Disputes Over Moral Status: Philosophy and Science in the Future of Bioethics

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
The Future

Readdressing Our Moral Relationship to Nonhuman Creatures: Commentary on “A Dialogue on Species-Specific Rights: Humans and Animals in Bioethics”

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
Moral Strangers ◽  
Ethical Thinking ◽  
Moral Relationship ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Negative Tone

Community discourse about the moral status of animals is critical to the future of bioethics and, indeed, to the future of modern society. Thomasma and Loewy are to be commended for sharing thoughts and trying to attain some common ground. I am grateful to them for fostering discussion and allowing me to respond. I cannot endorse the negative tone of the end of their conversation, however. They end with serious concerns about the possibility of any agreement between themselves. Even though I perceive some moral differences between them, I do not believe that they are moral strangers. In this commentary I review the ways in which I agree and disagree with Thomasma and Loewy and conclude with some thoughts about the kind of broad ethical thinking we need to do to address our moral relationship to nonhuman, living creatures.

Monkeys, Moral Machines, and Persons

2021 ◽  
pp. 290-305
Author(s):  
David R. Lawrence ◽  
John Harris
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Moral Machines ◽  
The Future

Debates over moral machines are often guilty of making wide assumptions about the nature of future autonomous entities, and frequently bypass the distinction between ‘agents’ and ‘actors’ to the detriment of their conclusions. The scope and limits of moral status are fundamentally linked to this distinction. We position non-Homo sapiens great apes as members of a particular moral status clade, which are treated in a similar fashion to that proposed for so-called ‘moral machines’. The principles by which we ultimately decide to treat great apes, and whether or not we decide to act upon our responsibilities to them as moral agents, are likely to be the same principles we use to decide our responsibilities to moral AI in the future.

scholarly journals On Moral Obligations and Our Chances of Fulfilling Them

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 625-638
Author(s):  
Farbod Akhlaghi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Practical Ethics ◽  
Alternative Action ◽  
The Future ◽  
Moral Wrongness

Abstract Many actions we perform affect the chances of fulfilling our moral obligations. The moral status of such actions is important and deeply neglected. In this paper, I begin rectifying this neglect by asking: under what conditions, if any, is it morally wrong to perform an action that will lower the chance of one fulfilling a moral obligation? In §1, I introduce this question and motivate concern with its answer. I argue, in §2, that certain actions an agent has good reason to believe will drastically lower their chances of fulfilling a moral obligation in the future, relative to at least one alternative action available, are pro tanto morally wrong. This answer, I argue, captures our intuitions in a range of cases, avoids the problems that other views considered here face, and can be plausibly defended against some independent objections. I conclude in §3 by noting some consequences for normative and practical ethics of the moral wrongness of at least some actions that lower the chances of fulfilling our moral obligations, and by raising a series of important questions regarding these actions for future consideration.

Generic Consistency in the Reproductive Enterprise: Ethical and Legal Implications for Exclusion Testing for Huntington's Disease

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 135-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deryck Beyleveld ◽  
Oliver Quarrell ◽  
Stuart Toddington
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Huntington's Disease ◽  
Huntington’S Disease ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Negative Test ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Child ◽  
Affected Parent

This paper applies Alan Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC) to assess the morality of exclusion testing for Huntington's Disease (HD). Part 1 presents the PGC and outlines ways in which its use may be justified. Part 2 considers how the PGC might grant protection to potential agents as such (the moral status of which is problematic under the PGC). Part 3 contends that the morality of exclusion testing rests not only on its implications for the fetus (at most a potential agent), but also on the intended relations between the possibly affected parent and the future “child-when-agent” (CA) (born after a negative test) that are intrinsic consequences of the central motivation for exclusion testing. Part 4 argues that the PGC renders it immoral, all things being equal, to permit exclusion tests on the fetus unless CA is granted (under specified circumstances) a right to find out whether the at risk parent is carrying the mutation for HD, with the implication that it is morally wrong for the at risk parent to be provided with the results of an exclusion test unless a legally binding duty is imposed on him or her to undergo a mutation test at CA's request. This right and its correlative duty might, however, be overridden by conflicting rights-considerations. The complexities of such an assessment are indicated.

scholarly journals Ανθρωπότητα, Μελλοντικές Γενεές και Βιοηθική

Bioethica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Κώστας Ν. Κουκουζέλης (Kostas Ν. Koukouzelis)
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The Future

The moral status of future persons and future generations is one of the pertinent issues under discussion in bioethics and in particular environmental bioethics. There is, indeed, a vast skepticism on whether future generations have rights or whether we have duties towards them and of what kind. However, the main question, which the present essay puts forward, comes at a prior point. Do we have an interest in whether future generations will exist after all or whether humanity will continue to exist and what kind of interest is this? It is argued that we are in a sense dependent on future generations’ existence in a way we are not dependent on the continuation of our individual lives. This is because humanity’s existence into the future makes us value certain things and practices in our lives now, indeed it conditions valuing. After evaluating three objections to the aforementioned argument, I argue that our interest in the existence of future generations is something crucial for how human practical rationality and action works, it has an egalitarian nature, but does not involve future generations’ welfare. It finally stems from practical rationality itself.

International determination of the total motion of the pole

1961 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Wm. Markowitz
Keyword(s):  
Secular Motion ◽  
The Future

A symposium on the future of the International Latitude Service (I. L. S.) is to be held in Helsinki in July 1960. My report for the symposium consists of two parts. Part I, denoded (Mk I) was published [1] earlier in 1960 under the title “Latitude and Longitude, and the Secular Motion of the Pole”. Part II is the present paper, denoded (Mk II).

Status of the Lick Proper Motion Program

1978 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 387-388
Author(s):  
A. R. Klemola
Keyword(s):  
Proper Motion ◽  
The Future

Second-epoch photographs have now been obtained for nearly 850 of the 1246 fields of the proper motion program with centers at declination -20° and northwards. For the sky at 0° and northward only 130 fields remain to be taken in the next year or two. The 270 southern fields with centers at -5° to -20° remain for the future.

Some Structural Features of Metaphase Chromosomes of Mice and Men

1967 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 190-191
Author(s):  
Godfrey C. Hoskins ◽  
Betty B. Hoskins
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Electron Micrographs ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Metaphase Chromosomes ◽  
The Future ◽  
Of Mice And Men ◽  
Mouse Cells ◽  
Human And Mouse

Metaphase chromosomes from human and mouse cells in vitro are isolated by micrurgy, fixed, and placed on grids for electron microscopy. Interpretations of electron micrographs by current methods indicate the following structural features.Chromosomal spindle fibrils about 200Å thick form fascicles about 600Å thick, wrapped by dense spiraling fibrils (DSF) less than 100Å thick as they near the kinomere. Such a fascicle joins the future daughter kinomere of each metaphase chromatid with those of adjacent non-homologous chromatids to either side. Thus, four fascicles (SF, 1-4) attach to each metaphase kinomere (K). It is thought that fascicles extend from the kinomere poleward, fray out to let chromosomal fibrils act as traction fibrils against polar fibrils, then regroup to join the adjacent kinomere.

Freeze-fracture cytochemistry: A goal set by Russell Steere in 1957

1993 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 60-61
Author(s):  
Nicholas J Severs
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Nature ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Freeze Fracture ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Membrane Biology ◽  
Routine Application ◽  
The Future ◽  
Freeze Etching

In his pioneering demonstration of the potential of freeze-etching in biological systems, Russell Steere assessed the future promise and limitations of the technique with remarkable foresight. Item 2 in his list of inherent difficulties as they then stood stated “The chemical nature of the objects seen in the replica cannot be determined”. This defined a major goal for practitioners of freeze-fracture which, for more than a decade, seemed unattainable. It was not until the introduction of the label-fracture-etch technique in the early 1970s that the mould was broken, and not until the following decade that the full scope of modern freeze-fracture cytochemistry took shape. The culmination of these developments in the 1990s now equips the researcher with a set of effective techniques for routine application in cell and membrane biology.Freeze-fracture cytochemical techniques are all designed to provide information on the chemical nature of structural components revealed by freeze-fracture, but differ in how this is achieved, in precisely what type of information is obtained, and in which types of specimen can be studied.

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