General

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 idea that animals can act morally—can act for moral reasons—has been almost universally rejected by philosophers and scientists alike. According to tradition, while animals may be objects of moral concern, they cannot be regarded as subjects of moral motivation. This book argues against the traditional view. Animals can act for moral reasons—at least there are no compelling reasons for supposing that that they can’t. Animals can act on the basis of moral emotions—emotions that possess moral content—and these emotions provide reasons for their actions. Animals can, in this sense, be moral subjects. Using recent empirical work in cognitive ethology as a springboard, this book embarks on a meticulous examination of the idea of moral motivation—an examination that weaves its way through central topics in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, metaethics, and moral psychology. The result of this investigation is a powerful defense of an extraordinarily controversial claim—animals can, in fact, be moral—that is sure to engender heated debate.

This book pays to tribute to Jonathan Glover, a pioneering figure whose thought and personal influence have had a significant impact on applied philosophy. In topics that include genetic engineering, abortion, euthanasia, war, and moral responsibility, Glover has made seminal contributions. The chapters here, written by contemporary moral philosophers, address topics to which Glover has contributed, with particular emphasis on problems of conflict discussed in his book, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. There are also testaments to the influence Glover has had on colleagues, students, and friends. Glover himself contributes a series of fine replies, which constitute an important addition to his published work.

Ethics at the Cinema is a collection of original philosophical papers on film. Contributors were invited to engage with ethical issues raised within, or within the process of viewing, a single film; they were given the freedom to write on a topic and film of their choice. All contributors have previously written in ethics and/or the philosophy of film, but they come from a wide range of traditions and backgrounds within both. The collection is divided into two parts: ‘Part 1: Critique, Character, and the Power of Film’, and ‘Part 2: Philosophical Readings’. The papers in Part 1 engage explicitly with meta-issues surrounding film, film narratives, and film viewing. The papers comprising Part 2 are engaged less with issues about film than with the details of their chosen film: its characters, its plot, and its particular uses of images.

Happiness in Good Lives explores happiness as an important dimension of fully desirable lives. Happiness is defined as loving one’s life, valuing it in ways manifested by ample enjoyment and a robust sense of meaning. As such, it interacts with all other dimensions of good lives, in particular with moral decency and goodness, authenticity, mental health, self-fulfillment, and meaningfulness. The book integrates philosophical issues with topics of broad human interest, and it includes chapters on how happiness connects with the virtues, love, philanthropy, suffering, simplicity, balancing work and leisure, and politics. Happiness is a moral value, as well as a self-interested value, which we have a responsibility as well as a right to pursue. Myriad specific virtues contribute to pursuing happiness, and in turn happiness contributes to or manifests an array of virtues such as love, self-respect, gratitude, and hope. Although happiness is by no means the entirety of good lives, it helps define some additional aspects of good lives, including authenticity, self-fulfillment, meaningfulness, and mental health. It also enters into understanding what it means to live a balanced life, and also a simple life centered on what matters most. The moral status of happiness is a central concern in the history of ethics. Recent “positive psychology” has breathed new life into traditional philosophical issues, and the book draws extensively on psychological studies. It also uses myriad examples from memoirs, novels, and films. One chapter is devoted to assessing the claim of Mary Shelley’s monster in Frankenstein: “Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”

Hegel's version of naturalism is drawn from Aristotelian naturalism: Hegel fused Aristotle's conception of nature with his insistence that the origin and development of philosophy has empirical physics as its presupposition. As a result, Hegel found that, although modern nature must be understood as a whole to be nonpurposive, there is nonetheless a place for Aristotelian purposiveness within such nature. Such a naturalism provides the framework for explaining how we are both natural organisms and also practically minded (self‐determining, rationally responsive, reason‐giving) beings. In arguing for this point, Hegel shows that the kind of self‐division that is characteristic of human agency also provides human agents with an updated version of an Aristotelian final end of life. In making his case, Hegel argues that both the antinomies of philosophical thought and the essential fragmentation of modern life are all not to be understood as overcome in a higher order unity in the “state.” On the contrary, Hegel demonstrates that modern institutions do not resolve such tensions any more than a comprehensive philosophical account can resolve them theoretically. The job of modern practices and institutions (and at a reflective level the task of modern philosophy) is to help us understand and live with precisely the unresolvability of these oppositions.

Seemingly every day society faces a new ethical challenge raised by a scientific innovation. Human genetic engineering, stem cell research, face transplantation, synthetic biology – all were science fiction only a few decades ago, but are now all are reality. How do we as a society decide whether these technologies are ethical? For decades professional bioethicists have served as a mediator between a busy public and decision-makers, helping people understand their own ethical concerns, framing arguments, discrediting illogical claims and lifting up promising ones. These bioethicists operate in multiple venues such as hospital decision-making, institutions that conduct research on humans, and recommending ethical policy to the government. While functioning quite well for many years, the bioethics profession is in crisis. Policy-makers are less inclined to take the advice of bioethics professionals, with many observers saying that bioethics debates have simply become partisan politics with dueling democratic and republican bioethicists. While this crisis is contained to the task of recommending ethical policy to the government, there is risk that it will spread to the other tasks conducted by bioethicists. To understand how this situation came into being, and the solution to this problem, this book closely examines the history of the bioethics profession. Bioethics debates were originally dominated by theologians, but came to be dominated by the emerging profession of bioethics due to the subtle and slow involvement of the government as the primary consumer of bioethical arguments. However, after the 1980s the views of the government changed, making bioethical arguments not quite so legitimate. With this knowledge of the sociological processes that lead to this evolution, the book proposes a radical solution to the crisis, which is for the bioethics profession to give up on some of the work that it currently does so that it can focus upon its strengths, and change the way the profession makes ethical arguments.

Is shame social? Is it superficial? Is it a morally problematic emotion? Researchers in disciplines as different as psychology, philosophy, and anthropology have thought so. But what is the nature of shame and why are claims regarding its social nature and moral standing interesting and important? Do they tell us anything worthwhile about the value of shame and its potential legal and political applications? In this book, the authors propose an original philosophical account of shame aimed at answering these questions. The book begins with a detailed examination of the evidence and arguments that are taken to support what they call the two dogmas about shame: its alleged social nature and its morally dubious character. Their analysis is conducted against the backdrop of a novel account of shame and ultimately leads to the rejection of these two dogmas. On this account, shame involves a specific form of negative evaluation that the subject takes towards herself: a verdict of incapacity with regard to values to which she is attached. One central virtue of the account resides in the subtle manner it clarifies the ways in which the subject’s identity is at stake in shame, thus shedding light on many aspects of this complex emotion and allowing for a sophisticated understanding of its moral significance. This philosophical account of shame engages with all the current debates on shame as they are conducted within disciplines as varied as ethics, moral, experimental, developmental and evolutionary psychology, anthropology, legal studies, feminist studies, politics and public policy.

In a world of limited resources, competition between the young and old prompt difficult questions of justice. In countries with public pension and health care systems, or with aging populations, there is often a concern that members of different generations are not always treated fairly. This book examines justice between age-groups with the ultimate goal of a new theory of justice that effectively grapples with those questions. In the realm of public policy and medical ethics this is an important and timely topic, but surprisingly one that has received relatively little attention from moral philosophers. The book develops a comprehensive view of fairness between age groups that applies the egalitarian values of equality, or priority for the badly off, to temporal parts of lives—not just to complete lives.

This book addresses questions in ethical theory and practical questions about lying, deception, and information disclosure in public affairs, business and professional ethics, and personal relationships. Part I is a conceptual map for the rest of the book. It proposes an analysis of the concepts of lying and deception and related concepts such as withholding information, “keeping someone in the dark,” and “half-truths.” Part II addresses questions in ethical theory. The book examines the implications of Kant's theory, act-utilitarianism, Ross's theory, and rule-consequentialism for moral questions about lying and deception. The book argues that Kant's absolutism about lying is untenable and that his moral theory doesn't commit him to being an absolutist. It also argues that the standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed intuitions. The book defends a version of the golden rule and a theory of moral reasoning. The book's theory implies that there is a moral presumption against lying and deception that cause harm — a presumption that is at least as strong as that endorsed by act-utilitarianism. The book uses this theory to justify its claims about the issues it addresses in Part III: deception and withholding information in sales, deception in advertising, bluffing and deception in negotiations, the duty of professionals to inform their clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars (or avoiding wars), lying and deception about history (with special attention to the Holocaust), and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half truths. The book concludes with a qualified defense of the view that honesty is a virtue.