Moral Status

Author : Joshua Shepherd
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2018-05-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781315396323

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Consciousness and Moral Status by Joshua Shepherd Pdf

It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

Author : Steve Clarke,Hazem Zohny,Julian Savulescu
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2021-08-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192894076

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Rethinking Moral Status by Steve Clarke,Hazem Zohny,Julian Savulescu Pdf

Common-sense morality implicitly assumes that reasonably clear distinctions can be drawn between the full moral status that is usually attributed to ordinary adult humans, the partial moral status attributed to non-human animals, and the absence of moral status, which is usually ascribed to machines and other artifacts. These implicit assumptions have long been challenged, and are now coming under further scrutiny as there are beings we have recently become able to create, as well as beings that we may soon be able to create, which blur the distinctions between human, non-human animal, and non-biological beings. These beings include non-human chimeras, cyborgs, human brain organoids, post-humans, and human minds that have been uploaded into computers and onto the internet and artificial intelligence. It is far from clear what moral status we should attribute to any of these beings. There are a number of ways we could respond to the new challenges these technological developments raise: we might revise our ordinary assumptions about what is needed for a being to possess full moral status, or reject the assumption that there is a sharp distinction between full and partial moral status. This volume explores such responses, and provides a forum for philosophical reflection about ordinary presuppositions and intuitions about moral status.

Author : Mary Anne Warren
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 1997-11-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191588150

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Moral Status by Mary Anne Warren Pdf

Mary Anne Warren explores a theoretical question which lies at the heart of practical ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? In other words, what are the criteria for being an entity towards which people have moral obligations? Some philosophers maintain that there is one intrinsic property—for instance, life, sentience, humanity, or moral agency. Others believe that relational properties, such as belonging to a human community, are more important. In Part I of the book, Warren argues that no single property can serve as the sole criterion for moral status; instead, life, sentience, moral agency, and social and biotic relationships are all relevant, each in a different way. She presents seven basic principles, each focusing on a property that can, in combination with others, legitimately affect an agent's moral obligations towards entities of a given type. In Part II, these principles are applied in an examination of three controversial ethical issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion

Author : David DeGrazia,Joseph Millum
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 329 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2021-08-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781316515839

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A Theory of Bioethics by David DeGrazia,Joseph Millum Pdf

Offers a compelling theory of bioethics, covering medical assistance-in-dying, the right to health care, abortion, animal research, and the definition of death.

Author : Stephen R. L. Clark
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : UOM:39015008350244

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The Moral Status of Animals by Stephen R. L. Clark Pdf

Author : Peter Kroes,Peter-Paul Verbeek
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-08
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789400779143

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The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts by Peter Kroes,Peter-Paul Verbeek Pdf

This book considers the question: to what extent does it make sense to qualify technical artefacts as moral entities? The authors’ contributions trace recent proposals and topics including instrumental and non-instrumental values of artefacts, agency and artefactual agency, values in and around technologies, and the moral significance of technology. The editors’ introduction explains that as ‘agents’ rather than simply passive instruments, technical artefacts may actively influence their users, changing the way they perceive the world, the way they act in the world and the way they interact with each other. This volume features the work of various experts from around the world, representing a variety of positions on the topic. Contributions explore the contested discourse on agency in humans and artefacts, defend the Value Neutrality Thesis by arguing that technological artefacts do not contain, have or exhibit values, or argue that moral agency involves both human and non-human elements. The book also investigates technological fields that are subject to negative moral valuations due to the harmful effects of some of their products. It includes an analysis of some difficulties arising in Artificial Intelligence and an exploration of values in Chemistry and in Engineering. The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts is an advanced exploration of the various dimensions of the relations between technology and morality

Author : David DeGrazia
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 1996-07-13
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0521567602

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Taking Animals Seriously by David DeGrazia Pdf

This book distinguishes itself from much of the polemical literature on these issues by offering the most judicious and well-balanced account yet available of animals' moral standing, and related questions concerning their minds and welfare. Transcending jejune debates focused on utilitarianism versus rights, the book offers a fresh methodological approach with specific and constructive conclusions about our treatment of animals. David DeGrazia provides the most thorough discussion yet of whether equal consideration should be extended to animals' interests, and examines the issues of animal minds and animal well-being with an unparalleled combination of philosophical rigor and empirical documentation. His book is an important contribution to the field of animal ethics and will be read with special interest by all philosophers teaching such courses, as well as biologists, those professionally involved with animals, and general readers concerned about animal welfare.

Author : Milla Emilia Vaha
Publisher : University of Wales Press
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2021-07-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781786837875

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The Moral Standing of the State in International Politics by Milla Emilia Vaha Pdf

Kant’s moral and political philosophy has been important in developing ethical thinking in international relations. This study argues that his theory of the state is crucially important for understanding the moral agency of the state as it is discussed in contemporary debates. For Kant, it is argued that the state has not only duties but also, controversially, inalienable rights that ground its relationship to its citizens and to other states. Most importantly, the state – regardless of its governmental form or factual behaviour – has a right to exist as a state. The Kantian account provided, therefore, explores not only the moral agency but also the moral standing of the state, examining the status of different kinds of states in world politics and expectations towards their ethical behaviour. Every state has a moral standing that must be respected in a morally imperfect world gradually transforming towards the ideal condition of perpetual peace.

Author : Gary Steiner
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2010-08-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780822970989

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Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents by Gary Steiner Pdf

Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents is the first-ever comprehensive examination of views of animals in the history of Western philosophy, from Homeric Greece to the twentieth century. In recent decades, increased interest in this area has been accompanied by scholars' willingness to conceive of animal experience in terms of human mental capacities: consciousness, self-awareness, intention, deliberation, and in some instances, at least limited moral agency. This conception has been facilitated by a shift from behavioral to cognitive ethology (the science of animal behavior), and by attempts to affirm the essential similarities between the psychophysical makeup of human beings and animals. Gary Steiner sketches the terms of the current debates about animals and relates these to their historical antecedents, focusing on both the dominant anthropocentric voices and those recurring voices that instead assert a fundamental kinship relation between human beings and animals. He concludes with a discussion of the problem of balancing the need to recognize a human indebtedness to animals and the natural world with the need to preserve a sense of the uniqueness and dignity of the human individual.

Author : James G. Dwyer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2010-10-21
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781139493185

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Moral Status and Human Life by James G. Dwyer Pdf

Are children of equal, lesser, or perhaps even greater moral importance than adults? This work of applied moral philosophy develops a comprehensive account of how adults as moral agents ascribe moral status to beings - ourselves and others - and on the basis of that account identifies multiple criteria for having moral status. It argues that proper application of those criteria should lead us to treat children as of greater moral importance than adults. This conclusion presents a basis for critiquing existing social practices, many of which implicitly presuppose that children occupy an inferior status, and for suggesting how government policy, law, and social life might be different if it reflected an assumption that children are actually of superior status.

Author : Shelly Kagan
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2019-04-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192565174

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How to Count Animals, more or less by Shelly Kagan Pdf

Most people agree that animals count morally, but how exactly should we take animals into account? A prominent stance in contemporary ethical discussions is that animals have the same moral status that people do, and so in moral deliberation the similar interests of animals and people should be given the very same consideration. In How to Count Animals, more or less, Shelly Kagan sets out and defends a hierarchical approach in which people count more than animals do and some animals count more than others. For the most part, moral theories have not been developed in such a way as to take account of differences in status. By arguing for a hierarchical account of morality - and exploring what status sensitive principles might look like - Kagan reveals just how much work needs to be done to arrive at an adequate view of our duties toward animals, and of morality more generally.

Author : Michael Skerker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2024
Category : History
ISBN : 0367521083

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The Moral Status of Combatants by Michael Skerker Pdf

This book develops a new contractualist foundation for just war theory, which defends the traditional view of the moral equality of combatants and associated egalitarian moral norms. Traditionally it has been viewed that combatants on both sides of a war have the same right to fight, irrespective of the justice of their cause, and both sides must observe the same restrictions on the use of force, especially prohibitions on targeting noncombatants. Revisionist philosophers have argued that combatants on the unjust side of a war have no right to fight, that pro-war civilians on the unjust side might be targetable, and that lawful combatants on the unjust side might in principle be liable to prosecution for their participation on the unjust side. This book seeks to undercut the revisionist project and defend the traditional view of the moral equality of combatants. It does so by showing how revisionist philosophers fail to build a strong foundation for their arguments and misunderstand that there is a moral difference between collective military violence and a collection of individually unjustified violent actions. Finally, the book develops a theory defending the traditional view of military ethics based on a universal duty of all people to support just institutions. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, ethics philosophy, and war studies.

Author : Mark H Bernstein
Publisher : Springer
Page : 153 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2015-09-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781137315250

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The Moral Equality of Humans and Animals by Mark H Bernstein Pdf

Received opinion has it that humans are morally superior to non-human animals; human interests matter more than the like interests of animals and the value of human lives is alleged to be greater than the value of nonhuman animal lives. Since this belief causes mayhem and murder, its de-mythologizing requires urgent attention.

Author : Albany Bonnie Steinbock Associate Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy State University of New York
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 1992-07-23
Category : Health & Fitness
ISBN : 9780199759682

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Life Before Birth : The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses by Albany Bonnie Steinbock Associate Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy State University of New York Pdf

Hardly a day passes without newspaper coverage of some new development regarding prenatal life. The abortion debate continues to rage, but other examples abound: forced Caesareans; prosecutions of women for drug use during pregnancy; fetal protection policies; the use of fetal tissue for transplantation; embryo research; and the disposition of frozen embryos. All of these issues raise the question of the moral status of the unborn: are embryos and fetuses part of the pregnant woman or are they persons? Are they sources of tissue, research tools, or are they pre-born children? Different conceptions of the unborn prevail in different contexts, giving rise to the charge of inconsistency. For example, women have been criminally charged with abusing their fetuses by using drugs during pregnancy, even though abortion--which pro-lifers call the ultimate child abuse--is legal. The legalization of abortion itself was based in part on the unborn's never having been recognized in law as a full legal person. Yet fetuses have been considered as persons for the purposes of insurance coverage, wrongful death suits, and vehicular homicide. This book provides a framework for thinking clearly and coherently about the unborn. The first chapter elaborates the book's basic idea, that all and only beings who have interests have moral standing, and only beings who possess conscious awareness have interests. This thesis, which is called "the interest view," raises issues of considerable philosophical complexity, but is presented in language non-philosophers will be able to understand. Subsequent chapters apply the interest view, and explore the moral and legal aspects of a wide range of issues, including abortion, the legal status of the fetus outside abortion, maternal-fetal conflict, fetal research, and the use and disposition of extracorporeal embryos resulting from the new reproductive technologies. The philosophical discussion is enlivened by examples and actual cases which immediately catch, and sustain, the reader's interest. Written in a lively style, Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses is a timely and important work that enables us to resolve contradictions in our current thinking about the unborn, and to approach new issues in a clear and rational manner.

Author : Michael Freeman
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2023-08-21
Category : Law
ISBN : 9789004632691

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The Moral Status of Children by Michael Freeman Pdf

With the passing of the UN Convention in 1989 children's rights have been placed firmly on the political agenda. This book explores a variety of children's rights issues from the Convention and beyond. It examines the moral foundations of children's rights issues from the Convention and beyond, and offers insights into children's rights issues both old and new. Amongst the subjects covered are the history of children's rights, empowerment, cultural pluralism, sexual abuse, contact as a child's right, the reproduction revolution and the child's right to identity, and children's rights in the context of English law. This is a book which those interested in children, children's issues and children's rights will find stimulating and rewarding. The author is a Professor of English Law at University College London, a barrister and the author of thirty books including, The Rights and The Wrongs of Children, Children's Rights: A Comparative Perspective, Children, Their Families and The Law and Violence In the Home: A Socio-Legal Study. He is the founding co-editor of the International Journal of Children's Rights, the editor of Current Legal Problems and a former editor of the Annual Survey of Family Law. A prominent advocate of children's rights for over 20 years, he has lectured widely on the subject.