Moral Philosophy

The chapters in this collection are ranged under four broad themes. Part I tackles the central issue of whether or not art and pornography are mutually exclusive in the most direct way. Part II explores the topic of imagination and fictionality in relation to pornography. Issues surrounding medium and genre provide the central focus of Part III, while Part IV addresses ethical and feminist concerns about pornography. This book will surely not constitute the last word on the debate in philosophy about the relationship between art and pornography. We fervently hope, though, that it will contribute to clarifying, enriching, and invigorating that debate.

Ethical and legal issues concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia are very much on the public agenda in many jurisdictions. This book addresses these issues within the wider context of palliative care for patients in the dying process. Its ethical conclusion is that a bright line between assisted death and other widely accepted end‐of‐life practices, including the withdrawal of life‐sustaining treatment, pain control through high‐dose opioids, and terminal sedation, cannot be justified. In the course of the ethical argument many familiar themes are given careful and thorough treatment: conceptions of death, the badness of death, informed consent and refusal, suicide, cause of death, the double effect, the sanctity of life, the ‘active/passive’ distinction, advance directives, and non‐voluntary euthanasia. The legal discussion opens with a survey of some prominent prohibitionist and regulatory regimes and then outlines a model regulatory policy for assisted death. The book concludes by defending this policy against a wide range of common objections, including those which appeal to slippery slopes or the possibility of abuse, and by asking how the transition to a regulatory regime might be managed in three common law prohibitionist jurisdictions.

A large number of people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. The law governing attempted crimes, then, is of practical importance, but the questions that arise in the adjudication of attempts also intersect with questions addressed by the philosophy of action, such as what intention a person must have, if any, and what a person must do, if anything, in order to be trying to do something. This book offers solutions to a variety of difficult problems that courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes through application of the philosophy of action. The book argues that the problems that courts face admit of principled solution through reflection on either (i) what it is to try to do something, (ii) what evidence is required for someone to be shown to have tried to do something, or (iii) what sentence for an attempt is fair, given the close relation between attempts and completions. The book proposes an account of the nature of trying to act, called “The Guiding Commitment View”, and uses that account to make progress on problems courts face. Under this account, to try to do something is to be committed by one's intention to each of the components of success, and to be guided by those commitments. It is argued that when the implications of this simple and intuitively plausible position are appreciated, we are able to recognize principled grounds on which the courts ought to distinguish between defendants charged with attempted crimes.

The Beloved Self is about the ‘holy grail’ of moral philosophy: an argument against Egoism, that we all have reasons to be moral. The first part of the book introduces three versions of Egoism, each paralleling a different moral theory, and sheds new light on the concept of self-interest in virtue ethics and especially in Kant's moral theory. Part Two looks at attempts to prove that Egoism is false, and shows that even modest arguments against Egoist appear to fail. Part Three discusses the relationship between knowledge and action and defends a new conception of moral epistemology, centred on the importance of moral understanding, which has wide-ranging implications regarding not only moral testimony and moral disagreement but also the nature of virtue and morally worthy action. This final part of the book culminates in a vindication of morality, an argument that it is not epistemically rational to believe the most plausible versions of Egoism.

This book argues for a number of related, highly provocative views: (i) coming into existence is always a serious harm; (ii) procreation is always wrong; (iii) it is wrong not to abort foetuses at the earlier stages of gestation; and (iv) it would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct. Although these conclusions are antagonistic to common and deeply held intuitions, the book argues that these intuitions are unreliable and thus cannot be used to refute it's grim-sounding conclusions.

The focus of this book is consequentialism, the moral theory upon which an action is morally right just in case its performance leads to the best state of affairs. The theory can with some plausibility claim a status as the default alternative in contemporary moral philosophy. Moreover, its pervasive deployment in spheres such as economics, public policy, and jurisprudence is one of the striking developments of the last 150 years. It is the thesis of this book that debates concerning the challenge of consequentialism tend to overlook a fundamental challenge to consequentialism, an unresolved tension between the theory and many of its most fundamental presuppositions. An appreciation of the nature of this tension grounds the articulation of a fundamental challenge to the theory from within. This challenge is developed and sharpened through the first 4 chapters of the book. Development of this challenge to consequentialism in turn reveals the apparent force of the challenge of consequentialism to be largely illusory. Chapter 5 demonstrates that many traditional rationales offered in its support draw upon systematic misappropriations of intuitions linking rightness of actions and goodness of actions, treating them as intuitions concerning rightness of actions and goodness of overall states of affairs. Chapters 6 and 7 demonstrate that one remaining rationale — a rationale grounded in the appeal to the impartiality of morality — does not provide support for the theory; indeed, that attempts to respond to the tension within consequentialism suggest a fundamental role for an alternative to the consequentialist's impersonal conception of impartiality, an interpersonal rather than an impersonal conception of equal concern. Unlike the consequentialist's impersonal conception, such interpersonal impartiality can allow for the ordinary moral convictions that actions that do not promote the best overall state of affairs are often morally permitted, and are sometimes morally required.

This book examines the ethical controversy surrounding biomedical enhancement: the use of biotechnologies to improve normal human capacities and characteristics. It deflates the heated rhetoric of the debate and, unlike other treatment of the topic, is informed by an understanding of evolutionary biology. The book debunks the idea that the natural is always good, and explains why and how we might need to change human nature.

BIOETHICS: A Systematic Approach is an extensive revision of Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals. The subtitle has changed in order to emphasize that what distinguishes the authors’ approach to bioethics from almost all others is that it is systematic. It applies the account of morality and rationality presented in COMMON MORALITY: Deciding What To Do (2004) and MORALITY: Its Nature and Justification, Revised Edition (2005) to the moral problems that arise in the practice of medicine. The concept of rationality used to justify morality is the same concept that is used to define the concept of malady or disease. The book offers an account of the concept of death, and provides an account of euthanasia that fits within the systematic account of morality and rationality that have been provided. It also shows that this systematic account explains the controversy about the morality of abortion. There are new chapters on moral disagreements, abortion, and on “what doctors must know”, and significant improvements have been made in the treatment of the concepts of consent and malady. An entire chapter is devoted to the concept of mental maladies. Arguments are also developed against principlism and shows how principlism’s authors’ misunderstanding of this view undermines their criticisms.

Our ability to map and intervene in the structure of the human brain is proceeding at a very quick rate. Advances in psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery have given us fresh insights into the neurobiological basis of human thought and behavior. Technologies like MRI and PET scans can detect early signs of psychiatric disorders before they manifest symptoms. Electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain can non-invasively relieve symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and other conditions resistant to treatment, while implanting neuro-electrodes can help patients with Parkinson's and other motor control-related diseases. New drugs can help regenerate neuronal connections otherwise disrupted by schizophrenia and similar diseases. All these procedures and drugs alter the neural correlates of our mind, and raise fascinating and important ethical questions about their benefits and harms. They are, in a sense, among the most profound bioethical questions we face, since these techniques can touch on the deepest aspects of the human mind: free will, personal identity, the self, and the soul. This book starts by describing the state of the art in neuroscientific research and treatment, and gives an up-to-date picture of the brain. It then looks at the ethical implications of various kinds of treatments, such as whether or not brain imaging will end up changing our views on free will and moral responsibility; whether patients should always be told that they are at future risk for neurological diseases; if erasing unconscious emotional memories implicated in depression can go too far; if forcing behavior-modifying drugs or surgery on violent offenders can ever be justified; the implications of drugs that enhance cognitive abilities; and how to define brain death and the criteria for the withdrawal of life–support.