摘要:

Abstract Many people have misgivings about the strategy of nuclear deterrence. Some of those misgivings centre on issues of effectiveness: safety depends entirely upon the dissuasion of an adversary. Other misgivings centre on moral concerns: the essence of deterrence is the threat, and the conditional intention, to kill millions of noncombatants. US President Reagan'sStrategic Defence Initiativepromised an alternative to deterrence, a strategic posture of interception of an adversary's weapons rather than preclusion of the decision to attack. It is conceived as a means of ‘defending’ the United States that does not threaten anyone. In this essay I examine various SDI proposals. I argue that only one of these could justify the transition to a strategic posture of ‘defence’, and might be a genuine alternative to deterrence—the one that is least feasible technologically. Only that one could plausibly be claimed to be morally superior to deterrence—and for strategic reasons, even its claim is dubious at best. Technologically more feasible proposals are not ‘defences’, but variants of deterrence. Since that is so, the most common and dramatic claim of their moral superiority to deterre

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00416.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract This essay considers and rejects the hypothesis of Fackenheim, Wiesel and others that the Jewish Holocaust contains some qualitatively or quantitatively distinct moral evil. The Holocaust was not qualitatively distinct because the intentions and vices of the mass murderer are qualitatively indistinguishable from the intentions and vices of the common murderer. The Holocaust was not quantitatively distinct either because the sum of the evils of the Holocaust is quantitatively indistinguishable from six million randomly selected individual murders or because the notion of a ‘sum’ of moral evils is conceptually incoh

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00417.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract China, India, Brazil and other major Third World nations have long refused to sign the Nuclear Non‐proliferation Treaty. This position might at first sight appear to be without any question morally unjustified and even irrational. Yet their claim that the treaty is ‘discriminatory’ merits the serious attention which it has not received. Only if certain aspects of this claim are accepted by the nuclear weapons signatories does a moral and rational onus to sign become unquest

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00418.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract Whether churches should be demolished, rebuilt, restored or preserved is a contentious issue. Some hold that the needs of a present worshipping community should take precedence over antiquarian or aesthetic interest, others that we owe a debt to the ages. Arguments mirror those between developers and environmentalists. It is argued here that it is not abstract rights that matter, but a sense of history, and of the sacred. Church buildings and landscapes are to be maintained not as museum pieces but as living elements of a humane piet

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00419.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract Our environmental crisis is commonly explained as a product of a set of attitudes and beliefs about the world which have been developed by post‐Cartesian technological society. Deep ecologists claim that the crisis can only be overcome by adopting an alternative non‐technological paradigm, such as can be discovered in non‐Western cultures. In this paper I (a) express misgivings about the use of the expression ‘Paradigm’ by deep ecologists, (b) question the claim that a science‐based world‐view inevitably fosters manipulative and exploitative attitudes to the natural world, (c) suggest that non‐technological cultures do not necessarily provide exemplary and superior models for relating to the natural world, and (d) defend a scientific naturalism as a satisfying way of realising our unity with

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00420.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract Libertarian justice arguably permits much that is harsh. It might plausibly be thought to generate only minimal obligations on the part of present people toward future generations. This turns out not to be so, at least on Nozick's version of libertarian justice, which is among the most thoroughly worked‐out versions. Nozickian justice generates extensive obligations to future people. This provides an indirect argument for environmentalist policies such as resource conservation and wilderness preservation. The basis for these obligations is Nozick's use of Locke's proviso, which is spelled out using the notion of the baseline. This paper explains how the extensive obligations are implied by the core ideas of Nozickian justice. There is also a discussion of some of the difficulties involved in understanding the notion of the baseline. However, these difficulties do not destroy the theoretical basis for obligations to future generations contained within Nozickian justice. Provided that libertarian justice involves some such device as Locke's proviso the enforcement of substantial environmentalist policies comes within the ambit of the libertarian minimal st

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00421.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract The kind of love under consideration here is that between equal persons as it typically occurs within the context of a friendship. It is assumed that love opens the way to a sense of meaning or purpose for the individual, the difficulty addressed being that of how to pursue or recognise love. Is it primarily a form of action or of feeling? Can love be said to consist of giving? How does love relate to freedom and dependence? The consideration of these questions leads to the argument that love necessarily involves the creation of needs and therefore of vulnerability. The essay closes with a conception of how the conflict between love as action and love as feeling (‘the two sides of love’) may be res

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00422.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract Desert theories of distributive justice have been attacked on the grounds that they attempt to found large inequalities on morally arbitrary features of individuals: desert is usually classified as a meritocratic principle in contrast to the egalitarian principle that goods should be distributed according to need. I argue that there is an egalitarian version of desert theory, which focuses on effort rather than success, and which aims at equal levels of well‐being; I call it a ‘well‐being desert’ theory. It is argued that this egalitarian conception of desert is preferable to a meritocratic conception, and that its adoption would encourage greater clarity in arguments over wage differentials and in debates about criteria for job and educational com

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00423.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract Against Peter Baehr's ‘The “irrationality” of the arms race’, published in Vol. 2 No. 2 of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, this paper argues that, at least directly and in the first instance, both rationality and irrationality characterise individual beliefs and individual behaviour. Furthermore it is fundamental to the understanding of persons that, before putting anyone down as in either respect irrational, we should first reconsider whether we were right, either in attributing to them beliefs which it would have been irrational for them to hold, or in assuming that their actual purposes and priorities were indeed such as to make their behaviour—by these standards—counterproductive. Once our present questions are approached in this way it becomes apparent that we have been given no sufficient reason for concluding that there is significantly more irrationality here than elsewhere. More than enoug

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00424.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Abstract Some recent powerful and persuasive arguments seem to imply that a world of people with lives that are barely worth living is preferable to a world which contains fewer people all of whom have extremely satisfying lives. This ‘repugnant conclusion’ is clearly to be rejected if possible—but is it possible? Many attempts to reject or avoid it have failed. One of the latest, by Michael Tooley, looked promising but the present essay argues that this attempt has also

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00425.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1986

数据来源: WILEY