scholarly journals Risk Imposition and Liability to Defensive Harm

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Frowe
Keyword(s):  
General Practice ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Defensive Harm ◽  
As If

AbstractAccording to Jonathan Quong’s moral status account of liability to defensive harm, an agent is liable to defensive harm only when she mistakenly treats others as if their moral status is diminished (for example, as if they lack a right that they in fact possess). Quong argues that, by the lights of the moral status account, a conscientious driver (Driver) who faultlessly threatens to kill Pedestrian is not liable to defensive harm. Quong argues that Driver’s action is evidence-relative permissible, despite the risks it imposes, because the general practice of prudent driving is permissible. The practice is permissible because (a) its risks do not disproportionately fall on some groups rather than others, (b) the threatened harms are incidental, and (c) the risk that driving imposes is acceptable in light of the benefits everyone derives from driving. Because the correct moral theory tells us that prudent driving is permissible, Pedestrian lacks a right that Driver refrain from driving. Hence, Driver does not, by driving, treat Pedestrian as lacking a right that Pedestrian in fact possesses. Driver is not liable to defensive force. I argue, against Quong, that cost–benefit analyses of types of risky activity cannot justify individual tokens of risk imposition. Actions that risk incidentally harming others must be justified by the prospective benefits of that token action. Hence, Driver’s imposition of risk on Pedestrian cannot be justified by the benefits of the general practice of driving. I argue that the permissibility of Driver’s imposing risk on Pedestrian via prudent driving turns on whether Driver is willing to internalise at least the foreseeable costs of that risky action. One can lack a right that a person refrain from performing a risky action whilst possessing a right not to be harmed by that risky action. Even if Pedestrian cannot reasonably demand that Driver refrain from driving, she can reasonably demand that Driver refrain from forcing her to bear the costs of his driving.

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.

The Green’s Gambit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Hale
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Endangered Species ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Endangered Species Act ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Kantian Moral Theory

This chapter argues that reasons are underdetermined and often left out of value-based discussions of nature. The chapter offers a rough sketch of Kantian moral theory – particularly the first two formulations of the Categorical Imperative – to suggest that the primary charge of environmentalism ought to be that of encouraging deeper justification of actions. It utilizes the Endangered Species Act, the argument from ecosystem services, and the case of a stolen kidney to suggest that cost-benefit analysis and related methodologies are insufficient for addressing the broad ethical considerations of environmentalists.

Environmental Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-168
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Metz
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Communal Relationship

This chapter begins Part III, which argues that the relational moral theory of rightness as friendliness is a strong competitor to Western principles in many applied ethical contexts. Chapter 8 articulates and defends a novel, relational account of moral status, according to which an entity is owed moral consideration roughly to the degree that it is capable of being party to a communal relationship. One of its implications is that many animals have a moral status but not one as high as ours, which many readers will find attractive, but which utilitarianism and Kantianism cannot easily accommodate. Relational moral status also grounds a promising response to the ‘argument from marginal cases’ that animals have the same moral status as incapacitated humans: even if two beings have identical intrinsic properties, they can differ in the extent to which they can relate and hence differ in their degree of moral status.

Automatic Sweethearts for Transhumanists

Robot Sex ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hauskeller
Keyword(s):  
Romantic Relationships ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Romantic Partners ◽  
Real Thing ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real Person ◽  
As If

This chapter asks the question whether sexual and/or romantic relationships with robots could ever be as satisfying as the real thing. Three main arguments are made. First, if we assume that robots will be not be real persons and instead simply behave and act as if they are persons (“pseudo-persons”) then love and sex with them will never be as satisfying as it is with a real person. Second, if robots somehow manage to be real persons (and not just pseudo-persons), we run into problems regarding their moral status and, importantly, their freedom to choose to be our romantic partners. It is more satisfying to be loved by a real person that freely chooses to be your lover than it is to be loved by someone who is programmed to love you. Finally, it is argued that the desire for relationships with robotic persons does reveal something telling about the transhumanist desire for total autonomy and independence. The only possible way for me to become completely independent is by cutting all ties to other persons, by making my own world, uninhabited by any real persons except myself. Robotic partners may consequently be the preferred inhabitants of that transhumanist utopia.

Moral Recognition and the Limits of Impartialist Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Udo Schuklenk
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Consideration ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Species Membership ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Self Learning ◽  
As If

‘Moral status’ is simply a convenient label for ‘is owed moral consideration of a kind’. This chapter argues that we should abandon it and instead focus on the question of what kinds of dispositional capabilities, species memberships, relationships etc., constitute ethically defensible criteria that justifiably trigger particular kinds of moral obligations. Chimeras, human brain organoids, and artificial intelligence do not pose new challenges. Existing conceptual frameworks, and the criteria for moral consideration that they trigger (species membership, sentientism, personhood) are still defensible and applicable. The challenge at hand is arguably an empirical challenge that philosophers and ethicists qua philosophers and ethicists are ill equipped to handle. The challenge that needs addressing is essentially whether a self-learning AI machine, that responds exactly in the same way to a particular event as a person or sentient being would, should be treated as if it was such a person or sentient being, despite doubts about its de facto lack of dispositional capabilities that would normally give rise to such responses.

Liability

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-57
Author(s):  
Jonathan Quong
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Rights ◽  
Jeff Mcmahan ◽  
Defensive Harm

Chapter 2 develops and defends an original account of liability to defensive harm: the moral status account. On this view, a person renders himself liable to defensive harm when the evidence-relative permissibility of his act depends on the assumption that others lack certain moral rights that they in fact possess, and his act threatens, or reasonably appears to threaten, those rights. The chapter also provides criticisms of competing accounts of liability, in particular, the moral responsibility account influentially developed by Jeff McMahan, among others. The chapter concludes by addressing a number of objections that might be pressed against the moral status account.

Kant and Animals

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Animal Minds ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Kantian Moral Theory

This is an edited collection devoted to the topic of the role of animals within Kant’s philosophy. It addresses key issues within both his theoretical and practical philosophy. It examines the place of Kant’s model of animal minds in the historical and contemporary contexts. It addresses the question of whether Kant’s philosophy of mind allows for animals to be capable of intentional representations of spatiotemporal objects. It explores how Kant treated the issue of animal nature as it manifests in humans and non-humans alike, and questions how Kant’s scientific theory attempted to accommodate animals within his broader Enlightenment worldview. It also addresses traditional worries about the moral status of animals within Kant’s and Kantian moral theory. Kant notoriously denied that we have direct obligations to animals, and the question persists as to whether Kantian moral theory provides the right account of the moral status of non-human animals. Several papers in this collection address the question and whether Kant’s views can be defended or ought to be rejected altogether on this basis alone. The collection considers the relevance of Kantian theory for our understanding of contemporary challenges facing human beings with regard to our relationship to animals.

THE LIMITS OF A NONCONSEQUENTIALIST APPROACH TO TORTS

Legal Theory ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara H. Fried
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Standards Of Conduct ◽  
As If

The nonconsequentialist revival in tort theory has focused almost exclusively on one issue: showing that the rules governing compensation for “wrongful” acts reflect corrective justice rather than welfarist norms. The literature either is silent on what makes an act wrongful in the first place or suggests criteria that seem indistinguishable from some version of cost/benefit analysis. As a result, cost/benefit analysis is currently the only game in town for determining appropriate standards of conduct for socially useful but risky acts. This is no small omission, and the failure of nonconsequentialists to acknowledge it or cure it can be traced to a number of recurring problems in the nonconsequentialist tort literature. Chief among them is the tendency to conflate prohibition and compensation, and to treat imposition of risk and imposition of harm as if they were distinct forms of conduct rather than the same conduct viewed from different temporal perspectives.

scholarly journals If One Can’t Lose Such a Right in These Circumstances, One Never Had It in the First Place

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Otsuka
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Defensive Harm

AbstractIn this article, I press a line of objection to Jonathan Quong's moral status account of liability to defensive harm. The claim on which I rest my critique is captured by the article's title: if one can’t lose such a right in these circumstances, one never had it in the first place.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document