Morally Significant Research Articles

Moral rightness and the significance of law: Why, how, and when mistake of law matters

The question of whether a mistake of law should negate or mitigate criminal liability is commonly considered to be pertinent to the culpability of the agent, often examined in light of the (epistemic) reasonableness of the mistake. I argue that this view disregards an important aspect of this question; namely, whether a mistake of law affects the rightness of the action, particularly in light of the moral significance of the mistake. I argue that several plausible premises regarding moral rightness under uncertainty, the nature of law, and the moral significance of law entail a positive answer to this question. Specifically, I consider this argument: (1) one (subjective) sense of moral rightness depends on the (epistemically justified) belief of the agent concerning a non-moral fact that is morally significant; (2) a law is (partly) a non-moral fact; (3) a legal fact might be morally significant; (4) therefore, an action that is compatible with an applicable moral standard, in light of the mistaken (justified) belief of the agent concerning a morally significant law, is (subjectively) right or less wrongful; (5) the (subjective) moral rightness of an action counts against criminal liability for this action; (6) therefore, an action that is compatible with the applicable moral standard, in light of the mistaken (epistemically justified) belief of the agent, counts against criminal liability for the action if the law is morally significant.

Is the creation of artificial life morally significant?

In 2010, the Venter lab announced that it had created the first bacterium with an entirely synthetic genome. This was reported to be the first instance of ‘artificial life,’ and in the ethical and policy discussions that followed it was widely assumed that the creation of artificial life is in itself morally significant. We cast doubt on this assumption. First we offer an account of the creation of artificial life that distinguishes this from the derivation of organisms from existing life and clarify what we mean in asking whether the creation of artificial life has moral significance. We then articulate and evaluate three attempts to establish that the creation of artificial life is morally significant. These appeal to (1) the claim that the creation of artificial life involves playing God, as expressed in three distinct formulations; (2) the claim that the creation of artificial life will encourage reductionist attitudes toward the living world that undermine the special moral value accorded to life; and (3) the worry that artificial organisms will have an uncertain functional status and consequently an uncertain moral status. We argue that all three attempts to ground the moral significance of the creation of artificial life fail, because none of them establishes that the creation of artificial life is morally problematic in a way that the derivation of organisms from existing life forms is not. We conclude that the decisive moral consideration is not how life is created but what non-genealogical properties it possesses.

The importance of what they care about

Many forms of contemporary morality treat the individual as the fundamental unit of moral importance. Perhaps the most striking example of this moral vision of the individual is the contemporary global human rights regime, which treats the individual as, for all intents and purposes, sacrosanct. This essay attempts to explore one feature of this contemporary understanding of the moral status of the individual, namely the moral significance of a subject’s actual affective states, and in particular her cares and commitments. I argue that in virtue of the moral significance of actual individuals, we should take actual cares and values very seriously—even if those cares and values are not expressions of the person’s autonomy—as partially constituting that individual as a concrete subject who is the proper object of our moral attention. In particular, I argue that a person’s actual cares and values have non-derivative moral significance. Simply because someone cares about something, that care is morally significant. In virtue of this non-derivative moral significance of cares, we ought to adopt of a commitment to accommodate others’ cares and a commitment not to frustrate their cares.

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Many avid gamers discount violent conduct in video games as morally insignificant as “it is just a game.” However, recent debates among users, regarding video games featuring inappropriate forms of virtual violence, suggest a more complex truth. Two experiments (N1 = 49, N2 = 80) examined users' guilt responses in order to explore the moral significance of virtual violence. In both studies, justification of virtual violence and users' trait empathy determined guilt in a structurally similar way to real-world scenarios: People felt guiltier if they engaged in unjustified virtual violence, especially if they were empathetic players. These results show that video games are capable of inducing affective moral responses in users. Accordingly, virtual violence may be considered morally significant action.

Killing and the Time-relative Interest Account

Jeff McMahan appeals to what he calls the “Time-relative Interest Account of the Wrongness of Killing” to explain the wrongness of killing individuals who are conscious but not autonomous. On this account, the wrongness of such killing depends on the victim’s interest in his or her future, and this interest, in turn, depends on two things: the goods that would have accrued to the victim in the future; and the strength of the prudential relations obtaining between the victim at the time of the killing and at the times these goods would have accrued to him or her. More precisely, when assessing this interest, future goods should be discounted to reflect reductions in the strength of such relations. Against McMahan’s account I argue that it relies on an implausible “actualist” view of the moral importance of interests according to which satisfactions of future interests only have moral significance if they are satisfactions of actual interests (interests that will in fact exist). More precisely, I aim to show that the Time-relative Interest Account (1) does not have the implications for the morality of killing that McMahan takes it to have, and (2) implies, implausibly, that certain interest satisfactions which seem to be morally significant are morally insignificant because they are not satisfactions of actual interests.

On the Demarcation Problem and the Possibility of Environmental Ethics

According to a popular critique of environmental ethics, the view that nature has intrinsic value faces an insurmountable demarcation problem. This critique was delivered in a particularly forceful manner two decades ago by Janna Thompson in her paper “A Refutation of Environmental Ethics.” However, the demarcation problem, albeit a real problem, is not insurmountable. Thompson’s argument draws on the claim that the possibility of environmental ethics depends on the possibility that nature can be demarcated with respect to some allegedly morally significant property or set of properties. Her own view of nature’s moral significance is equally dependent on that possibility. Therefore, if the demarcation problem were insurmountable, that would imply a refutation of her own view on nature’s moral significance as well.

Brain Damage and the Moral Significance of Consciousness

Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption. We clarify the widely held but obscure principle that consciousness is morally significant. It is hard to apply this principle to difficult cases given that philosophers of mind distinguish between a range of notions of consciousness and that is unclear which of these is assumed by the principle. We suggest that the morally relevant notion is that of phenomenal consciousness and then use our analysis to interpret cases of brain damage. We argue that enjoyment of consciousness might actually give stronger moral reasons not to preserve a patient's life and, indeed, that these might be stronger when patients retain significant cognitive function.

Abortion, Potential, and Value

This article challenges an important argument in the abortion debate, according to which at least early abortions are acceptable because they do not terminate the actual existence of something of moral significance (i.e., a ‘person’), but rather prevent a potentially significant entity from becoming actual, which happens whenever one uses contraceptives. This article argues that insofar as we see something as morally significant or valuable, we tend to think it wrong to deliberately terminate its actual existence and to deliberately prevent a corresponding potential entity from becoming actual, a principle I call the ‘Inverse Proportional Value Principle’. After defending this principle and showing it to oppose the idea that abortion is acceptable since it simply prevents the existence of something of moral worth or value, I show this principle to sanction some abortions, given that the entity which stands to result from a pregnancy is sufficiently lacking in value.

Separation-survivability as moral cut-off point for abortion

We argue that separation-survivability is a significant developmental fetal milestone beyond which abortion is only rarely and exceptionally morally justifiable. Secondly, we argue that the continuous nature of prenatal development, and simultaneous parallel development and actuation of intrinsic and contingent potentiality that eventually results in the development of a person capable of moral thoughts and deeds, implies continuously incremental moral significance. We propose that the moral justifiability of each instance of non-therapeutic pre-viable termination should be the product of an internal dialectic or “moral enquiry”. Arguments should be of increasing power in order to trump the sliding-scale increase in prenatal moral significance. We agree that sentience is morally significant, but argue that survivability is of predominant importance, since human beings who have the potentiality of separate, relatively independent lives, should, normally, be allowed to continue living. We argue for a moderate position on abortion.

Poverty and the Moral Significance of Contribution

AbstractThe main thesis of the article is that one’s responsibility to render assistance is not affected by having contributed to the situation by causing harm. I examine ways in which contribution to need is morally significant. Although contribution is relevant with regard to certain features, such as questions of blame, compensation, and fair distribution of the cost of assistance, I argue that contribution should carry no weight when assessing our duty to assist people in severe need if we can do so at little cost. If this is true we have reason to suspect that it is redundant to know whether or not we have in fact contributed to the need of the global poor when assessing our duty to address global poverty.

What's Wrong with Torture?

Why is torture morally wrong? This question has been neglected or avoided by recent moral philosophy, in part because torture is by its nature especially difficult to discuss. Torture involves degrees of pain and fear that are often said to be utterly indescribable; indeed, these experiences are sometimes said to destroy in their victims the very hope of any sort of communication or shared experience whatsoever. Torture has proved surprisingly difficult to define. There is no clear agreement on the distinction between torture, coercion, and manipulation, or whether such techniques as sleep and sensory deprivation, isolation, or prolonged questioning should count as forms of torture. In addition, we may be fearful of deriving some sort of perverse titillation from the subject, or of being able to dispassionately contemplate the agonies of real victims of torture. Those who have not suffered torture may well feel What’s Wrong with Torture? DAVID SUSSMAN

Future Generations and Contemporary Ethics

Future generations do not exist, and are not determinate in their make-up. The moral significance of future generations cannot be accounted for on the basis of a purely individualistic ethic. Yet future generations are morally significant. The Person-Affecting Principle, that (roughly) only acts which are likely to affect particular individuals are morally significant, must be augmented in such a way as to take into account the moral significance of Homo sapiens, a holistic entity which certainly does exist. Recent contributions to Environmental Values by Alan Carter and Ernest Partridge are criticised (but not entirely rejected).

Future Generations and Contemporary Ethics

Future generations do not exist, and are not determinate in their make-up. The moral significance of future generations cannot be accounted for on the basis of a purely individualistic ethic. Yet future generations are morally significant. The Person-Affecting Principle, that (roughly) only acts which are likely to affect particular individuals are morally significant, must be augmented in such a way as to take into account the moral significance of Homo sapiens, a holistic entity which certainly does exist. Recent contributions to Environmental Values by Alan Carter and Ernest Partridge are criticised (but not entirely rejected).

Beyond prejudice: the moral significance of human and nonhuman animals

In Beyond Prejudice , Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being—one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself—is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the traditional view—which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged persons—as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and abnormal humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo—which decrees that animals decidedly do not count—to reevaluate their convictions.

Distinguishing Between Active and Passive Euthanasia

The standard ways of distinguishing between active and passive euthanasia, act versus omission, and removal of ordinary versus removal of extraordinary care, do not have any clear moral significance. We have used particular aspects of the physician-patient relationship to make a morally significant distinction between active and passive euthanasia. Passive euthanasia is defined as the physician's abiding by the rational valid refusal of life-sustaining treatment of a patient or his surrogate decision-maker. Understanding passive euthanasia in this way makes it clear why, everything else being equal, there is no morally significant difference between discontinuing a treatment and not starting it, for example, taking a patient off a respirator versus not putting him on in the first place. It also makes clear why stopping the feeding and hydration of some patients is not merely morally permissible but is morally required. Patients may make a rational valid refusal of food and fluids just as they may of other kinds of life support, and what patients rationally refuse when competent holds its force when they become incompetent. By basing the distinction between active and passive euthanasia on the universally recognized moral force of a rational valid refusal, we have provided a clear foundation for the moral significance of this distinction. Our way of making the distinction preserves for patients the control over their lives that has sometimes been unjustifiably taken from them. It also eases the burden on doctors who no longer are forced to make use of ad hoc and confused distinctions in which they justifiably have little faith.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Extraordinary means and the intentional termination of life

Physicians and their professional organizations often distinguish between ordinary and extra-ordinary means of treatment. The moral relevance of this distinction, which has recently been defended by the philosopher Bonnie Steinbock (The Intentional Termination of Life. Ethics Sci. Med. 6, 59, 1979.). is challenged. It is argued that neither this nor the “overlapping distinction” between intention and foresight is morally significant. If deliberate cessation of ordinary treatment, resulting in the foreseen death of the patient, is the intentional termination of life—so is the deliberate cessation of extraordinary treatment. Two interrelated arguments are advanced in support of the claim that the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of life-support has no moral significance. The first is based on Steinbeck's own criterion for the intentional termination of life (“if one acts intentionally, foreseeing that a particular result will occur, one can be said to have brought about the result intentionally”), the second suggests that the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means is a distinction not between different means but between lives judged worthy of prolongation and those not: it is a quality-of-life criterion. This explains why the concept of extraordinary means is “flexible”, why “what might be considered ‘extraordinary’ in one situation might be ordinary in another”. But if we do not admit that quality-of-life considerations rather than “means” are at issue, then we cannot give an adequate answer as to why it may. for example, be morally permissible to switch off the respirator when it sustains an irreversibly comatose patient but not when it sustains a patient with a respiratory disease. It is argued that when the physician intentionally flicks the switch to turn off the respirator, foreseeing the death of the patient, then he has brought about the death intentionally and it does not matter whether we call the respirator in the first case an “extraordinary” and in the second case an “ordinary” means. The deliberate cessation of life-prolonging treatment is the intentional termination of life—either passive euthanasis or. if the patient against his doctor's advice, refuses further treatment. passive suicide.