The latest ethics alert appears below the fold.
Publicly Available:
Edouard Machery, Understanding the Folk Concept of Intentional Action:
Philosophical and Experimental Issues
Mark Phelan
and Hagop
Sarkissian, The Folk Strike Back; Or, Why You Didn?t Do It Intentionally,
Though It Was Bad and You Knew It
John Bengson, Marc A.
Moffett, & Jennifer Cole Wright, The
Folk are Intellectualists
Fred
Feldman, Actual
Utility, The Objection from Impracticality, and the Move to Expected Utility
Sharon Street, A
Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value
Bart Streumer, Are
There Irreducibly Normative Properties?
David
McNaughton, Review of Michael
Huemer , Ethical Intuitionism,
from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Julian
Savulescu, Solving
the Stem Cell and Cloning Puzzle, from Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical
Ethics
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Divine Command Theory
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aquinas’ Moral Philosophy
Richard Arneson, Joel
Feinberg and the Justification of Hard Paternalism
Douglas Portmore, Desire
Fulfillment and Posthumous Harm. (Penultimate draft of a paper forthcoming in
the American Philosophical Quarterly.)
This paper argues that the standard account of posthumous harm is untenable.
The standard account presupposes the desire-fulfillment theory of welfare, but
I argue that no plausible version of this theory can allow for the possibility
of posthumous harm. I argue that there are, at least, two problems with the
standard account from the perspective of a desire-fulfillment theorist. First,
as most desire-fulfillment theorists acknowledge, the theory must be restricted
in such a way that only those desires that pertain to one’s own life count in
determining one’s welfare. The problem is that no one has yet provided a
plausible account of which desires these are such that desires for posthumous
prestige and the like are included. Second and more importantly, if the
desire-fulfillment theory is going to be at all plausible, it must, I argue,
restrict itself not only to those desires that pertain to one’s own life but
also to those desires that are future independent, and this would rule out the
possibility of posthumous harm. If I’m right, then even the desire-fulfillment
theorist should reject the standard account of posthumous harm. We cannot
plausibly account for posthumous harm in terms of desire fulfillment (or the
lack thereof).
Nick Bostrom, Technological Revolutions:
Ethics and Policy in the Dark. Technological revolutions are among the most
important things that happen to humanity. This paper discusses some of the
ethical and policy issues raised by anticipated technological revolutions, such
as nanotechnology.
Available by Subscription Only:
NOT SO PROMISING AFTER ALL:
EVALUATOR-RELATIVE TELEOLOGY AND
COMMON-SENSE MORALITY
MARK SCHROEDER
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly;
Volume 87, Issue 3, 2006Sep1, Page 348
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0114.2006.00265.x?ai=2l8&ui=gfy1&af=T
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Philosophy, Volume 81 – Issue 02 – April
2006. This issue contains:
Moral
Competence and Bernard Williams
Abigail L. Rosenthal
Published Online: 18-SEP-06
[ abstract ] pp 255 – 277
Punishment and Repentance
John Tasioulas
Published Online: 18-SEP-06
[ abstract ] pp 279 – 322
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Lewis and Blackburn
on quasi-realism and fictionalism
C. S. Jenkins
Analysis;
Volume 66, Issue 292, 2006Oct1, Page 315
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8284.2006.00634.x?ai=2gl&ui=gfy1&af=T
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NOTICE: If you have an ethics paper (or a
new draft of one) that has recently become available online and you would like
me to link to it in the next Ethics Alert, then please send me an email or an email
attachment (.doc or .rtf) with the relevant information. The relevant
information should be properly formatted so that it can be simply cut and
pasted into a post. Thus it should look like this:
Richard
J. Arneson, Luck
Egalitarianism: An Interpretation and Defense, forthcoming in Philosophical Topics.
Not like
this:
<a href=
“http://philosophy2.ucsd.edu/~rarneson/index.html”>Richard J.
Arneson</a>, <a
href=“http://philosophy2.ucsd.edu/~rarneson/luckegalitarianism2.pdf”>Luck
Egalitarianism: An Interpretation and Defense</a>. forthcoming in <i>Philosophical
Topics</i>.
Those interested in my response to Schroeder’s “Not So Promising After All: Evaluator-relative Teleology and Common-sense Morality” should see my “Consequentializing Moral Theories” (forthcoming in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly).
Here’s an abstract: To consequentialize a given non-consequentialist theory, take whatever considerations that the non-consequentialist theory holds to be relevant to determining the deontic status of an action and insist that those considerations are relevant to determining the proper ranking of outcomes. In this way, the consequentialist can produce an ordering of outcomes that when combined with her criterion of rightness yields the same set of moral verdicts that the non-consequentialist theory yields. In this paper, I argue that any plausible non-consequentialist theory can be consequentialized. I explain the motivation for the consequentializing project and defend it against recent criticisms by Mark Schroeder. Against further challenges, I argue that the fact that any non-consequentialist theory can be consequentialized doesn’t entail that we’re all consequentialists nor does it entail that consequentialism is empty. Lastly, I argue that although the consequentializer will need to appeal to our considered moral convictions in determining how to rank outcomes, this in no way renders the resulting consequentialist position circular or uninformative.