bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Weakness of Will
Authors: Tappolet Christine
Published: January 2013

Weakness of will is generally taken to involve a conflict between practical thought and action (seeAction), such as when we have another glass of wine even though we judge that it would be better to refrain, all things considered. Failures of this kind often lead to imprudence (seePrudence) and blameworthiness (seeBlame); and they are commonly taken to be paradigmatically irrational (seeRationality). One interest in weakness of will is practical. Moral philosophy focuses on the nature and causes of the moral failure that is often involved in weakness of will, and examines ways to restore self‐control. Another interest comes from moral psychology (seeMoral Psychology). A better understanding of the nature of weakness of will promises to shed light on practical thought and its relation to motivation (seeMotivation, Moral) and action. In fact, weakness of will is often used as a test case for theories of action and theories of moral reasoning (seeMoral Reasoning).
Moral Equality of Combatants
Authors: Bazargan Saba
Published: January 2013

The moral equality of combatants (MEC) is a doctrine about the principles governing the conduct of combatants in a war (where “conduct” is taken to include not only how combatants are permitted to fight, but whether they are permitted to fight). According to MEC, the principles governing the conduct of combatants in a war do not depend on what side in the war the combatants are fighting on. Thus, if MEC is correct, then for any side in a war, the principles governing the conduct of the combatants do not depend on whether that side is fighting a just war. Consequently, if it is permissible to fight in a just war, combatants do no wrong by fighting in an unjust war. The most distinguished supporter of this application of MEC is Michael Walzer. In his influential book Just and Unjust Wars (2000), Walzer argues that the responsibility for waging an unjust war rests with military and civilian leaders – not with combatants who typically have no control over the decisions made by their leaders, and who typically are subjected to deception, indoctrination, and coercion by the state. Thus, in a war with a just and unjust side, the combatants fighting on the unjust side (unjust combatants) are typically no less morally innocent than those fighting on the just side (just combatants). Walzer argues that since both just and unjust combatants are morally innocent (unless they commit war crimes) the principles governing combat ought not to distinguish just combatants from unjust combatants.
Rorty, Richard
Authors: Hiley David R.
Published: January 2013

Richard Rorty (1931–2007) was educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, receiving his PhD in philosophy from Yale in 1959. He taught philosophy at Wellesley College and Princeton University, was university professor of humanities at the University of Virginia, and taught comparative literature at Stanford University until his retirement. He received the prestigious McArthur Fellowship (1981–6); and he held a number of important lectureships, including the Howison (Berkeley 1983), Northcliffe (University College London 1986), Clark (Trinity College, Cambridge, 1987), Romanell (Phi Beta Kappa 1989), Tanner (Michigan 1990), Oxford Amnesty Lecture 1993, Massey (Harvard 1997), and Donellan (Trinity College Dublin 1998). While his earliest published work was in the tradition of analytic philosophy, writing on issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind and language, his most important and controversial book,
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(1979), sought to undermine foundationalist tenants of analytic philosophy and the traditional view of philosophy of which it was a part. His subsequent publications worked out the consequences of anti‐foundationalism for philosophy, science, ethics, and politics. This essay will begin with an overview of his critique of traditional philosophy in order to draw out its implications for ethics.
Natural Law
Authors: George Robert P. , Tollefsen Christopher
Published: January 2013

Natural law ethics forms a distinctive family of ethical theories, all of which take the human good, or human well‐being, as central to their theoretical approach. After a period of diminishing influence following the Enlightenment, during which natural law theory was largely a matter for Catholic seminaries, natural ethics has seen a resurgence in recent decades in normative ethics, philosophy of law, political theory, and applied ethics.
Dirty Hands
Authors: Blattberg Charles
Published: January 2013

When Machiavelli (1950: Ch. 15) famously wrote that the prince who would govern effectively must learn “how not to be good,” he gave powerful articulation to an idea that has become commonplace, namely, that we cannot practice politics without “getting our hands dirty.” To attempt otherwise is to court disaster – for oneself, of course, but also for one's subjects. Consider the “ticking time bomb” scenario, which has become prominent in the literature. A terrorist has been captured who has knowledge of a bomb that will soon explode, causing a great loss of innocent life. Should those in charge authorize the use of torture in order to obtain the information for finding and defusing the bomb? On the one hand, many believe that torture is always wrong; on the other, there exists a responsibility toward all those innocent lives. Does this mean that, in politics, it can be right to do wrong? But is that not a contradictory, even paradoxical claim? Overall, contemporary moral and political philosophers can be said to have given three answers to these questions.
Feminist Metaethics
Authors: Holroyd Jules
Published: January 2013

Metaethical questions concern the nature of morality: are there moral properties, and, if so, what kind of thing are they? How do they motivate us? How should we understand moral discourse, and how can we gain moral knowledge?
Boycotts
Authors: Stoll Mary Lyn
Published: January 2013

A boycott occurs when one or more parties ask that consumers refuse to patronize an organization in order to achieve some goal. The goal of a boycott may be primarily instrumental, i.e., designed to effect policy changes, or the goal may be fundamentally expressive, i.e., an expression of moral disdain. Most boycotts involve both. The term “boycott” originates in disputes between British estate manager Charles Cunningham Boycott and his Irish workers. After years of leaving workers in deplorable living conditions, Boycott paid tenant farmers to bring in the harvest at a fraction of their normal wage. Workers who refused were evicted; they vowed to ostracize Boycott completely (
see
Economics and Ethics).
Paradoxes of Voting
Authors: Saari Donald G.
Published: January 2013

The 2000 Florida presidential elections, where Bush beat Gore even though Gore would have beaten Bush in a head‐to‐head comparison, combined with US Electoral College outcomes where a popular vote winner can lose, capture the uncomfortable reality that election outcomes can reflect the choice of a voting rule rather than voter preferences. This concern is crucial because “winners” affect our future. “Voting paradoxes” prove that the problem is much worse than commonly believed.
Rabbinic Ethics
Authors: Schofer Jonathan Wyn
Published: January 2013

Some modern and postmodern readers consider ethics to be at the heart of Judaism, perhaps its essence. This view appears, in very different ways, through formulations of “ethical monotheism” and through the primacy that Emmanuel Levinas gives to ethics in his phenomenology. Other modern and postmodern readers contrast ethics with Jewish law, attributing lesser significance to ethics or even questioning whether the category of ethics is appropriate for classical Judaism at all (Levinas 1969; Gibbs 2010; Newman 1998; Vial and Hadley 2001; Schweiker 2004). Such positions presume very different understandings of what ethics entails. Louis Newman (1998) concludes his extensive examination of Jewish law and Jewish ethics by arguing that we need to clarify the relation between law, ethics, and religion.
Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Authors: Connolly Anthony J.
Published: January 2013

The rights of indigenous peoples (or indigenous rights) are those rights aspired to, claimed, held, exercised, or enforced by or on behalf of the indigenous peoples of the world (Connolly 2009). The United Nations has estimated the worldwide population of indigenous people at around 370 million, inhabiting 90 countries across all the regions of the world (United Nations 2009). In 2007, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This agreement codified many of the rights asserted by the world's indigenous groups over the past few decades and offered those groups a clear and authoritative moral and legal basis upon which to pursue their ongoing struggle for recognition and justice (United Nations 2008;seeIdentity, Politics of; Recognition; Reconciliation). The promulgation of the Declaration also signaled the increased importance within national and international moral, political, and legal discourse of issues surrounding the status and needs of indigenous peoples.
Respect
Authors: Woodruff Paul
Published: January 2013

Respect is, most generally, appreciation of the value of a person or thing, accompanied by appropriate affect, and expressed in appropriate behavior. Respect may take objects from a broad range, but is most often accorded to human beings. In addition to respecting a person, e.g., for honesty, one might respect a gale of wind for its strength or a position of power for its rank (regardless of the person who holds it). This essay, like most ethical discussions of respect, will focus on respect for persons, which occupies an important place in the ethics of human relationships. Some thinkers treat respect as the foundation for human rights (seeRights). Thinkers under the influence of Kant hold that we are morally required to respect each other for our value as human beings, i.e., for our capacity for rational choice and our dignity as ends in ourselves (seeKant, Immanuel).
Brain Death
Authors: Howsepian A. A.
Published: January 2013

Few philosophical questions have as much practical import as how to understand the nature of organismic death (hereafter, “death”seeDeath).Dead human beings, for example, are believed to be proper objects of autopsy, burial, vital organ procurement for purposes of transplantation (seeOrgan Transplantation), and release from previous social obligations. At its most basic conceptual level, an organism dies when it ceases to be; however, even this very basic idea requires explanation. What does it mean for an organism to cease to be? A very natural and widely embraced suggestion is that an organism has died when it ceases to function as an integrated whole, when it has lost its somatic integrative unity or, alternatively, when it has lost its “principle of organization” (or “soul”) (seeAquinas, Saint Thomas; Aristotle; Organic Unities). Yet even if this issue were settled, disagreement concerning other levels involved in the definition of death would remain in dispute, including general physiological standards which reflect that death has occurred, operational criteria concerning death, and what specific evaluative steps are appropriate for establishing that death has occurred (Capron and Kass 1972).
Ought Implies Can
Authors: Howard‐Snyder Frances
Published: January 2013

The idea that ought implies can (hereafter, OIC) or perhaps more perspicuously, that inability to do something implies that one does not have an obligation to do it, has been around a long time. It has been traced back to Pelagius and Augustine and is akin to the Roman legal maxim
impossibilium nulla obligation est
, but is usually associated with Kant (1996;
see
Kant, Immanuel). It is connected to issues of Moral Luck (
see
Moral Luck), moral Dilemmas (
see
Dilemmas, Moral), questions about subjective and objective obligation, and the debate over freedom, determinism, moral responsibility, and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (
see
Free Will). I will consider different versions of OIC, major arguments in support of it, and major arguments against it.
Beauvoir, Simone de
Authors: Deutscher Penelope
Published: January 2013

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) is associated with mid‐twentieth‐century French existentialist thought (
see
Existentialism), on which she partly drew in the development of
The Second Sex
(1949), one of the most important texts of twentieth‐century feminist thought (
see
Continental Feminist Ethics). It achieved worldwide sales exceeding one million copies. She is also a noted author of four volumes of autobiography (including
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
, 1958), significant narrative works on the deaths of her mother (
A Very Easy Death
, 1964) and of her partner Jean‐Paul Sartre (
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
, 1981;
see
Sartre, Jean‐Paul), and of fiction, in which her philosophical themes are further developed. Her novel
The Mandarins
was awarded the prestigious French literary prize, the Goncourt, in 1954.
Zhu Xi
Authors: Makeham John
Published: January 2013

Thecentral topic of Confucian moral philosophy isren xing, or “human nature.” Within that tradition, the two most influential accounts of the topic are those of Mencius (fourth centurybce;seeMencius) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200). Mencius lived at a time when many thinkers were troubled by a profound metaphysical doubt as to whether “heaven” (tian) underpins human moral values.Ren xingis what links us with the nonhuman universe, the normative order of heaven. Mencius maintained that humans (ren) are beings born for goodness; at birth, there exists a natural tendency for goodness, as inevitable as the natural tendency of water to flow downward. When left unhindered and properly nurtured, our innate good tendencies – the moral predispositions of our “heart‐mind” (xin) – will become manifest of their own accord (seeIntuitions, Moral).
Consequentialism
Authors: Cummiskey David
Published: January 2013

At the most basic level, according to consequentialists, right actions maximize good consequences. The simple intuitive idea motivating consequentialism is that a good person makes the world a better place and, ideally, we should all aim to do as much good as possible.
Early Modern Ethics
Authors: Guyer Paul
Published: January 2013

This essay concerns the development of ethics in Britain and Europe from the publication ofLeviathanby Thomas Hobbes in 1651 to the early work (1764–5) of Immanuel Kant (seeHobbes, Thomas; Kant, Immanuel). There are numerous ways to classify ethical theories in this period. The simplest way would be to regard the entire period as a response to the perceived egoism of Hobbes, the view that people are motivated only by concern for their own well‐being and may do anything they consider necessary for that, although if they are rational all will see that it is in their own self‐interest to institute a state that will define and enforce public laws. The next simplest way would be to regard the period as responding to Hobbesian egoism on the one hand and to the voluntarist ethics of divine command on the other (seeDivine Command), according to which right and wrong are defined by the will of God and human beings comply with the moral laws so instituted motivated by fear of punishment and hope of reward from God or his human regents.
Confucius
Authors: Angle Stephen C.
Published: January 2013

Confucius (551–479BCE) is the Latinized name of Kong Qiu, best known in Chinese as Kongzi (Master Kong). Only partially successful in his public career, Confucius' private teaching inaugurated an era of reflectiveness and helped to define core elements of Chinese civilization. Subsequent generations of students built on his initial formulations to develop one of the world's great philosophical traditions, which in English we call “Confucianism”; various terms are used in Chinese, includingRu jia(the Scholars' School) andDao xue(the Learning of the Way). While later Confucian thinkers would develop elaborate frameworks of metaphysics, mind, and epistemology, Confucius' own teachings concentrated on ethics, politics, social values, and personal improvement. These teachings and the key terms in which they are phrased remained touchstones for the tradition ever after, and the Confucian tradition became absolutely central to what it meant to be Chinese. Given the scope of China and its civilization, it is no exaggeration to say that Confucius is among the most influential of humanity's thinkers.
International Criminal Justice
Authors: Rodman Kenneth A.
Published: January 2013

International criminal justice is a field of international law that calls for the trial and punishment of those individuals who bear the greatest responsibility for the most serious war crimes and human rights abuses. Its increasing prominence in international tribunals and national courts since the 1990s has prompted ethical debates over whether there is a universal duty to prosecute international crimes or whether that duty needs to be weighed and balanced against the potentially adverse consequences of insisting on trials for other interests and values.
Hart, H. L. A.
Authors: Kramer Matthew H.
Published: January 2013

Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart (1907–92) was the foremost legal philosopher and one of the foremost political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a Jewish family in Yorkshire, England, Hart pursued his undergraduate education at Oxford and went on to qualify as a barrister. After practicing law for several years, he worked for the British intelligence service MI5 during the World War II. When the war ended, he returned to Oxford to take up a fellowship in philosophy at New College. He subsequently became Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford (and Fellow of University College) and, later still, Principal of Brasenose College. During the closing years of his career as an active scholar, he devoted much of his time to editing and interpreting the works of Jeremy Bentham (seeBentham, Jeremy). Many former students of his, including Ronald Dworkin, Joseph Raz, John Finnis, Neil MacCormick, Herbert Morris, and Wilfrid Waluchow, have been among the most prominent legal philosophers of the next generation.
William of Ockham
Authors: Guilfoy Kevin
Published: January 2013

William of Ockham's (1287–1347) ethical theory defies easy categorization. Fundamentally, Ockham is an intentionalist in the tradition of Augustine and Abelard: only acts of will are morally significant. However, he develops his theory in the framework of an Aristotelian virtue ethic (
see
Augustine, Saint; Abelard, Peter). The combination of an intentionalist ethic and an Aristotelian virtue ethic is an uneasy marriage, but one that Ockham makes sense of. The most significant problem in explicating Ockham's ethical thought is that he develops two different accounts of the ultimate standards of morality. He argues that all moral norms are determined by divine command. He also argues that human reason, even when ignorant of God, can discover moral norms. This tension is found at the foundation of Ockham's moral theory. Ockham divides moral science into two branches: positive and nonpositive (Quod. II.14). Positive moral science recognizes that God has the absolute power to command anything that does not involve a contradiction, and that any act is good (or evil) only because it is commanded (or prohibited) by God. Nonpositive moral science derives its norms from the exercise of human reason. Some nonpositive moral principles are known
per se.
These principles are somewhat abstract: “anything dictated by right reason should be done” (sent. III.12). Others are known by experience. These principles are more practical and directive: “an angry person should be soothed with calm words” (connex. 2.14). For Ockham, divine command and human reason each provide us with a set of moral norms and code ethical conduct. Ockham's many defenders are hard pressed to explain how he reconciled these two competing bases of moral norms.
Corporate Governance
Authors: Donaldson Thomas
Published: January 2013

In a world where corporations dominate ever larger segments of global society, the question of how corporations are governed, i.e., corporate governance, is vital. Definitions for the term “corporate governance” vary. The broadest definition, and the one that we shall use here, includes the rules, policies, habits, institutions, and laws affecting the activities of the organization. Corporate governance in this sense is concerned with phenomena that philosophers call “prescriptive” or action‐guiding. The rules, policies, and other elements of governance are whatguideor control the firm. The term “corporate governance” usually also implies a for‐profit firm, i.e., one designed to earn money for its owners. We shall restrict the term similarly here. The for‐profit firm can be either “private,” meaning that it is owned by a particular group of investors, or “public,” meaning that its shares of stock are publicly traded and hence subject to securities laws. Sometimes a state‐owned enterprise (SOE) can be profit‐making, but we shall exclude them from discussion here.
Troeltsch, Ernst
Authors: Sockness Brent W.
Published: January 2013

Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) ranks together with Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) as one of the most accomplished and influential German liberal Protestant theologians of the early twentieth century. His magisterial 1912 work in the history of Christian social teachings (Troeltsch 1931) and various historical studies of Western ethical traditions (Troeltsch 1925) – e.g., of the ethos of the Hebrew prophets; of Stoic, Christian, and modern forms of natural law; of the British moralists; of the social philosophy of Christianity – have long made Troeltsch required reading for students of religious, especially Christian, ethics. Far less recognized is his constructive proposal in ethical theory, which, in critical engagement with Marburg and Southwest Neo‐Kantianism, retrieved aspects of Schleiermacher's philosophical ethics (seeSchleiermacher, Friedrich) as well as Kant's (seeKant, Immanuel). This enabled him to construct a moral–theoretical framework capable of providing a general account of concrete cultural values emergent in history and, more specifically, a defense of the contributions of Hebraic and Christian moral traditions to modern European and North American societies. Following a few biographical and contextual observations, this essay will identify the “crisis of historicism” motivating Troeltsch's lifelong interest in practical philosophy and then sketch the lineaments of his ethical theory proper as a response to the crisis of orientation into whichfin de siècleEuropean society was widely perceived to have fallen.
Calvin, John
Authors: Little David
Published: January 2013

As an important leader of the “Reformed” branch of the Protestant Reformation that arose in Europe and Great Britain during the sixteenth century, John Calvin (1509–64) may best be described as a practical theologian. Presupposing, as he did, the familiar aphorismecclesia reformata semper reformanda(“the church reformed, ever reforming”), he understood reform as comprehensive and ongoing. He proceeded to revise Roman Catholic doctrine and the interpretation of scripture and tradition in close conjunction with proposals to restructure social practice as a whole, including moral understanding and conduct and the institutions of church and state. According to Calvin, human beings cannot be content with knowledge of God based on “empty speculation” that “merely flits in the brain,” but only with that which “takes root in the heart.” “All right knowledge of God is born of obedience” (1960, I: 61, 72).
Power
Authors: Patton Paul
Published: January 2013

Power is a central concern for many fields of social, political, and moral inquiry. For this reason, power is defined and described in many different ways. For some theorists, it is primarily associated with domination, coercion, violence, and other negative forms of action on individuals and groups. For others, power is primarily positive, expressed in the exercise of legitimate collective authority or in the educative and transformative control of children by parents and teachers. Some conceive of power as opposed to the freedom of individuals and groups, while others conceive of it as a condition of freedom. Because of the many conceptual and normative differences in the way that social theorists use the term “power,” it has been suggested that it is an “essentially contested” concept (Connolly 1974; Lukes 2005). Others have argued that there are distinct concepts of power, some of which are related by Wittgensteinian family resemblances (Wartenberg 1990; Clegg and Haugard 2009). A better model is to suppose that there is a core concept of power that is normatively neutral with respect to the character of its effects, which then underpins a number of different conceptions, each characterized by the incorporation of further concepts. This model, which will be employed here, accords with the structure of other moral and political concepts such as justice and equality.
Healthcare Resources, Distribution of
Authors: Daniels Norman
Published: January 2013

Few people who become ill or have ill loved ones want less than the best care possible, regardless of cost. Their clinicians generally want to do the best they can for their patients, being spurred either by career and monetary incentives or by ethical obligations. In response, all the developed societies spend considerable resources on meeting healthcare needs (seeNeeds). European countries expend 8–11 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare, mostly on personal medical services (Organisation for Economic and Co‐Operation and Development 2009). The US, an extravagant outlier, spent 17.6 percent of GDP on healthcare in 2009 (Goldstein 2011); this figure represents 50 percent more than the next highest spending country. Yet the US is the only wealthy country that falls well short of providing universal health insurance coverage; and this is in spite of the fact that it has higher infant mortality rates and lower life expectancy than other wealthy countries – which is a result of inefficiency in its health system – and that population health is influenced by other factors than personal medical expenditures (Commonwealth Fund 2008; Davis et al. 2007). The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010, if it withstands legal challenges and any legislation that follows the 2012 election, will close around 60 percent of the gap in coverage in the US, reducing the numbers of uninsured from close to 50 million to 30 million; but this is still not universal coverage, even if it significantly reduces inequalities in access to healthcare (HR 3590–111th Congress: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 2012).
Cheating
Authors: Green Stuart P.
Published: January 2013

The concept of cheating is ubiquitous in our legal and moral lives: we talk about it in the context of academic institutions, sports and games, business, the professions, politics, war, even love. Yet it has largely been ignored in the philosophical literature. Although the term “cheating” is often used as a generalized, somewhat vague term of disapprobation, reflection suggests that it does in fact represent an analytically and expressively distinct form of moral wrongfulness.
Reductionism in Ethics
Authors: Heathwood Chris
Published: January 2013

Ethical reductionism is a doctrine in metaethics, the area of ethics in which we ask not what the facts are concerning our moral obligations, or concerning what things in life are worth pursuing, but, among other things, questions about the nature (or even the very existence) of such facts. One such question is whether moral facts are, to put it roughly, identical to facts of another kind. Reductionism in ethics is the view that they are. That is, reductionists hold that moral facts, or moral properties, are identical to facts or properties that can be expressed using nonmoral vocabulary.
Homicide
Authors: Ferzan Kimberly Kessler
Published: January 2013

Homicide is the killing of a human being (
see
Killing
). This is an act that is often prohibited, and indeed, criminally punished. This essay will first survey what it means to (1) “kill” (2) a “human being.” It will then turn to when it may be permissible to kill. Finally, in those instances when killing is impermissible, many legal systems punish more culpable killings more severely, and the last portion of this essay will examine these culpability doctrines.
Sin, Concepts of
Authors: Weaver Darlene Fozard
Published: January 2013

Sin is a theological term, a name for the “disruption of our proper relationship to God” (McFadyen 2000: 5). It can apply to actions, situations, social structures, aspects of the human condition, and expressions of human freedom and willing. The language of sin cannot be translated into secular ways of speaking about moral frailty without incurring some loss. The value of sin as a concept, and a reason for maintaining a variety of concepts for explicating the meaning of sin, lies precisely in its theological character. As a theological language, sin is an irreducibly relational term, always locating the person in relation to God, the source and end of being and goodness. For ethics – religious or secular – an appreciation for the depth and richness of sin places wrong‐doing, vice, and evil in the context of reflection on the ground of and purpose for human life. Sin is therefore always a morally freighted concept, although among theologians the relationship between sin and immorality is complex and contested. Concepts of sin appear in monotheistic religions; other religious traditions speak of human weakness or wrong‐doing in allied but not equivalent ways.
Potential Persons
Authors: Bayne Tim
Published: January 2013

The notion of a potential person is central to many debates in what, following Heyd (1992), we might call “genethics” – the domain of moral inquiry that is concerned with the creation of persons. Some genethical questions concern thenumberof people that we bring into existence. Do we have moral reasons to create as many people as we can? Do we have moral reasons to create as few people as we can? Or is morality indifferent to the number of people that we create? Another set of genethical questions concern thetypesof people that we create. Should we try to create certain kinds of people? Should we attempt to avoid creating certain types of people? Or, again, is morality relatively indifferent to the kinds of people that we bring into existence? A third set of questions concerns the ways in which the interests of possible people should bebalanced offagainst the interests of actual people. Should the interests of actual people always trump those of potential people, or are there situations in which the interests of potential people ought to take precedence over those of actual people? As we shall see, these questions raise acute challenges for existing moral theories, and are very far from being solved.
Coherentism, Moral
Authors: DePaul Michael
Published: January 2013

Outside of ethics, “coherentism” most frequently denotes one of the two main accounts of epistemic justification, the other account being foundationalism. Coherentism rejects foundationalism's metaphor of justification structured like a building. According to this metaphor, all justified beliefs are eventually justified by special basic beliefs that are not justified by any further beliefs, just as an entire building is supported by foundation stones that are not supported by any other elements of the building. Coherentism takes the planks of a raft as its preferred metaphor: just as all such planks are held in place only by their connections to other planks, all beliefs are epistemically justified only by their relations to other beliefs (see Sosa 1980).
Confidentiality
Authors: Draper Heather , Rogers Wendy A.
Published: January 2013

“Confidentiality” refers to the duty not to disclose private information to other people. It is often associated with healthcare professionals’ duty to safeguard patient information, but confidentiality extends to all personal information provided in circumstances or relationships which imply that the information will not be disclosed to others. In some relationships the duty to maintain confidentiality is regarded as absolute (priests in the confessional, for example). In others, although the duty is a strong one, it is not absolute and some disclosures may be required (e.g., by law) or justified with reference to other duties (e.g., protection of the public interest). This essay will concentrate on confidentiality as it applies to healthcare practice. It will look at why there is a duty, various justifications for breaking confidentiality, and difficult cases.
Projectivism
Authors: Price A. W.
Published: January 2013

Projectivism is a position in philosophy that makes acts of projecting a mental state upon an external reality central in the explanation of certain concepts that seem problematic. These have included ethical and aesthetic concepts, and also concepts of modality (notably, necessity). It is primarily an aetiological (or developmental) view about the origin of such concepts; yet it may have implications for our view of whether such concepts can be applied to the world truly or falsely.
Ideal Observer Theories
Authors: Kawall Jason
Published: January 2013

Ideal observer theories are metaethical theories according to which the truth of moral judgments is determined by the attitudes of hypothetical ideal observers (
see
Metaethics; Moral Judgment). Intuitively, ideal observer theorists attempt to characterize ideal observers (henceforth, IOs) with traits that would eliminate common flaws that mar the reactions of ordinary humans. For example, we often seem to go wrong in our moral judgments because we have false beliefs, lack crucial information, are biased in our own favor, inconsistent, and so on. IOs are thus often characterized as being well informed (or even omniscient), impartial, consistent, and empathetic (
see
Impartiality).
Precautionary Principle
Authors: Munthe Christian
Published: January 2013

Following the statement in the United Nations'Rio Declarationof 1992 that countries should apply a “precautionary approach” in policymaking on environmental and technological issues, the notion of a precautionary principle (PP) has gained ground in worldwide policymaking and regulation, thus catching the interest of ethics scholars. Although seldom explained in much detail, and resulting in quite different policy results in different countries and areas (O'Riordan et al. 2001; Sandin 1999; Trouwborst 2002; Zander 2010), PP is generally understood as a norm urging or permitting policymakers to take preventive action in the face of unknown, uncertain, or probable dangers, motivated by the experience of how seemingly valuable and promising practices may lead to seriously adverse consequences in spite of lack of solid evidence to this effect (Sandin 1999). In ethics debate, this idea has been applied not only to matters regarding the large‐scale introduction and use of technology (e.g., regarding energy production, transport and communication, nano‐ or biotechnology, and so on) (seeBiotechnology; Nanotechnology, Ethics of) with possible ensuing impact on the natural environment connecting to the notion of sustainability (seeSustainability), but also, for example, to abortion (seeAbortion), medical genetics, embryo experimentation (seeEmbryo Research), the treatment of animals (seeAnimal Experimentation), terrorism (seeTerrorism), and general research ethics (seeResearch Ethics) (Munthe 2011). Many of these applications advocate strong conclusions in spite of the fact that PP or its normative justification have not been made very clear. At the same time, PP has been the subject of criticism, much of which boils down to three points: lack of clarity, lack of practicality, and/or ethical implausibility. Curiously, these critical points have often been made in conjunction, in spite of the fact that a clear sense of what PP means seems necessary for backing up the other two objections.
Global Health Ethics
Authors: Schuklenk Udo , Cline Cheryl
Published: January 2013

Since the middle of the twentieth century, people have experienced remarkable gains in health. Life expectancy has almost doubled (World Health Organization 2003: 3) and child mortality rates have decreased by 60 percent (Moser et al. 2005: 203). Despite these positive trends, health disparities between those who are financially well off and those who are not continue to widen. In developing world countries these disparities are particularly pronounced. For example, an estimated nine million children under the age of 5 die globally each year, 50 percent of which are easily preventable (World Health Organization 2009). Many of these deaths can be attributed to the health resource gap between the developed and the developing world. At the same time, global wealth has increased to such an extent that it is now feasible to significantly reduce health‐related illness, suffering, and premature death. Many of the world's health problems that result in the large‐scale avoidable loss of quality‐adjusted life‐years are the foreseeable consequence of poverty caused by the world economic order. High drug prices protected by the international patent regime put medicines out of the reach of many of the world's citizens, and a paucity of health research funding, for diseases that primarily affect citizens living in poorer countries, results in unnecessary illness and premature death. These are two of the many factors that contribute to poor living conditions for the majority of the world's citizens that are not just tragic but unjust. A growing body of literature addresses our moral obligations to improve health globally in light of our material capacity to do so. This essay draws on this emerging ethics literature to describe two contending accounts of global health obligations. We then highlight four prominent ethical issues in global health ethics that include (1) sharing the benefits of research carried out through developing country collaborations, (2) the growing trend of patients traveling across national borders in pursuit of healthcare, (3) the migration of healthcare workers to wealthier from poorer communities, and (4) international infectious disease control.
Hybrid Theories of Moral Statements
Authors: Barker Stephen
Published: January 2013

Hybrid theories are metaethical theories concerning the content of sentences about moral value (seeMetaethics). These theories claim that sentences with ethical content express two kinds of mental state. One state is an affect‐like state. The other is a belief‐like state. The expressed affect‐like state will involve a moral attitude of some kind, such as approval, but it is not part of the truth‐conditions of the sentence. We can divide hybridists into two kinds.
Manipulation
Authors: Todd Patrick
Published: January 2013

At the most general level, manipulation is one of many ways of influencing behavior, along with (but to be distinguished from) other ways, such as coercion and rational persuasion.
Civic Virtue
Authors: van den Brink Bert
Published: January 2013

To act virtuously is to act competently in light of standards set by a certain role. To act virtuously in a civic context is to act competently as a citizen or member of a political community (Dagger 1997: 14;seeCitizenship). Etymologically, civic virtue is about showingvirtus(strength, excellence) for thecivitas(both citizenship and political community). What counts as strength or excellence of the citizen is historically variable and determined in practice by the specifics of given political arrangements and reigning ideologies and political theories (seePolitical Ethics). In modern constitutional democracies (seeDemocracy), emphasis is on virtues such as judicial impartiality, respect for individual rights (seeRights) and personal autonomy, justice (seeJustice), personal integrity, social and political participation, public reasoning, reflective judgment, and toleration (Macedo 1990; Galston 1991; Dagger 1997). In premodern city‐states there is a similar stress on deliberative and participatory virtues but for a much smaller citizenry, which consisted of men of status and sufficient means. In premodern political theory we find less emphasis on the virtue of the toleration of ethical difference (seeToleration) but detailed focus on questions of the good life (Aristotle 1995). In addition, we find reflection on military virtues, the virtues of noble leadership,virtù(“manliness”) (Machiavelli 1997), and sacrifice for the common good.
Deleuze, Gilles
Authors: Smith Daniel W.
Published: January 2013

Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) was a prolific French philosopher best known for his 1968 magnum opusDifference and Repetition(Deleuze 1994), which developed an approach to metaphysics derived from a principle of difference, and his two‐volume work in political philosophy,Capitalism and Schizophrenia(Deleuze and Guattari 1977, 1987), which he co‐authored with Félix Guattari, a militant psychotherapist. Deleuze also wrote a series of influential studies of figures in the history of philosophy, including Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bergson, as well as a number of works on literature, film, painting, and the arts, which gave him a wide readership outside the field of philosophy. He eluded easy classification as a philosopher: although he characterized himself an empiricist, expressing equal admiration for William James and Bertrand Russell, he nonetheless admitted his even deeper indebtedness to the rationalism of Spinoza and Leibniz, and he considered the question of the conditions for the production ofnovelty(Whitehead) orcreativity(Bergson) to be one of the fundamental issues of contemporary thought.
Camus, Albert
Authors: Sprintzen David
Published: January 2013

Contracting tuberculosis at the age of seventeen and facing the prospect of an early death indelibly marked Albert Camus (1913–60) with a profound sense of the transiency of life, while deepening his passionate commitment to its irreplaceable value. That dual experience resonates throughout his work, from his early essays in “Two Sides of the Coin” (usually translated as “The Right Side and The Wrong Side”) and “Nuptials,” and then in his celebrated novelThe Stranger(1942), to his last unfinished, clearly autobiographical, workThe First Man(published posthumously in 1994). In the face of inevitable death (seeDeath), he commits himself to an unceasing effort to “bear witness” to human possibilities. In the words of the epigram toThe Myth of Sisyphus(1942), “Oh my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the field of the possible.”
Capabilities
Authors: Brooks Thom
Published: January 2013

Capabilities concern freedom and human dignity. A capability marks out an ability to do or be. If I possess a capability, then I have the ability to do an action (obtain food, speak freely, etc.) or to become a certain kind of person (self‐directing, etc.). A capability is different from actual functioning because I may not choose to perform these actions or become these kinds of people. This approach offers a distinctive view about justice. Part of its focus is on freedom which takes the form of securing opportunities for persons to freely choose to satisfy capabilities. Another focus pertains to human dignity, in that securing opportunities for capability satisfaction is thought to also best secure human dignity.
Democracy
Authors: Christiano Thomas
Published: January 2013

“Democracy” in this essay is a process of collective decision‐making in which all or nearly all the members of the permanent adult population of the society have effective rights to participate as equals in a crucial stage of the decision‐making. In the case of representative democracy this implies that all or nearly all the adult population participates in free and fair elections, in which each person has an equal opportunity to run for office, to organize for political influence and to vote, and in which those elections do genuinely choose and reject those who have political power in the society. This is an undemanding and minimal definition and does not answer any normative questions. Democracy is not always morally desirable. Nor is this all we should hope and press for in democratic societies. The normative principles that underpin democracy, which we shall review in the rest of this essay, must do the work of determining when democracy is desirable and what shape democracy ought to take. Still, this definition excludes the societies of Western Europe and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which excluded women and/or ethnic minorities and/or people without property. They may be “proto‐democratic” because they extended the suffrage to very large proportions of their populations and because they seemed to hold the seeds of universal suffrage within them. Second, it suggests that groups of children that make decisions as equals are also not democracies.
Citizenship
Authors: Brooks Thom
Published: January 2013

A citizen is a member of a political community, who normally enjoys the rights and often assumes the duties of citizenship. The problem is identifying what, if anything, is required to be a citizen. This essay will explain the ways in which citizenship has been understood and the normative questions arising from considering the moral and political relevance of different features for membership. There will also be attention given to leading debates on citizenship, including whether the idea of citizenship has much currency.
Evolution, Ethics and
Authors: James Scott M.
Published: January 2013

The relationship between ethics and evolution is multifaceted. It has itself evolved substantially in the years since Darwin first published his ideas. For example, many tend to associate evolutionary ethics with social Darwinism (see below), according to which our moral norms and social policies should be based on those behavioral tendencies favored by natural selection. But social Darwinism has been abandoned. And yet the study of evolutionary ethics has never been more energized. The direction of that energy has shifted dramatically since the 1980s. This essay will explore the influence of evolutionary thought on ethics in three broad and overlapping areas: moral psychology, normative ethics, and metaethics.
War and Religion
Authors: Kelsay John
Published: January 2013

In a justly famous essay on “The Social Psychology of the World Religions,” Max Weber (seeWeber, Max) noted the particular role of religion in the legitimation of social and political order. Politics has to do with the distribution and exercise of power. Yet the historical record indicates that human beings wish for social life to be about something more than “mere” power. Most, if not all communities develop ways of talking that suggest the possibility of distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate (or just and unjust) forms of order. The resulting vocabularies often involve the kinds of things associated with the concept “religion”: appeals to scripture, citations of myths or tales of ancestors long removed, law codes understood as the commands of deities, and so on (seePolitical Ethics; Power).
Employers and Employees
Authors: McCall John J.
Published: January 2013

Employment, at its most basic level, is an agreement to exchange labor for money. Of course, anyone who has ever worked will understand that the employment relationship is much richer and involves more than this simple exchange. Employment, for instance, often provides persons with an identity, a feeling of community, and a sense of meaning (
see
Work, Nature and Value of).