摘要:

ABSTRACT Genocide is a political catastrophe. Yet it has not received much academic attention. A few social scientists have studied it. Philosophers have largely ignored it. There is a large literature on the Holocaust, but there is little agreement as to how this should be related to other genocides. Some have argued that the Holocaust represented a crisis of Western culture, but that Western culture has not responded adequately for the lack of the appropriate self‐understanding. This crisis has been attributed to the predominance of scientistic models of rationality in our culture. Social‐scientific approaches to genocide have been criticised because of their commitment to logical empiricism, which is held to be epistemologically and ethically inadequate. Ethical approaches based on liberal humanism have been criticised by post‐Nietzschean philosophers for their attachment to allegedly outworn metaphysical assumptions. However, the deconstruction of social science and liberal ethics leads in the direction of relativism and nihilism, which are either useless or dangerous in the face of evils such as genocide. The arguments against conventional social science and ethics are examined, and a counter‐critique made of post‐modern philosophy in order to clear the ground for constructive thinking abo

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00402.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT The article constitutes an attempt to answer the question contained in the title, by reference to three example topics: individual privacy, ownership of software, and computer ‘hacking’. The ethical question is approached via the legal one of whether special, computer–specific legislation is appropriate. The conclusion is in the affirmative, and rests on the claim that computer technology has brought with it, not so much the potential for committing totally new kinds of crimes, as a distinctive set of linguistic and conceptual apparatus which makes it necessary to describe computer–related activity in spe

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00403.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT The essay enquires whether a negative concept of liberty suffices for political and legal discourse. A contemporary argument alleging the inviability of a negative concept of liberty is examined and exposed as wanting, while street‐smart claims on behalf of a ‘positive’ concept of liberty are shown to be deployments of the negative concept, misdescribed. The truth that lack of money is lack of freedom in societies with a money economy and coercively enforced property rights is established with supporting examples, and its implications for need satisfaction assessed. Judgment is concluded that the negative concept of liberty is both the only viable concept of liberty and demonstrably adequate for morally sensitive engagement with politic

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00404.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT The paper is a discussion of moral responsibility and excuses in regard to psychiatric disorders involving abnormal desires (e.g. impulse control disorders such as kleptomania and pyromania, psychosexual disorders such as exhibitionism, obsessive‐compulsive disorder and others). It points out problems with previous approaches to the question of whether or not to excuse persons with these disorders, and offers a new approach based on the concept of duress. There is a discussion of duress in regard to non‐psychiatric cases based on the core notion of duress involving a choice between undesirables, and the paper concludes with an argument that moral blame for individuals with these sorts of disorders should often be lessened and in some cases removed ent

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00405.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the issue of aborting abnormal fetuses from the standpoint of the prerogatives and obligations of parents. First, two intuitively‐based models of parenthood are developed. In the Trustee Model, parental authority is grounded in the obligation of parents to promote the interests of children, while the Artisan Model locates parental authority in the intrinsic value of parenthood as a mode of parental self‐expression. Reasons are given for believing that neither of these models, taken individually, contains a complete or adequate picture of parenthood and that both have counterintuitive implications. Under the assumption that there is little hope of developing a master model for parenthood to supplant the two inadequate models, five principles are developed for determining how the two models should be applied in making moral decisions. These principles are then applied to five categories of abnormal fetuses. The conclusion is that abortions are justified in the first three categories (involving severe abnormalities), but not in the fifth category (involving only slight deformities). The fourth category requires parental discretion. Finally, a check on these conclusions is provided by comparing them with a parental action that would generally be considered impermissible, namely the decision of a Jehovah's Witness not to permit a blood transfusion for his or her child in a life‐threatening si

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00406.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT There is a popular way of appealing to consistency of judgment or principle whose result is to rule out relevant information. To avoid the danger of judging similar cases differently, relevantly different cases are treated alike. So the information distinguishing them is lost. I try to formulate, defend and apply a requirement upon determining whether situations are similar with respect to a principle. Adherence to the requirement is a way to prevent the loss of information through illicit appeals to consistency. Part II examines a difficulty for the requirement proposed. The difficulty concerns determinateness: given the requirement's broad scope, it cannot yield judgments on specific cases without prejudging substantive issues. Without reaching any solution to the difficulty, I point out that parallel difficulties arise for similar requirements in diverse areas, and that the problem can be mitigated to varying degrees in actual applications of these requirement

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00407.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT Unexpected but vivid and compelling memories are a wide‐spread experience in late life. The experience has often been described in literature, and in recent years has been the object of extensive gerontological research under the label ‘life review’. Such memories often include a reversal of judgment about a past act, relationship, event, etc. What earlier was judged to be so is, in the retrospect of late life, judged not to have been so after all. This presents a question: which judgment—the earlier or the later—has better epistemological credentials in such cases? Some obvious possible answers are considered and rejected. It would seem that the issue is not resolvable on epistemological grounds. A parallel dilemma seems to appear in other dimensions of experience. An example from aesthetic experience is briefly

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00408.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT Sissela Bok's two main works, on lying and secrets, have not received all the attention they deserve. This is possibly because the underlying structure from which she is working is not, at least according to the critics, made sufficiently explicit. I believe that this structure is found in Sissela Bok's commitment to the fundamental tenets of democracy. This not only provides a framework that is clearly discernible but also gives her books an urgency, and supplies the solid basis necessary for taking up the challenges she puts forward. This is particularly important now that new democracies in Eastern Europe are looking to established democracies in the West for guideline

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00409.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT Largely as a result of public outcry, legislation has recently been passed in the UK prohibiting the sale of bodily parts. This topic was the focus of a recent article inJournal of Applied Philosophyby Ruth Chadwick, which acknowledged that difficulties might exist in trying to distinguish between the selling of one's bodily organs and the selling of one's labour. The position argued for, in the ensuing discussion, is that there is no relevant moral difference between the two acts. Furthermore it contests the view that the sale of bodily organs should necessarily be prohibited. The assertion is made that the legislation does little to prevent the general exploitation of the type of person likely to be involved in such transactions, places unnecessary restrictions on the autonomy of individuals, and does nothing to promote an enhanced moral attitude by health professional

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00410.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

ABSTRACT Argument about Rights can be either purely formal or substantial—meant to affect conduct. These two functions, which need different kinds of support, often become confused. The source of much confusion is the idea that rights‐language is an all‐purpose ‘moral theory’ which is in competition with others such as Utilitarianism. Since these are not really rivals but complementary aspects of moral thinking—parts of it, both of which need to be used along with many others—attempts to establish one of them as sole ruler are doomed to incoherence. The ambition to deploy an all‐purpose thought‐system is distinct from the moral motivation to change the world, and the two aims inevitably interfere with one another. Among these ‘moral theories’, however, the language of rights is specially ill‐suited for all‐purpose use. This becomes plain when philosophers, taking its adequacy for granted, conduct moral argument in terms of it alone, as if it were obviously appropriate, without background discussion. Rights‐language is of particularly limited use because it is simply the most competitive and litigious of such thought‐systems. Its win‐or‐lose formula allows no more scope for doing justice to defeated claims than a lawcourt does. For the serious conflicts of value that underlie large

ISSN:0264-3758    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00411.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1991

数据来源: WILEY