scholarly journals The Moral Distinction Between Combatants and Noncombatants: Vulnerable and Defenceless

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
Moral Distinction

scholarly journals Costa, cancer and coronavirus: contractualism as a guide to the ethics of lockdown

2021 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-107103
Author(s):  
Stephen David John ◽  
Emma J Curran
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Core ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Self Defence

Lockdown measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic involve placing huge burdens on some members of society for the sake of benefiting other members of society. How should we decide when these policies are permissible? Many writers propose we should address this question using cost-benefit analysis (CBA), a broadly consequentialist approach. We argue for an alternative non-consequentialist approach, grounded in contractualist moral theorising. The first section sets up key issues in the ethics of lockdown, and sketches the apparent appeal of addressing these problems in a CBA frame. The second section argues that CBA fundamentally distorts the normative landscape in two ways: first, in principle, it allows very many morally trivial preferences—say, for a coffee—might outweigh morally weighty life-and-death concerns; second, it is insensitive to the core moral distinction between victims and vectors of disease. The third section sketches our non-consequentialist alternative, grounded in Thomas Scanlon’s contractualist moral theory. On this account, the ethics of self-defence implies a strong default presumption in favour of a highly restrictive, universal lockdown policy: we then ask whether there are alternatives to such a policy which are justifiable to all affected parties, paying particular attention to the complaints of those most burdened by policy. In the fourth section, we defend our contractualist approach against the charge that it is impractical or counterintuitive, noting that actual CBAs face similar, or worse, challenges.

On the Moral Distinction between Intention and Advertence

2021 ◽  
pp. 377-399
Author(s):  
A P Simester
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Systematic Difference ◽  
Standard View ◽  
Ceteris Paribus ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Special Category

This chapter discusses the moral implications of the distinction between intention and advertence. Excepting the special category of oblique intention, the criminal law broadly embraces the distinction outlined in the previous chapter, between intended actions and those merely foreseen. That embrace calls for normative defence. One way of defending it is to appeal to what can be called the standard view, that intended wrongdoing is, ceteris paribus, inherently more culpable than advertently risked wrongdoing. However, there are reasons to doubt the standard view. This chapter offers a different, albeit compatible, explanation. On the account presented here, the most systematic difference between intended and foreseen wrongdoing is not measured in degrees of culpability. Rather, it is worked out in terms of what actions may legitimately be invoked to justify pro tanto wrongdoing. In general, foreseen actions do not lend any favourable weight to the justification of intended ones, whereas intended actions can lend favourable weight to the justification of foreseen ones.

Dead Labor, Homo Sacer, and Letting die in the Labor Market

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Tyner
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Negative Rights ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Letting Die

Within philosophy, a long-standing debate has addressed the moral distinction between ‘taking life’ and ‘letting die’. In this paper I re-situate this debate within the context of the capitalist labor market. Drawing on insights from both Marx and Agamben, I re-theorize the figure of figure of homo sacer as a (potentially) dead laborer to argue that an ideology of ‘letting die’ is systemic to capitalism; however, our legal, spiritual, and moral values, and the privileging of ‘negative rights’, continue to promote the belief that killing is morally worse.

On a Purported Error About the Doctrine of Double Effect: A Reply to Sophie Botros

Philosophy ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitley R. P. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Double Effect ◽  
Doctrine Of Double Effect ◽  
Recent Edition ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Essential Contribution ◽  
Two Sides

In a recent edition of the journal Philosophy, Sophie Botros asserts that modern ethical theorists have badly misunderstood the role of the Doctrine of Double Effect, turning it into a device by which to prohibit actions which are deemed impermissible; whereas the true function of the Doctrine is rather one of justifying actions. In my reply, I argue that Dr Botros has misunderstood the Doctrine: that its ‘prohibitive’ and its ‘justificatory’ roles are merely two sides of the same coin, since its function is to decide for a given action whether it is permissible or impermissible. Furthermore, Dr Botros has misconstrued the essential contribution of the DDE is not the balancing of good results against bad ones, but the quite different position that the crucial moral distinction is between intended and merely foreseen results.

Intuitions and the Demands of Consequentialism

Utilitas ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTHEW TEDESCO
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Moral Methodology ◽  
Moral Distinction

One response to the demandingness objection is that it begs the question against consequentialism by assuming a moral distinction between what a theory requires and what it permits. According to the consequentialist, this distinction stands in need of defense. However, this response may also beg the question, this time at the methodological level, regarding the credibility of the intuitions underlying the objection. The success of the consequentialist's response thus turns on the role we assign to intuitions in our moral methodology. After presenting the demandingness objection to consequentialism and revealing the underlying methodological stalemate, I break the stalemate by appealing to research in the cognitive neuroscience of intuitions. Given the evidence for the hypothesis that our moral intuitions are fundamentally emotional (rather than rational) responses, we should give our intuitions a modest (rather than robust) role in our moral methodology. This rescues the consequentialist's response to the demandingness objection.

Physician-Assisted Suicide: Where to Draw the Line?

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERNLÉ W.D. YOUNG
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Assisted Suicide ◽  
Assisted Dying ◽  
Physician Assisted Suicide ◽  
Assisted Death ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Physician Assisted Dying ◽  
Hippocratic Tradition

In brief compass, I will touch on three of the central ethical and public policy issues that divide those who are opposed to physician-assisted dying from those who are supportive of this practice. These are: (1) the moral distinction (if any) between actively hastening death and passively allowing to die; (2) how to interpret the Hippocratic tradition in medicine with respect to physician-assisted death; and (3) whether physician-assisted suicide can be effectively regulated. I shall summarize the arguments pro and con with respect to each issue, and also indicate my own position.

scholarly journals How’s Life After the Collapse? Populism as a Representation Linkage and the Emergence of a Populist/Anti-Populist Political Divide in Italy (1994–2018)

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Zanotti
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
The People ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Partisan Competition ◽  
Political Divide ◽  
Central Claim

Populism is a hot topic in academia. The causes of this phenomenon have received much attention with many studies focusing on the role of the high levels of unresponsiveness of mainstream parties in triggering a populist response. In this respect, in many cases, populist parties have become a relevant electoral force in the concomitance with an electoral decline of mainstream political options, mostly in the last decades. This article considers a situation in which the whole party system’s unresponsiveness reaches its zenith, and the party system collapses. A collapse is the result of the incapacity of most of the parties in the system to fulfill their basic function, i.e., to represent voters’ interests. When this happens, none of the types of linkages—programmatic, clientelist, or personalist—that tie parties and voters are effective. Empirical observation shows that in those cases populism can perform as a sort of representation linkage to re-connect parti(es) and voters on the basis of the moral distinction between “the people” and “the elite.” Through a discursive strategy of blame attribution, populistm can attract a large portion of the vote. At this point, its opposing ideology—anti-populism—also arouses. In other words, populism/anti-populism may result in a political cleavage that structures the party system by itself or, more frequently, with other cleavages. To elucidate this argument, the paper explores the case of Italy between 1994 and 2018. The electoral relevance of populist parties translated first into a discursive cleavage, which, in turn, changed the space of competition with the emergence of a new political axis, namely populism/anti-populism. This paper's central claim is that the dynamics of partisan competition cannot be understood by overlooking the populism/anti-populism political divide. The conclusion touches on one implication of the emergence of this political cleavage, namely change of the incentives for coalition building. In fact, when populism and anti-populism structure, at least partially, the party system changing the space of interparty competition, this in turn may affect the determinants behind parties’ coalition-building choices.

scholarly journals Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-232
Author(s):  
Vince R. Vitale
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Moral Distinction ◽  
Horrendous Evils ◽  
Specific Interests ◽  
Individual Human

This concluding chapter takes a step back to consider the place of Non-Identity Theodicy in the contemporary theodicy literature. It recaps the key areas of overemphasis and underemphasis in contemporary theodicies. These misemphases include a failure to adequately appreciate the distinctive challenges that horrendous evils pose for the moral justification of harm; an overemphasis on the moral distinction between causing and permitting (especially where God is the agent in question); an overestimation of the moral significance of caretaker rights to cause or permit harm; an overemphasis on the role of free will in theodicy (resulting in a tendency towards anthropocentrism); and a questionable focus on general goods which manifests itself in a prioritizing of worlds over human persons, generic human persons over individual human persons, and all-things-considered benefit over more specific interests such as the aversion of serious harm. It is argued that Non-Identity Theodicy corrects for these various misemphases by conceiving of God first and foremost not as a creator of goods but as a lover of persons. This chapter ends by discussing how Non-Identity Theodicy can be combined with other theodicies in the formulation of a cumulative case theodicy.

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