摘要:

ABSTRACTThe destruction of the environment is a matter for moral concern and cannot be halted in the long term by appeals to human utility. However, the inadequacy and naïvety of humanist styles of ethical argument become apparent when attempts are made to extend them to environmental issues. They usually abstract certain supposed features of natural objects, e.g. sentience, and reify these as essential characteristics which operate to carry or ground ethical values. These arguments necessarily lead to the exclusion of objects which are, in fact, ethically valued or entail an unacceptably expansive egalitarianism. Such egalitarianism is often followed by a return to human‐centred prejudices opposed to the originally stated aims of ‘biocentric’ethicists like Taylor. Similarly, those physical and ecological holisms which rely not upon shared ‘natural’features, but upon sharing in nature itself cannot solve this dilemma as they are incapable of explaining differential ethical values. The attempt to place boundaries on moral considerability should be abandoned in favour of an ethical pluralism which places emphasis on the context of

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00276.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTCurtailing health care for the very old promises to free resources that can be devoted to others. Such self‐conscious limit‐setting, leading to premature death, requires both a moral justification and a change in the paradigm of physician obligation. This paper argues that the moral justification for curtailing care is absent, and that the paradigm of the physician as a servant of life, and the patient's agent, is worth preserving. Finally, it is suggested that, if the ailing old need to be deprived of life‐extending care, then the state should undertake the task of killing them. Physicians should not undertake this role, for it is the state that may gain an advantage it seeks by saving money, not the physi

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00277.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTThis article attempts to show that arguments in favour of abortion which deny personhood to the fetus (person‐denying arguments) do not work. Several very common person‐denying arguments for abortion are dealt with, and an analysis is provided of two well known person‐denying arguments; those from the philosophers Mary Ann Warren and Michael Tooley. The result is that these fare no better. The conclusion is that there is a fallacy in person‐denying arguments in

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00278.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTThe concept of a ‘professional’, as distinguished from that of a ‘tradesman’, encompasses both white collar workers and those who produce excellent work in any occupation. These divergent meanings have a common philosophical source in the way workers justify their work. A worker becomes a professonal by professing reasons for doing his work in a certain way. A worker is a tradesman if the value of his work in trade is the sole justification for the way it is done. Workers can be both professionals and tradesmen, unless what the consumer will buy and what is proper are different, placing ‘reason value’and ‘trade value’into conflict. Value conflicts are most likely in occupations involving a high level of theoretical knowledge, where the consumer has trouble judging what is proper. Thus, we say that professional persons work in white collar occupations, but that is misleading, for ‘professional’is a way of handling value conflicts, not a kind of work. In value conflicts the worker has an obligation to inform the consumer—to profess reasons—ab

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00279.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTIn this paper we compare philosophical and contemporary psychological approaches to mental handicap. Careful comparison between the disciplines reveals major differences and indicates that much further work is needed which would be fruitful for both sides.The two disciplines concentrate on different questions: philosophy tends to look chiefly at mental handicap in relation to issues of personhood and is not very clear about what mental handicap is; psychology on the other hand is much more specific about mental handicap, but shows little concern with critically examining value issues. Our main intention is to explore the different ways in which mental handicap is defined and seen as a class.We conclude that class definition embodies a significant normative component and a large element of social construction. To ignore this and attempt to make normative judgements on the basis of class membership is thus highly problematic. Since within philosophy, these normative issues are often discussed in terms of personhood, this category is also critically examined and the conclusion is reached that it too has normative and social components which can lead to ethically dubious judgements being made about ‘the mentally handicapped

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00280.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTIt is occasionally said of individuals or groups of individuals that they have gone beyond the call of duty in certain of their business practices. Not only have they fulfilled or satisfied the requirements of duty, but they have risen above the level of duty in performing various meritorious or praiseworthy actions. Such acts, called acts of supererogation, are never required of moral agents; indeed, it is never morally blameworthy to refrain from them. However, they are morally good to perform and those who perform them are doing that which is morally worthy of praise or approbation. In this essay I begin with some examples of business practices which can plausibly be construed as acts of supererogation. I then discuss some general features of supererogation and draw some conclusions in the form of advice for persons who have a genuine concern to practise good ethics in their business or professional lives. The advice can be summed up as follows: although acts of supererogation are optional, good ethics requires that one should not take a complacent or indifferent attitude toward performing them.

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00281.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTThe article begins by identifying a set of hitherto undisclosed contradictions of meaning and value attributed to a basic structure of our existence—competition. It seeks to resolve these contradictions by showing that there are two basic forms of competition not previously distinguished: (1) the dominant model of competition in which pay‐offs extrinsic to the activity itself are conferred on one party at the expense of others; and (2) the submerged, spontaneous form of competition in which no structure of extrinsic and exclusionary pay‐offs is imposed on the action. Illustrating in terms of a paradigm example, ice‐hockey, the analysis shows that the well‐known and systematic pathologies of competitive conflict—violence, cheating, authoritarianism, sexism, drug‐taking and so on—are a law‐like consequence of the dominant structure of competition and not a problem of co

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00282.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTIn his bookThe End of LifeJames Rachels argues that in a situation of forced choice if we must choose between a more and a less complex human being we have good reason to choose in favour of the normal human. He argues also that since some humans have less complex mental abilities than some animals it will sometimes be right to choose a non‐human animal in preference to a human being.I do not consider Rachels’belief that sometimes non‐human animals are to be preferred to retarded humans; I focus rather on the seemingly less contentious belief that in situations of forced choice, we should choose human beings with more rather than less complex lives. I reject this contention both because Rachels does not seem to have offered a worthwhile argument in its favour and also because I find his cavalier approach to the lives of people with intellectual disabilities morally offensive.En routeI argue against his simplistic separation of human lives into the categories ‘simple’and ‘complex’on the basis of whether the individuals in question fall into what he seems to take as given—the clear cut categories ‘mentally retarded’

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00283.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTA new phenomenon in the philosophical discipline, philosophical practice—or counselling—is introduced to the reader through the description of three different approaches to philosophical practice. What is common to these approaches is that an academically trained philosopher philosophises together with a ‘sane’person—the visitor—on questions and problems relevant to the visitor. The essential difference between this and psychological counselling is that philosophers do not use therapeutic methods or make diagnoses. The philosophical practitioner triggers in his dialogue partner a didactic philosophical process, which enables the visitor to become an authentic thinker and eventually to arrive at philosophical answers by her/himself. The effectiveness of the language used in philosophical practice is not so much in applying philosophical ideas or theories as in the philosophical knowledge, skills and attitudes attained by

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00284.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACTMartin Hollis, inMarket Equality and Social Freedom [1], used the Dewsbury case to illustrate the tension between individual freedom and the public good. Like others engaged in the public debate on multicultural education in general, and Dewsbury in particular, Hollis avoided the main issue: “What should be thecurriculumin a school attended by pupils from different cultural backgrounds?’’Rational debate in this highly controversial area requires an analysis of two fundamental concepts—multicultural educationandrespect.The former can take three forms, each corresponding with a distinctive curriculum model. One—the Equality option—is inimical to parental rights as guaranteed under the European Convention, but it attracts support because of a widespread failure to recognise that one can respect someone's right to hold and propagate a particular faith (or opinion) without necessarily respecting that faith (or opinion).It is shown that this failure has come about through very lax usage of ‘respect’. It is argued that by respecting persons whatever their values the potential conflict between liberty and equality can be resolved in

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00285.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY