1,721,022 research outputs found
Possible preferences and the harm of existence
No full textHow good or bad is a person’s life? How good or bad is a world? In this dissertation, I will attempt to answer these questions. Common-sense would dictate that if a person’s life would be extremely bad, then bringing her into existence is a bad thing. Not only is it bad for the person who lives it, but also, it is bad because it makes the world a worse place. A world populated only by individuals who have lives full of unrelenting misery and suffering is certainly worse than a world only populated by individuals who are extremely well off. If we can measure the value of a person’s life and the value of a world, then we can determine how good or bad our lives are and how good or bad the actual world is. Investigating these issues and providing satisfactory answers to these questions is immensely important.
In this dissertation I argue that all actual human lives are so bad that it would have been better had all of us never come into existence. I also argue that our world is worse than an empty world. The nucleus of my view consists of the following two claims:
i. Each person has an interest in acquiring a new satisfied preference.
ii. Whenever a person is deprived of a new satisfied preference this violates an interest and is thus a harm with a finite disvalue.
If one holds both (i) and (ii), then one is a deprivationalist. Any deprivationalist will have to claim that existence is worse for all actual persons than non-existence. I also show that deprivationalism presents a clear strategy for escaping The Repugnant Conclusion and The Mere Addition Paradox. For a deprivationalist, the Non-Identity Problem is neutralized as well. Parfit’s challenge in Reasons and Persons was to devise a theory of beneficence that could escape these cases without leading to other unacceptable conclusions. Parfit failed to find a theory—“Theory X”—that would meet these requirements. If the conclusions in this dissertation are correct, then deprivationalism is a good candidate for Theory X
Strengthening the capability approach : the foundations of the capability approach, with insights from two challenges
No full textThe Capability Approach was initially developed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, with the first basic articulation presented in his 1979 ‘Equality of What?’ Tanner Lecture. Since then, the approach has gained a huge amount of attention as a conceptual framework which offers a clear and insightful way to measure well-being and development. Most recently, the approach has been refined and extended by Martha Nussbaum to issues of disability, nationality, and species membership in political philosophy.
This project is about the foundations of the capability approach. More specifically, this project asks whether we can, and whether there are good reasons to, strengthen those foundations. The conclusions drawn here are that we ought to think seriously about the way that the capability approach develops as a theory that responds to real world challenges and change. More importantly, this project contends – in light of the challenges of future people and indigenous peoples – that there is good reason to think of new ways to ground the approach. This project takes up this challenge and grounds the approach in a modified version of Tim Mulgan’s approach to well-being. This project demonstrates that this alternative enriches the capability approach by providing us with a way of making sense of important problems, and with options for moving forward.
Overall, this project asks important questions about how the capability approach could evolve based on challenges that remain relatively under-explored in the current literature. This project contributes to this literature by demonstrating that we can and ought to strengthen the capability approach and its ability to understand, take on board, and resolve these challenges
The ethics of globalisation, free trade and fair trade
No full textIn this thesis I take a broadly consequentialist normative position and argue that because fair
trade is an inefficient method of aiding the poor, we should not support it and prefer free trade
goods with an appropriate and equal donation to a charity, designed to aid the poor and
encourage development in the undeveloped and developing world, instead. I also argue that
globalisation is the best means of development and we should support it as well. The thesis
progresses first by considering consequentialism, which I argue is especially suited to the
problem of analysing poverty in applied ethics, and some objections to it, which I briefly attempt
to answer. Following that, I consider fair trade and both some theoretical and practical problems
that it faces which my alternative does not. Then I briefly consider how globalisation results in
development and why it should be supported. Finally, I conclude with a brief chapter where I
respond to a few pertinent objections which arise on the periphery of my discussion that could be
seen as damaging to my position
A challenge to the permissibility of procreation
No full textThe Non-Identity Problem (the NIP) raises a series of problems to the morality of procreation. The NIP, I believe, highlights a fundamental problem concerning the justifiability of procreation. In chapter 1, I introduce the NIP and show that the logic of the NIP does not rule out the anti-natalist claim. Moreover, there are reasons, which are independent of its capacity to solve the NIP, to accept the anti-natalist claim. However, the anti-natalist claim poses a serious justificatory challenge to the permissibility of procreation. To see whether we can restore the permissibility of procreation, I examine the impersonal pro-natalist claim in chapter 2 and argue that there is not only no good reason to believe that whatever makes life worth living gives us an impersonal reason to procreate but good reason not to believe that. In chapter 3, I examine the justifications for the right to procreate and argue that most promising ground – that is, parenting interest – fails to establish a moral right to procreate. Therefore, the justification of procreation is in trouble, at least, at the individual level because there is a reason against procreation out of concern for possible people and no impersonal reason to procreate and the moral significance of parenting interests fails to justify imposing the harm of coming into existence. This is, nevertheless, a somewhat moderate conclusion because it does not defend that procreation is all-things-considered wrong. More works need to be done to show why procreation is morally permissible (or impermissible)
Internalism, Subjectivism, and Objectivism about Reasons for Action
No full textIn this thesis, I argue we should reject the claim that what we now have reason to do is necessarily constrained in some way, by what we now happen to care about. I thus argue against the view, often referred to as ‘internalism’ about reasons for action, which holds that:
(INT) An agent has a reason to do (X) only if doing (X) stands in some relation (R) to the concerns, desires, motivations etc. they now happen to have -their ‘existing motivational set’.
I discuss a variety of interpretations of (INT) and argue that these views always ‘undergenerate’, and suggest agents lack reasons for acting it is firmly intuitive they have. This I suggest, is also a problem for what are sometimes called ‘subjective’ views on reasons for action, which I define as interpretations of:
(S) An agent has a reason to do (X) only if, and because, doing (X) stands in some relation (R) to the concerns, desires, motivations etc. they now happen to have -their ‘existing motivational set’.
Rather than endorsing either an ‘internalist’ or a ‘subjectivist’ view on reasons for action, I argue we should endorse the following ‘objective’, or ‘value-based’ view, on what, in virtue of which, agents have their reasons for acting:
(O) an agent A has a reason to do (X) only if, and because, either
(i) doing (X) would be instrumental in bringing about some intrinsically valuable event, state of affairs, outcome etc.
or
(ii) A’s doing (X) would be an intrinsically valuable event, state of affairs, outcome etc.
I think we should take it that whenever we have a reason to do something, we have this reason in virtue of there being things we could make happen or bring about by doing that thing, which are themselves intrinsically valuable. This is what ‘objectivism’ about reasons for action suggests.
In evaluating the comparative merits of (O), against versions of (INT) and (S), I engage with recent work by defenders of internalism and subjectivism about reasons for action such as David Sobel, Michael Smith, Julia Markovits and Kate Manne. To this same end, I also engage with recent work by Derek Parfit, who I read as a proponent of (O)
Global problems and individual obligations : an investigation of different forms of consequentialism in situations with many agents
Full text linkIn this thesis, I investigate two challenges for Act Consequentialism which arise
in situations where many agents together can make a difference in the world.
Act Consequentialism holds that agents morally ought to perform those actions
which have the best expected consequences. The first challenge for Act
Consequentialism is that it often asks too much. This problem arises in situations
where agents can individually make a difference for the better, e.g. by
donating money to charities that fight extreme poverty. Act Consequentialism
here often requires agents to make immense sacrifices which threaten to compromise
agents future ability to do more good, reduce agents to a drastically
simple lifestyle, and amount to taking up the slack left by others. The second
challenge is that Act Consequentialism often asks too little. This problem
arises both in situations where agents can not make any difference for the better,
e.g. by stopping to pollute the environment, and in situations where they
can not make any difference whatsoever, e.g. when they individually vote or
protest against a morally bad but widely supported policy.
Act Consequentialism is subject to the above challenges because it only
considers the differences that individuals can make on their own. A natural
response is to adopt a form of Collective Consequentialism which considers
the difference that agents can make together. I investigate how far Act
Consequentialism can deal with each of the above challenges, and how far
these challenges require us to adopt Collective Consequentialism
Why death can be bad and immortality is worse
No full textThis thesis examines the moral implications of the metaphysical nature of
death. I begin with the Epicurean arguments which hold that death is morally
irrelevant for the one who dies, and that one should regard it accordingly. I
defend the Epicurean claim that death simpliciter can be neither good nor bad
from objections which purport to show that the negative features of death are
bad for the one who dies. I establish that existence is a necessary condition
for a person’s being morally benefited or wronged, and since death is the
privation of existence, death cannot be bad for the person who dies. To
account for the commonly-held belief that death is an evil, I explain that the
prospect of death can be morally relevant to persons while they are alive as
death is one of the many states of affairs that may prevent the satisfaction of
persons’ desires for the goods of life. I claim that categorical desires ground a
disutility by which death can rationally be regarded as an evil to be avoided
and feared. I then consider an infinite life as a possible attractive alternative
to a finite life. I argue that a life which is invulnerable to death cannot be a
desirable human existence, as many of our human values are inseparable from
the finite temporal structure of life. I conclude that death simpliciter can be
neither good nor bad, but the fact of death has two moral implications for
living persons: death as such is instrumentally good (it is a necessary
condition by which the value of life is recognized); and our own individual
deaths can rationally be regarded as an evil to be avoided
Groundwork and Principles for Applied Conservatism
No full textThis thesis is a broad survey of conservatism-in-general, written in the immediate context of important conservative institutions being threatened by or having already fallen to radical populism and reactionaryism. The thesis provides groundwork to help establish principles of conservatism (POCs), consistent with Burke and Oakeshott, that might be acceptable to as wide a range of contemporary self-identifying conservatives as possible, and capable of supporting safe and reasonable decisionmaking and action-guidance in a world which does and must constantly change. Ten suggested POCs are derived from detailed surveys of four related but differing conservatisms: ontological conservatism, epistemic conservatism, conservatism in ethics and metaethics, and conservatism in political philosophy.
Through these surveys, Ladyman and Ross’ ontic structural realism is proposed as a bridge- builder between religious and non-religious conservatives. Epistemic conservatism is argued to be necessary for all non-circular epistemic inquiry, with responses suggested to Littlejohn’s concerns it may justify horrendously evil ideas and acts. The effective altruism movement is criticised through a conservative lens. The value conservatism believes inheres in the status quo, in traditional knowledge, institutions and conventions, and in scientific method, free markets and democratic elections, is reinforced through the concept of the wisdom of crowds. Conservatism is compared with Hooker’s wary rule consequentialism and Aristotelian virtue ethics, and it is suggested, based on Annas and Lang, that our pursuit of good and evil could be understood as analogous to sporting and artistic endeavour. The surveys identify and the POCs make use of Five Fundamental Human Commonalities, Five Thoroughgoing Ethical Uncertainties and Five Fundamental Obligations of the State.
The POCs’ plausibility is demonstrated by application to transatlantic chattel slavery from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and nationalisation of labour in the UK in 1940. Further applications are suggested, including in ontology, epistemology and ethics, to help resolve very current political and geostrategic issues, and in commercial decisionmaking. While arguments are made why most political decisionmaking should occur through distributed, discursive processes based on the principle of subsidiarity, recommendations are made for how the virtue of prudence, necessary for final decisionmakers including heads of government, could be developed within polities
Global distributive justice
No full textThis dissertation is concerned with the moral-philosophical dimensions of global poverty and inequality. The first chapter argues in favour of justice-based – contrasted with beneficence-based – obligations asking the wealthy to actively do something about severe poverty abroad. The distinguishing property of justice-based obligations is that they derive their high level of moral stringency from the fact that they ask the obligation-bearer to rectify for past and/or present violations of negative obligations, such as the obligation not to harm anybody (regardless of geographical distance). Partly in following and partly in reinterpreting Thomas Pogge the first chapter concludes that the current economic and political order harms the global poor by making it difficult or impossible for them to satisfy their basic needs. To the extent that better-off states (citizens and their democratically accountable governments) uphold such an unjust global order and contribute to the poor’s enduring dire straits they have obligations of justice to secure the basic needs of the poor. This is why the approach introduced and defended in this essay is called “basic needs cosmopolitanism”.
The second chapter examines the idea of “basic needs” more detailed. Basic needs cosmopolitanism employs a specific notion of basic needs that is derived from Martha Nussbaum’s list of ten central human functional capabilities. These capabilities are of universal appeal, i.e. they are concerned with activities and states of being that are indispensable features of every human life. After discussing Nussbaum’s justification for the universal applicability of her list and after examining in more detail the list itself the argument distinguishes between basic needs for the material (financial, resource-related, etc.) and basic needs for the non-material (political, social, etc.) prerequisites for possessing these central capabilities. Both groups of basic needs have to be satisfied by a sufficient quality and quantity in order for a society to count as being able to meet its citizens basic needs and as being able to secure all its citizens’ central capabilities. The crucial idea is that if Nussbaum’s central capabilities are presented as having universal appeal, the related basic needs are of global applicability as well. The standard of material and non-material prerequisites is applied to a) the question of whether and to what extent the global order harms the poor and b) the question of what and how much material transfers from the wealthy to the poor are required on grounds of justice.
Since this dissertation’s topic is global distributive justice the primary focus of this argument lies on the material pre-requisites that have to be available in order to secure central capabilities for all. This does not imply that the non-material basic needs for living in a society ruled by just and stable political and social institutions are less important. A complete version of basic needs cosmopolitanism will have to dedicate equal consideration to obligations of justice related to the global order’s responsibility for poor countries’ lack of the non-material prerequisites. The notion of “potential functionings”, introduced in concluding this essay, is supposed to underline the importance of securing central capabilities for all members of poor societies and expresses again basic needs cosmopolitanism’s commitment to identifying universal minimal standards of social and economic global justice
Emotion and Moral Judgment; Moral Unanimity and Diversity
No full textThere are instances of moral unanimity. There are also instances of moral diversity. I argue that
emotion-based accounts of moral judgment can plausibly explain such instances (and this counts
as a reason in favour of such accounts). I also argue that such accounts can best a rival
conventionalist account in at least one respect in explaining (instances of) moral unanimity and
diversity. I make these arguments with the aim of prompting ‘fence-sitters’ to side with such
emotion-based accounts of moral judgments
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