plausible structure within the wider clinical trial process so that one might better explain the sources of the dilemmas and their possible resolutions.

Morire senza coscienza. La giustificazione morale della sedazione palliativa profonda continua

Un recente disegno di legge sulle cure alla fine della vita ha proposto di estendere l’opzione della sedazione palliativa profonda continua anche a pazienti che non siano in fase terminale di malattia. Questo sviluppo del dibattito sulle cure alla fine della vita richiede un nuovo sforzo per chiarire i termini della questione e risolvere alcune persistenti ambiguità. Il presente articolo sottolinea come la sedazione palliativa profonda continua sia eticamente lecita, e in effetti parte integrante delle cure palliative, solo quando eseguita in modo conforme alle principali linee guida. Daremo argomenti per mostrare come ‘l’imminenza di morte’, generalmente intesa come morte attesa entro poche ore/giorni, sia un importante criterio clinico per decidere della liceità etica di questa pratica medica. Nella nostra argomentazione (1) spiegheremo come la Dottrina del Duplice effetto, cui frequentemente si fa ricorso nei dibattiti etici su questa pratica, non sia invece necessariamente applicabile al caso della sedazione palliativa; (2) identificheremo una giustificazione alternativa, etica e clinica, per il ricorso alla sedazione in situazioni di fine vita; infine (3) discuteremo l’eventuale liceità del ricorso alla sedazione palliativa in casi di sofferenza esistenziale. Contiamo in tal modo di contribuire allo sviluppo del dibattito bioetico in corso su questi temi.

Incentives for Smoking Cessation During Pregnancy: An Ethical Framework.

IntroductionSmoking during pregnancy increases the risk of morbidity and mortality of the mother and child. The inability of the unborn child to protect itself, raises the social and academic responsibility to protect the child from the harmful effects of smoking. Interventions including rewards (incentives) for lifestyle changes are an upcoming trend and can encourage women to quit smoking. However, these incentives can, as we will argue, also have negative consequences, for example the restriction of personal autonomy and encouragement of smoking to become eligible for participation. To prevent these negative consequences, we developed an ethical framework that enables to assess and address unwanted consequences of incentive-based interventions whereby moral permissibility can be evaluated.Aims and MethodsThe possible adverse consequences of incentives were identified through an extensive literature search. Subsequently, we developed ethical criteria to identify these consequences based on the biomedical ethical principles of Beauchamp and Childress.ResultsOur framework consists of 12 criteria. These criteria concern (1) effectiveness, (2) support of a healthy lifestyle, (3) motivational for the target population, (4) stimulating unhealthy behavior, (5) negative attitudes, (6) personal autonomy, (7) intrinsic motivation, (8) privacy, (9) fairness, (10) allocation of incentives, (11) cost-effectiveness, and (12) health inequity. Based on these criteria, the moral permissibility of potential interventions can be evaluated.ConclusionsIncentives for smoking cessation are a response to the responsibility to protect the unborn child. But these interventions might have possible adverse effects. This ethical framework aims to identify and address ethical pitfalls in order to avoid these adverse effects.ImplicationsAlthough various interventions to promote smoking cessation during pregnancy exist, many women still smoke during pregnancy. Interventions using incentives for smoking cessation during pregnancy are a promising and upcoming trend but can have unwanted consequences. This ethical framework helps to identify and address ethical pitfalls in order to avoid these adverse effects.It can be a practical tool in the development and evaluation of these interventions and in evaluating the moral permissibility of interventions using incentives for smoking cessation during pregnancy.

Leibniz on Slavery and the Ownership of Human Beings

Leibniz puts forward an intriguing argument against the moral permissibility of chattel slavery in a text from 1703. This argument has three independent layers or sub-arguments. The first is that slavery violates natural rights. The second is that moral laws such as the principles of equity and piety oppose slavery, or at least severely limit the permissible actions toward slaves. The third and final layer is that slavery can at most be justified if the slave is permanently incapable of conducting herself well. Yet, it is very doubtful that any actual human beings satisfy that description. This paper analyzes and evaluates Leibniz’s argument, which scholars have so far largely neglected. Even though some elements of the argument are not original to Leibniz, it is of considerable importance for the scholarship of early modern philosophy: it sheds light on Leibniz’s views not only on the moral status of slavery itself, but also on moral rights and obligations more generally.

Placebos as a Source of Agency: Evidence and Implications.

Bioethical discussions surrounding the use of placebos in clinical practice have long revolved around the moral permissibility of deceiving a patient if it is likely to benefit them. While these discussions have been insightful and productive, they reinforce the notion that placebo effects can only be induced through deception. This paper challenges this notion, looking beyond the paradigmatic clinical encounter involving deceptive placebos and towards many other routes that bring about placebo effects. After briefly describing the bioethical terrain surrounding the deceptive use of placebos in clinical practice, section 1 offers an examination of the various mechanisms known to contribute to placebo effects: classical conditioning, expectations, affective pathways, open-label placebo treatments, and additional factors that do not fall easily into a single category. The following section explores how each of these routes can be harnessed to bring about clinical benefits without the use of deception. This provides grounding for reconceiving of the placebo effect as a clinical tool that is not always in conflict with patient autonomy and can even be seen as a source of agency. In the final section, implications of the shift away from seeing placebos as necessarily deceptive are discussed. These include the necessity of looking beyond the clinical encounter and mainstream medicine as the primary sites of placebo responses, how important acknowledging the limits of placebo effects will be when we do so, as well as the difficulties of disentangling agency, responsibility, and blame within medicine.

Sweatshops, Harm, and Interference: A Contractualist Approach

Activists and progressive governments sometimes interfere in the working conditions of sweatshops. Their methods may include boycotts of the products produced in these facilities, bans on the import of these products or tariffs imposed by the home country, and enforcing the host country’s laws that aim at regulating sweatshops. Some argue that such interference in sweatshop conditions is morally wrong since it may actually harm workers. The reason is that the enterprise that runs the sweatshop may choose to lay off some workers as the result of effective interference in order to maintain their profit at the desired level. If successful, this argument would prohibit any interference in sweatshop conditions on moral grounds. In this article, I argue in dissent and build a contractualist argument in favor of the moral permissibility of interference in sweatshops. I base my argument on an ex ante interpretation of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism.

The unique moral permissibility of uncontrolled lung donation after circulatory death.

Implementing uncontrolled donation after circulatory determination of death (uDCDD) in the United States could markedly improve supply of donor lungs for patients in need of transplants. Evidence from US pilot programs suggests families support uDCDD, but only if they are asked permission for using invasive organ preservation procedures prior to initiation. However, non-invasive strategies that confine oxygenation to lungs may be applicable to the overwhelming majority of potential uDCDD donors that have airway devices in place as part of standard resuscitation. We propose an ethical framework for lung uDCDD by: (a) initiating post mortem preservation without requiring prior permission to protect the opportunity for donation until an authorized party can be found; (b) using non-invasive strategies that confine oxygenation to lungs; and (c) maintaining strict separation between the healthcare team and the organ preservation team. Attempting uDCDD in this way has great potential to obtain more transplantable lungs while respecting donor autonomy and family wishes, securing public support, and enabling authorized persons to affirm or cease preservation decisions without requiring evidence of prior organ donation intent. It ensures prioritization of life-saving, the opportunity to allow willing donors to donate, and respect for bodily integrity while adhering to current ethical norms.

The 5-HTTLPR polymorphism impacts moral permissibility of impersonal harmful behaviors.

Inspired by the roles of serotonin in an emotional aversion to harmful actions, we examined to what extent serotonin transporter gene (5-HTT)–linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR), a proxy for measuring serotonin function, underpinned the individual differences in moral judgment through cross-sectional analysis and two-wave comparison. The cross-sectional analysis with a larger cohort (N = 1197) showed that the SS carriers of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism, corresponding to the low ratio of serotonin recycling from the synaptic cleft, rated impersonal harmful actions (e.g. flipping a switch to divert a train to hit one person instead of five people) as more permissible as compared with the L-allele carriers. The two-wave comparison with a subsample from the larger cohort (N = 563) indicated that the association between 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and moral permissibility of impersonal harmful actions was stable from wave 1 to wave 2. Thus, these findings highlight the importance of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism to harmful moral behaviors.

Deciding with dignity: The account of human dignity as an attitude and its implications for assisted suicide.

Discussions about assisted suicide have hitherto been based on accounts of dignity conceived only as an inherent value or as a status; accounts of dignity in which it appears as a (contingent) attitude, by contrast, have been neglected. Yet there are two good reasons to consider dignity to be an attitude. First, this concept of dignity best allows us to grasp a crucial aspect of everyday language: people often express fears of losing their dignity-and it is not possible to explain this with an account in which dignity is inherent. Second, such a concept allows us to adduce new argumentation where the argument based on status ends. Dignity considered as a status provides grounds to argue for the moral permissibility of assisted suicide, in the sense that in such an account individuals possess the normative power to waive their right to life. But the question then remains of how to decide what counts as a good reason for assisted suicide-and this is where an argument based on dignity as an attitude can provide illumination.

Reasons for Punishment: A Study in Philosophical Translation (Or, Why Sadistic Punishment is Morally Impermissible)

This article is a contribution to a symposium on Kit Wellman’s intriguing monograph, Rights Forfeiture and Punishment (Oxford University Press 2017). Primarily, the article grapples with Wellman’s claims regarding the moral permissibility of sadistic punishment. The metaphor of “philosophical languages” is employed throughout, to compare (translate) Wellman’s use of rights-forfeiture discourse to an approach that is grounded in practical-reasons discourse. This study in philosophical translation allows us to reassess and critique Wellman’s conclusions regarding the moral permissibility of sadistic punishment. On one level, the article is an attempt to engage with Wellman’s book and rights-forfeiture based arguments on, and in, their own terms. Yet, the article is also an attempt to explain and defend a practical-reasons based approach to appraising moral permissibility. If the article succeeds, it both pays tribute to Wellman’s masterful rights-forfeiture arguments, while making the case that practical-reason arguments illuminate a wider range of salient considerations that we should wish to keep in view when considering the moral permissibility of sadistic punishments.

Reply to Parry and Viehoff, Finlay, Ferzan, and Frowe

This article responds to four others that critically and productively engage with my book, Law and Morality at War. Four themes emerge: the law of armed conflict’s claim to legitimate authority, the relationship between the law of armed conflict and the deep morality of war, the moral norms governing killing in the fog of war, and the moral (im)permissibility of targeting civilians.

Human Rights and Surrogacy – Association between Human Rights Approaches and Ethical Approaches

The main problems that Modern Bioethics faces concern mainlythe terms of rights, which feature prominently in the theoreticalisttheories. If classical theories of deontocracy and utilitarianism areapplied to surrogate motherhood, we will be led not only to different butalso opposing decisions. Bioethics, nevertheless, ought to make the bestpossible decisions and take into consideration moral aspects and valuesby prioritizing the importance of rights. The correlation between humanrights and ethical approaches is particularly convoluted. Both of them areestablished on the respect of human dignity, the individual’s importanceand the moral integrity of human existence. As regards the moral dilemmasthat arise as to the moral permissiveness of surrogacy, it behoves us toapply a particular ethical theory that wil be uesd as a method of justifyinga certain decison. Therefore, in the case of surrogate motherhood, basicethical theories refer to Intuitionism and Ethical Ethics. A morality whichis reliant foremost on the notion of duty, imperative and obligation. Itexamines the ethical dilemmas and answers the question of what one hasto do based on their individual imperatives and duties.

Polarisering in Nederland

In this study, we explore differences in values between educational groups in the Netherlands. Scholars argue that, due to e.g. globalisation, these differences may have grown over time, leading to a new cleavage in society. Using Dutch data from the European Values Study (1999-2017), we assess whether this cleavage exists in the Netherlands. In addition, we test the assumption that educational polarisation has grown in the last two decades for a broad spectrum of values: post-materialism, moral permissiveness, religiosity, intolerance, traditional gender roles, and social and political trust. Our findings suggest that there is not much evidence for growing polarisation between educational groups in the Netherlands. Although we do observe significant differences between educational groups in all values studied here, we cannot see that these differences have grown over time, with one exception: political trust.

Asymmetric information, libertarianism, and fraud

This paper argues (a) that while a no-fraud legal requirement does not follow from libertarian first principles, it is not only permitted – but also mandated – by them under certain conditions, and (b) that the claim that some fraudulent exchanges are morally invalid need not appeal to a theory of moral permissibility that is external to those principles.