How social workers do construct what is ‘ethical’ in their work, especially when they are positioned at the intersection of multiple paradoxes, including that of two opposing responsibilities in society: namely, to care for others but also to prevent others from harm? Paradoxes in practice are especially complicated to manage in the neoliberalism of the Global North where the priority of efficiency has been heightened and the obligation towards the most vulnerable has been weakened. Taking data from a Canadian (...) study, this paper delineates the structural paradoxes of practice and elaborates on the concept of ethical trespass, especially in times of austerity. Ideas are illustrated with case material from participants who were practitioners working with a population of young single impoverished mothers. Impacts of the discourses on single mothers, resource inadequacies, and increased surveillance on clients are discussed, and the effects on workers such as individualization and burnout will be outlined. Despite the challenges, practitioners in the study found ways to minimize trespass and act ethically. The strategies employed included problematizing the helping relationship, being a responsible traitor, dissident speech, and the use of contextualized practice. (shrink)

Scientific expert testimony is crucial to public deliberation, but it is associated with many pitfalls. This article identifies one—namely, expert trespassing testimony—which may be characterized, crudely, as the phenomenon of experts testifying outside their domain of expertise. My agenda is to provide a more precise characterization of this phenomenon and consider its ramifications for the role of science in society. I argue that expert trespassing testimony is both epistemically problematic and morally problematic. Specifically, I will argue that scientific experts are (...) subject to a particular obligation. Roughly, this is the obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of scientific expertise in certain contexts. Thus, I argue that scientists who possess expert knowledge are confronted with hard questions about when and how to testify and, therefore, that being a scientific expert comes with great responsibility. Consequently, I provide a concrete “expert guideline” according to which scientific experts, in certain contexts, face an obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of expertise. Furthermore, I consider a number of the conditions in which the guideline is waived or overridden. On this basis, I consider the broader aspects of the roles of scientific experts in a society with a high division of cognitive labor that calls for trust in scientific expert testimony. (shrink)

Mortal being is not being pure and simple, not posit-ive being alone, as the lived experiencesuggests it to be. Living being is always a living of mortal flesh, a living taunted by death as “thenothingness that wearies it.” This taunting doggedly pursues the living being and turns it inward inwhat Levinas terms “inter-esse.” In living its mortality, essence is always inter-esse — inside ofitself — in the for-itself of self-interest.This paper attempts to track the opening of essence from its “innocent” (...) lived mortality, through the“thinking” awakening that brings it to an awareness of the violences entailed in its living, to itsopening as an ethical being where self is abandoned, ruptured, sacrificed for the sake of thesuffering other. This paper also addresses the larger question of what, if anything, is missing inLevinas’ account of living being. In his fidelity to a monadic view of isolated existence with itsmeaning-appropriations, is Levinas bound to maintain the “innocence” of all living beings, even intheir most vile acts against others? Can Levinas account for the ability of the existent to leap outsidehis enclosed world to effect the destructive works that we witness every day in the human world?Can Levinas, committed to the “innocence” of living being, do justice to the injustices of theholocaust that motivate his work, or to the endless parade of holocausts that mark the history of thehuman species even to the present day? Finally, this paper entertains whether Levinas’ weddednessto this view of living being as isolated self-enclosure compels him to overlook the degree to whichour meanings are preordained by the socio-politico-economic realities of our cultural contexts,whether the phenomenologist, as much as the existent, must remain blind to the powers of histories and institutions and systems to dictate the meanings that we find as the borders that give us the stable lifeworld. (shrink)

While postmodernists have claimed that the failure of the Enlightenment was a failure of philosophical courage, this plenary address explores how its greatest shortcoming actually was its hubris. Paying attention to how Western scholars have centered pride in their elitist purview was their ultimate worldview, this article examines ‘pride’ as the doctrinal dimension of the good life in contemporary Western society and culture. Furthermore, it implores postmodern Christian social ethicists to reform their stewardship to the telos of the field's highest (...) ideals and role, in order to confront the shortcomings of the Enlightenment and help realize its greater capacity for social transformation. Borrowing the Gandhian critique of ‘knowledge without character’, the author surveys how the existential crisis of higher education, the political manipulation of journalism, and the policy practices of politicians, public intellectuals, and pundits operate in addressing post-imperial/postmodern legacies have legitimated implicit biases and dehumanizing projects that pass off stereotypes as scholarship and hate as hermeneutics. (shrink)

The novice/expert problem is the problem of knowing which apparent expert to trust. Following Alvin Goldman’s lead, a number of philosophers have developed criteria that novices can use to distinguish more from less trustworthy experts. While the criteria the philosophers have identified are indeed useful in guiding expert choice, I argue, they can’t do the work that Goldman and his successors want from them: avoid a kind of testimonial scepticism. We can’t deploy them in the way needed to avoid such (...) scepticism, because it would take genuine expertise to do so. I argue that attempts to deploy them in this sort of deep way involve a kind of transgression akin to, and at least as unreliable as, epistemic trespassing. We should give up trying to solve the novice/expert problem and instead promote better epistemic trust. (shrink)

Dramatic changes or revolutions in a field of science are often made by outsiders or 'trespassers,' who are not limited by the established, 'expert' approaches. Each essay in this diverse collection shows the fruits of intellectual trespassing and poaching among fields such as economics, Kantian ethics, Platonic philosophy, category theory, double-entry accounting, arbitrage, algebraic logic, series-parallel duality, and financial arithmetic.

In the social sciences, the iconic definition of privilege is that of unearned advantage. Consequently, professionals in the social services may devote less attention to the examination of their own professional privilege since it has been earned. This article addresses ethical concerns about the earned privilege that accrues to professionals in the caring fields and the potential effects on service users. This paper will focus particularly on some of the pedagogical dimensions. The inherent paradox in socializing students into professional (...) roles, which enhance privilege, while attempting to reduce the power differentials with service users, requires attention by teachers. How one might lessen the hierarchy that is created between the helper and service user as a result of that privilege will be explored. The paper will detail professional privilege and both constructive and problematic impacts on the helping relationship. The ‘uneven’ advantage of being able to set the standards of health and morality are also discussed. In the process, ethical trespass may result. We will explore this concept and its implications. Because, privilege contributes to social stratification between helpers and recipients, the final segment offers one educational strategy that can be used to potentially lessen the ‘we–they’ duality. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to identify a limit to the appropriate application of property law to the use and storage of bodily material. I argue here that property law ought to be limited to protecting ‘contingent rights’ and that recent cases where property rights have been recognised in semen represent the application of property law beyond this limit. I also suggest how the law ought to develop in order to avoid the overextensive use of property law.

Using a case vignette as an illustration, an expanded framework for examining ethical issues in human service practice is proposed. The article argues that the helping relationship is multiply constructed through discursive fields, rather than being a given, and that the lens of ethics must be widened to understand both the highly contradictory nature of practice, with its accompanying paradoxes, and the broader structures that constrain and influence practitioners. The article draws on the centrality of the concept of (...) class='Hi'>ethical trespass to recognize the inevitability of some level of harm in the application of human service work, despite intention or skill. At the same time, investigating workers' uses of resistance to the dominant discourses is suggested as a means to edge toward the reduction of trespass. (shrink)

Victims of hacker attacks are increasingly responding with a variety of “active defense” measures, including “invasive tracebacks” that are intended to identify the parties responsible for the attack by tracing its path back to its original source. The use of invasive tracebacks raise ethical issues because, in most cases, they involve trespassing upon the machines of innocent owners. Sophisticated hackers attempt to conceal their identities by routing their attacks through layers of innocent agent machines and networks that are compromised (...) without the knowledge of the owners. The use of invasive traceback technologies in such cases, then, involves an act is presumptively problematic from an ethical standpoint: intentionally entering upon the property of an innocent person without her consent constitutes a prima facie trespass. I argue that there is no ethical principle that would justify the use of invasive tracebacks by private persons or entities. First, I argue that invasive tracebacks cannot be justified under the Defense Principle, which allows one person to use proportional force to defend herself or other innocent persons from attacks. Second, I argue that, in ordinary cases, the use of an invasive traceback impacting innocent persons cannot be justified under the Necessity Principle, which permits the infringement of an innocent person’s rights when necessary to achieve a significantly greater good. Since these are the only applicable principles, I conclude that, in the absence of special circumstances, it is not ethically permissible for private parties and entities to implement invasive traceback technologies. (shrink)

Dr. Floyd-Thomas’s paper brings nuance to the discussion of pride and the hubris brought by the Westernized Enlightenment across disciplines. As much as I have the impulse to throttle others or shout or spit with the onslaught of mis-truths and ‘alternative facts’, this would not be a wise moment to conclude inquiry as an oral historian, or a Christian ethicist. I ask, can we decolonize ourselves, our syllabi, the canon, and thus our students with grace, understanding, even forgiveness so as (...) not to repeat the trespasses? (shrink)

The risks associated with the techniques of medically assisted procreation (MAP) rapidly became well-known, and in such a short space of time that no biomedical domain remained untouched by the great deal of thinking and the expression of a multitude of opinions it provoked. MAP is evolving between two poles: quality/misuse (even violation) and evidence/fantasy. The ethics will be evoked in the clinical reality from which they spring and where their justification lies. The three objects common to these ethics, the (...) oocyte, the embryo and the child, are illustrated in this context. MAP has as its corollary access to the oocyte, the fertilization of which will take place in vitro. Access to the embryo, on the other hand, enables the clinician, for the purposes of diagnosis [preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), predictive medicine], or even soon for therapeutic purposes (gene therapy) to draw close to a boundary, to trespass beyond which may be seen by humanity to threaten its very origins and integrity: the alienation of the human genome. For the infertile couple, the missing child may take on a dimension of which they would have been unaware, had they not been forced to express their desire. The burden of the imaginary child may, in this way, become a heavier load to bear when, after such desire, he comes into being. MAP puts the goal of normalisation within reach and, in doing so, accentuates the risk of the burden of the attributed representation of the child. On the one hand, MAP offers a tremendous diagnostic and therapeutic potential, while on the other it opens the door to excess and delirium. In this melting pot, ethics, catalysed by this new source of problematics, has discovered a favourite area in which to define and redefine itself. We propose the intervention of ethics on three different levels. Before the elaboration of the law: on first reflection, ethics may influence the responsibilities of the legislator, by taking care that the law does not obscure the biomedical and socioeconomic contexts of MAP and, thereby, also include other related and complementary aspects dealing with the same subject. The secondary discussion of ethics should influence the application of legal protection, by taking into account the rapid technological and social development of MAP, there too, by discussing the whole, rather than the details which will obscure the object. The ethical reflection of the clinician, who is aware of these difficulties, is guided by elements that are specific to his position as a doctor. The cohesion of the team around the clinician and the ethics specialist enables us to develop consensual clinical ethics that are transmissible and therefore teachable. This complex role can, in our view, only be acted out directly in the clinical situation, where the constant, direct relationship with the object of the reflection and the treatment allows ethics to take into account the contingencies of medical practice: we invite the ethics specialist to take part in our clinical activity on a daily basis. (shrink)

This book is about permissive consent--the moral tool we use to give another person permission to do what would otherwise be forbidden. For instance, consent to enter my home gives you permission to do what would otherwise be trespass. This transformation is the very thing that philosophersidentify as consent--which is why we call it a normative power. It is something individuals can do, by choice, to change the moral or legal world. But what human acts or attitudes render consent? (...) When do coercive threats, offers, or lies undermine the transformative power of consent? What intentionsor conventions are necessary to render consent meaningful?This book develops a novel theory that explains the moral features of consent in some of the most central domains of human life--but that also serves as a study in how to theorize normative power. It argues that consent is a moral mechanism with exactly the set of features that, when triggered,prevents another person's behavior from constituting a certain kind of wrongdoing. What kind of wrongdoing? It depends on what sort of permission is being granted. Sometimes consent permits others to enter, occupy, or act within some bounded domain wherein the consent-giver holds moral authority. Inthese cases, consent operates to prevent what the book calls: Invasive Wrongdoing. By identifying the moral features that underlie this special wrongdoing, we can learn what it takes to render consent. (shrink)

The confrontation of anthropology and ethics has not been a peaceful one. Entrenched attitudes, hardened lines, frequent anxieties about trespass have tended to prevail. Philosophers may allow anthropology, like any other science, to putter about in the external investigation of causes and conditions of morality, perhaps even to play an ancillary role in the practical decisions of normative ethics, but they are prone to rule it out as an interloper in the reflective analysis of theoretical ethics. We should like (...) to suggest that anthropology has a contribution to make, through both its content and its method, in the latter domain; and paradoxically, that it is through the light it throws on theoretical ethics that anthropology makes its profoundest contribution to normative ethics. (shrink)

The confrontation of anthropology and ethics has not been a peaceful one. Entrenched attitudes, hardened lines, frequent anxieties about trespass have tended to prevail. Philosophers may allow anthropology, like any other science, to putter about in the external investigation of causes and conditions of morality, perhaps even to play an ancillary role in the practical decisions of normative ethics, but they are prone to rule it out as an interloper in the reflective analysis of theoretical ethics. We should like (...) to suggest that anthropology has a contribution to make, through both its content and its method, in the latter domain; and paradoxically, that it is through the light it throws on theoretical ethics that anthropology makes its profoundest contribution to normative ethics. (shrink)

Organ availability for transplantation has become an increasingly complex and difficult question in health economics and ethical practice. Advances in technology have seen prolonged life expectancy, and the global push for organs creates an ever-expanding gap between supply and demand, and a significant cost in bridging that gap. This article will examine the ethical implications for the nursing profession in regard to the procurement of organs from an impoverished seller’s market, also known as ‘Transplant Tourism’. This ethical (...) dilemma concerns itself with resource allocation, informed consent and the concepts of egalitarianism and libertarianism. Transplant Tourism is an unacceptable trespass against human dignity and rights from both a nursing and collective viewpoint. Currently, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Royal college of Nursing Australia, The Royal College of Nursing (UK) and the American Nurses Association do not have position statements on transplant tourism, and this diminishes us as a force for change. It diminishes our role as advocates for the most marginalised in our world to have access to care and to choice and excludes us from a very contemporary real debate about the mismatch of organ demand and supply in our own communities. As a profession, we must have a voice in health policy and human rights, and according to our Code of Ethics in Australia and around the world, act to promote and protect the fundamental human right to healthcare and dignity. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue on impact investing applies the attractive nuisance notion to impact investing. Social sector actors ‘trespassing’ on the playing field of conventional investment markets may not appreciate the risks. We apply the framework of essentially contested concepts to foster fruitful diverse research in this emerging research field. We advance six dimensions, which we propose allow to describe different sub-clusters of how the term is used in research and practice. For each dimension we identify risks and (...) opportunities stemming from the contested nature and highlight an ambitious research agenda for how future business ethics scholars can help address and foster impact investing. We conclude by illustrating how the papers in this special issue address these challenges. (shrink)

I explore philosophically the phenomenon of home wireless networks as used to share broadband Internet connections. Because such networks are frequently unsecured, third parties can use them to access the Internet. Here I consider carefully whether this kind of behaviour should be properly called theft. I begin with a brief non-technical introduction to 802.11 wireless networks. Subsequently, I present a four part argument – appealing to the unsecured nature of the networks discussed, entrenched software and hardware behaviours, trespass law, (...) and the openness of ‹public park’ spectrum – suggesting that this kind of behaviour is permissible and should not be construed as theft. Substantively, I conclude that, despite the quite compelling considerations that these arguments bring to bear, this behaviour is theft. Additionally, I draw attention to significant flaws in the design and implementation of wireless technology (specifically in the out-of-the-box configuration for wireless access points and in the wireless connectivity of early versions of Windows XP) that facilitate the intentional and unintentional theft of Internet bandwidth. I suggest some simple mechanisms that could be incorporated into the technology which would serve to remove the ethical ambiguity in its usage by third parties, including adding the ability for a network owner to explicitly mark her network as not for public use,␣and changes to default hardware and software behaviours. I conclude by encouraging increased use of value-sensitive design practices in the development of future wireless technologies. (shrink)

In order to understand the lived experiences of physicians in clinical practice, we interviewed eleven expert, respected clinicians using a phenomenological interpretative methodology. We identified the essence of clinical practice as engagement. Engagement accounts for the daily routine of clinical work, as well as the necessity for the clinician to sometimes trespass common boundaries or limits. Personally engaged in the clinical situation, the clinician is able to create a space/time bubble within which the clinical encounter can unfold. Engagement provides (...) an account of clinical practice as a unitary lived experience. This stands in stark contrast to the prevailing notion, referred to as a dual discourse, that describes medicine as the addition of humanism to science. Drawing on Aristotle’s notion of phronesis and Sartre’s definition of the situation, we illustrate how this novel perspective entwines clinical practice, the person of the clinician, and the clinician’s situation. (shrink)

In this paper I contemplate two phenomena that have impressed theorists concerned with the domain of reasons and of what is now called ‘normativity’. One is the much-discussed ‘externality’ of reasons. According to this, reasons are just there, anyway. They exist whether or not agents take any notice of them. They do not only exist in the light of contingent desires or mere inclinations. They are ‘external’ not ‘internal’. They bear on us, even when through ignorance or wickedness we take (...) no notice of them. They thus very conspicuously shine the lights of objectivity, and independence, and even necessity. By basking in this light, ethics is rescued from the slough of sentiment and preference, and regains the dignity denied to it by theorists such as Hobbes or Hume, Williams, Gibbard or myself. Hence, many contemporary philosophers compete to stress and to extol the external nature of reasons, their shining objectivity. The other phenomenon is that of the inescapable ‘normativity’ of means-ends reasoning. Here the irrationality of intending an end but failing to intend the means is a different shining beacon. It is that of pure practical reason in operation: an indisputable norm, again showing a sublime indifference to whatever weaknesses people actually have, and ideally fitted to provide a Trojan horse for inserting rationality into practical life. If the means-end principle is both unmistakably practical and yet the darling child of rationality itself, then other principles of consistency or of humanity, or of universalizing the maxims of our action, can perhaps follow through the breach in the Humean citadel that it has spearheaded. And so we get the dazzling prospect that if people who choose badly are choosing against reason, then this can be seen to be a special and grave defect. It would locate the kind of fault they are indulging. It would give us, the people of reason, a special lever with which to dislodge their vices. Being able to herd knaves and villains in a compound reserved for those who trespass against reason and rationality therefore represents definite progress. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers have competence in one field but pass judgment on matters in other fields where they lack competence. I examine philosophical questions related to epistemic trespassing by expert witnesses in courtroom trials and argue for the following positions. Expert witnesses are required to avoid epistemic trespassing. When testifying as an expert witness, merely qualifying one’s statements to indicate that one is not speaking as an expert is insufficient to avoid epistemic trespassing. Judges, litigators, and jurors can often recognize epistemic (...) trespassing by examining a purported expert’s credentials and track record. Judges should not permit recognizable epistemic trespassers to testify as expert witnesses. Litigators should seek to expose recognizable epistemic trespassers during cross-examination. Jurors should treat recognizable instances of epistemic trespassing as a reason to downgrade the testimony of epistemic trespassers. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that consent is a normative power. For instance, consent can make an impermissible act permissible. In the words of Heidi Hurd, it “turns a trespass into a dinner party... an invasion of privacy into an intimate moment.” In this chapter, I argue against the assumption that consent has such robust powers for moral transformation. In particular, I argue that there is a wide range of sex that harms or wrongs victims despite being consensual. Moreover, these (...) cases are not limited to those where con- sent is vitiated by background conditions. I start by calling this category of consensual sex Bad Sex. I then distinguish subspecies of this category, including psychological pressure, social coercion, and epistemically unsafe sex. I end by responding to an objection on which we should treat at least some subspecies of Bad Sex as rape. Though this alternative proposal is often motivated by ameliorative and strategic considerations, I argue that such considerations actually count against collapsing the categories of Bad Sex and rape. (shrink)

If one takes a course in philosophy to-day at a British university, a discreet silence is usually observed about existentialism. Often the professors understand little of its methods or its doctrine. If their excuse in part is the inaccessibility in English of standard existentialist texts, it is true also that philosophers trained in the “critical philosophy” now in vogue feel a certain aversion to existentialism or, at all events, to the notion they have formed of it. If Christianity was a (...) scandal to the Greeks and remains a scandal, as Dr. Brunner has recently told us, to contemporary humanists, existentialism is a scandal to the positivists. The latter are aware that the existentialists habitually trespass in the fields of religion, ethics, aesthetics and psychology, fields which, on the positivist view, should be reserved to other disciplines than philosophy, which has its own distinctive subject-matter and approach. They know that certain existentialists, notably Heidegger, provide a happy hunting ground for examples of “metaphysics.” They have heard that existentialism has sought to turn the tables on positivism by accusing it, if not of metaphysics, at all events of a barrenness of significant content, of a preoccupation with mere logistics which removes philosophy completely from men's business and bosoms. If the positivist accuses the existentialist of perpetrating “nonsense” in a technical sense, the latter retorts by accusing the positivist of reducing philosophy to nonsense in a pragmatic sense. (shrink)

In an individualistic society and in the increasingly competitive business environment people do not seem inclined to forgive others their trespasses. One is more likely to choose to ignore the virtue of forgiveness as a way of handling personnel situations involving intense conflict or mild disagreements, favoring instead the negative feelings of resentment, anger, revenge or retaliation. Business people seem less concerned with growth in virtue and character; interestingly they allow their character and ultimately their work relationships to deteriorate because (...) they hold onto feelings of anger and resentment. Is there a place for forgiveness in our interpersonal relationships in general and in corporate life in particular? I believe there is. A study of the virtue of forgiveness shows that it is a misunderstood virtue, but one that deserves attention. In this article I will examine the virtue of forgiveness, defining what forgiveness is and is not, and will illustrate how it might be situated as an essential human resource management strategy. (shrink)

“One who elects to serve mankind by taking the law into his own hands thereby demonstrates his conviction that his own ability to determine policy is superior to democratic decision making. [Defendants’] professed unselfish motivation, rather than a justification, actually identifies a form of arrogance which organized society cannot tolerate.” Those were the words of Justice Harris L. Hartz at the sentencing hearing of three nuns convicted of trespassing and vandalizing government property to demonstrate against U.S. foreign policy. Citizens engaging (...) in civil disobedience are indeed at times accused of being arrogant because they apparently think their own political judgment is superior to that of the democratic majority. This paper examines and evaluates the claim that dissenters are epistemically arrogant. Contrary to the dominant viewpoint in the literature, I argue that epistemic arrogance involves inflating the epistemic worth of one’s view. Indeed, the most plausible charge against civil dissenters consists of two claims: (A) civil dissenters have a higher degree of rational certainty in P than is warranted, and (B) civil dissenters use a method of expression that requires a higher level of rational certainty than is warranted in the propositions that their political view is right and the injustice they fight is substantial. I argue that civil disobedience does not necessarily involve epistemic arrogance. Whether an act of civil disobedience evinces epistemic arrogance has to be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the extent to which each dissenter lives up to (A) and (B). (shrink)

Descartes died in Stockholm on 11 February 1650 from pneumonia contracted during the freezing cold mornings spent in his philosophical colloquia with Queen Christina. According to Chanut, who stayed with him until the very end, his death was "sweet and very much like his life". These words have always been held to be of fundamental importance in the different accounts of the philosopher's death, especially in Adrien Baillet's Vie de Monsieur Descartes. The literature that flourished around Descartes' death has always (...) presented this ‘trespassing' as the final declaration of his philosophy, inspired by those principles he had theorized in his works as a philosophy of life and that he would play out even in the crowning moment as an ethic of wisdom which has to be lived out in the first person, and for the last time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thinking Mortal ThoughtsDebra SanThere is something quite odd about the ancient Greek advice to “think mortal thoughts” (or “think of mortal things”), for what human being past the flush of youth has not trembled at the thought of mortality? Consciousness of our mortal condition is considered a hall-mark of the human species, and is no doubt the reason we alone among the species on the planet entertain notions of (...) divinity. Why then are we counseled to think about what we cannot help thinking about anyway? And what purpose does the advice serve: are those who tender it eager to promote their own fearful frame of mind? Or, on the contrary, are they urging us to be courageous in the face of death? Perhaps the advice intended is to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Or perhaps “mortal thoughts” are suicidal thoughts, and the object is to shuffle off this mortal coil in a manner, time, and place of our own choosing.Clearly, taken out of context, the injunction “think mortal thoughts” can mean any number of things. But in the context of ancient Greek culture, “think mortal thoughts” means roughly this:“Since you are not one of the immortal gods, be mindful of your limits as a human being. Consciousness of the inevitability of your death should inform the way you live your life, for just as your lifespan is limited by your mortality, so too are your capacities for understanding, for action, and for achievement. This is the truth of your condition; if you don’t accept it, you’ll be frustrated at best, and at worst you’ll incur divine wrath and retribution for attempting to push past your proper human boundaries into sacred turf where you don’t belong and aren’t wanted. Don’t trespass. Don’t even think about it. Don’t assume, in a futile exercise of hubris, that you’re a special case whose transgression [End Page 16] (huperbasia) will be exempt from dire consequences. Gnothi sauton, know yourself as a mortal being, and meden agan, do nothing to excess, or you will suffer the fate of Icarus, who aimed too high and died for it, or the fate of Phaethon, who was destroyed by forces which he thought he could control.”The advice presented here echoes throughout classical Greek drama, whose tragic protagonists are the theatrical descendants of Icarus and Phaethon. When Antigone compares herself to Niobe, the Chorus must remind her that “she was a god, born of gods, and we are only mortals born to die” (925–26). 1 In her failure to think mortal thoughts, Antigone resembles her father, whose refusal to acknowledge his limits is so profound that even after mutilating himself in horror at the discovery of his own transgressions, he must still be reminded that he is no longer “the master of all things” (1675). 2 Pentheus in the Bacchae lacks the stature of either Oedipus or Antigone, but like them he has pretensions beyond the limits befitting a mortal; he fails to exercise the “simple wisdom [that] shuns the thoughts of proud, uncommon men and all their god-encroaching dreams” (427–29). 3 In his arrogant and unrealistic attempt to pit his own puny powers against the incomparable force of the immortal Dionysus, Pentheus suffers the fate of those whose hubris overcomes the temperate virtue of sōphrosunē, “the wisdom that accepts” (390). Even the bloodthirsty, pre-Eumenides Furies of the Eumenides accept the limits which moderation entails: they understand that Zeus “appointeth the mean as the master in all things” (531). 4One might expect that this cautionary, temperate strain in Greek thinking would appeal to Aristotle, whose doctrine of the mean in Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics might have come straight out of the Oresteia. And yet, when the caution is expressed in the maxim “think mortal thoughts,” Aristotle rejects it, claiming that human beings should try to aim their thoughts at a level so high it cannot really be reached by mortals, which is to say a level as high as that of the immortal gods, whose contemplative, intellectual activity (theōria) soars far above... (shrink)

Reasons have recently occupied the centre of the theory of value. Some writers, such as Tim Scanlonthink that they are not only central, but exhaust the topic, since everything important that we want to say about the good or the valuable, or the obligatory and the required, can be phrased in terms of reason. An action is good to perform if the reasons in favour of performing it are stronger than those in favour of doing anything else or doing nothing. (...) An action is the right thing to do, or ought to be performed, if the reasons for doing it are so strong that it would be unreasonable to do anything else. In this kind of way, reasons can occupy the whole territory of ethics. Furthermore, if people who choose badly are choosing against reason, then this might seem to be a special and grave defect. It would locate the kind of fault they are indulging. It would give us, the people of reason, a special lever with which to dislodge their vices. For reason seems to have a peculiar compulsion about it. It is sometimes tempting to be bad, but surely not tempting to be irrational or unreasonable. Being able to corral knaves and villains in a compound reserved for those who trespass against reason and rationality may therefore represent definite progress. Reasons have another feature that attracts many contemporary theorists. They are just there, anyway. They exist whether or not agents take any notice of them. They do not only exist in the light of mere desires or mere inclinations. They are ‘external’ not ‘internal’. They bear on us, even when through ignorance or wickedness we take no notice of them. They thus very conspicuously shine the lights of objectivity, and independence, and even necessity. By basking in this light, ethics is rescued from the slough of sentiment and preference, and regains the dignity denied to it by theorists such as Hobbes or Hume, Gibbard or myself. Whole books have therefore been written stressing the external nature of reasons. These lines of thought contain less than meets the eye, however, if talk of reason just turns out to be another idiom for talking about the good and the right.. (shrink)

Are there matters we should exclude from inquiry? Personal privacy apart, it seems difficult to justify. By what higher, better knowledge than the results of inquiry itself could one know what inquiry ought not know? Is such knowledge a metaphysical intuition whose authority cannot be questioned? Isn't that a fairy-tale? But what about ethics? What about ethical limitations on knowledge? Can they not concern more than simply what to do with knowledge we have, concerning instead the very dynamic of (...) knowledge, the direction of inquiry itself? Might not the best ethics of knowledge teach that certain directions of inquiry are forbidden, like a trespass against personal privacy? (shrink)

In this paper I contemplate two phenomena that have impressed theorists concerned with the domain of reasons and of normativity. One is the much-discussed ‘externality’ of reasons. Reasons are just there, anyway. They exist whether or not agents take any notice of them. They do not only exist in the light of contingent desires or mere inclinations. They are ‘external’ not ‘internal’. They bear on us, even when through ignorance or wickedness we take no notice of them. They thus very (...) conspicuously shine the lights of objectivity, and independence, and even necessity. By basking in this light, ethics is rescued from the slough of sentiment and preference, and regains the dignity denied to it by theorists such as Hobbes or Hume, Gibbard or myself. Many contemporary philosophers compete to stress the external nature of reasons, their shining objectivity.1 The other phenomenon is that of the inescapable ‘normativity’ of means-ends reasoning. Here the irrationality of intending an end but failing to intend the means is a shining beacon of pure practical reason in operation: an indisputable norm, again showing a sublime indifference to whatever weaknesses people actually have, and ideally fitted to provide a Trojan horse for inserting rationality into practical life. If the meansend principle is both practical and the child of rationality itself, then other principles of consistency or of humanity, or of universalizing the maxims of our action, can perhaps follow through the breach in the Humean citadel that it has spearheaded. And so we get the dazzling prospect that if people who choose badly are choosing against reason, then this can be seen to be a special and grave defect. It would locate the kind of fault they are indulging. It would give us, the people of reason, a special lever with which to dislodge their vices. Being able to corral knaves and villains in a compound reserved for those who trespass against reason and rationality may therefore represent definite progress. It is sad to have to spoil the party, but my claim is straightforward.. (shrink)

“[A] murder prosecution is a poor way to design an ethical and moral code for doctors,” observed the California Court of Appeal in 1983. Yet, physicians who have chosen to help terminally ill patients to commit suicide have trespassed on illegal ground. When skilled medical care fails to relieve the pain of terminally ill patients, some people believe that physicians may assist in these suicides. Others reject any kind of physician involvement. The debate on assisted suiczide and active euthanasia (...) has focused on whether these acts can ever be acceptable. We propose to shift the debate to a less divisive issue: whether a caring physician who provides a suffering and ill patient with a prescription for a lethal dose of medication should be prosecuted as a felon. Even assisted suicide's opponents may object to such criminal prosecution. We propose to modify existing criminal laws to give physicians who assist their terminally ill patients in suicide, under carefully defined circumstances, a legal defense against criminal charges. (shrink)

Numerous humans - in my opinion, far too many - continue to live apart from nature, rather than as a part of nature. In this personal essay I discuss various aspects of traditional science and suggest that holistic and heart-driven compassionate science needs to replace reductionist and impersonal science. I argue that creative proactive solutions drenched in deep caring, respect, and love for the universe need to be developed to deal with the broad range of problems with which we are (...) confronted. Simply put, I have had enough. I want the world to be a better place for all of its inhabitants and time is not on our side. I feel a deep sense of urgency and passionate impatience. We are worrying about wildness as it is disappearing right in front of our eyes - as I write and we discuss. Thus, I am willing to open myself to criticism, to be vulnerable for expressing views that are not part of main-stream science. Rather than take a doomsday view that the world will not even exist in 100 years if we fail to accept our unique responsibilities, it is more disturbing to imagine a world in which humans and other life coexist in the absence of any intimacy and interconnectedness. Surely we do not want to be remembered as the generation that killed nature. To illustrate some of my points, I discuss various aspects of translocation studies in which animals are moved about from one place to another in humans' attempts to "redecorate" nature. In these projects interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary and disciplinary boundaries must be trespassed. I also emphasize the importance of teaching children well for their and our futures rest on their developing a deeply-rooted caring ethic. My vision is to create a world-wide community in which humans perceive themselves as a part of nature and not apart from her, in which humans who are overwhelmed and whose spirits and souls have been robbed and squelched by living in and amongst steel, concrete, asphalt, noise, and a multitude of invasions of their private space reconnect with raw nature - with the wind in their faces, the odors of wild flowers, and the sounds, sights, odors, and touch of other animals and inanimate environs. A world in which sensing is feeling. Nature is our unconditional friend and reconnecting with nature can help overcome alienation and loneliness. The power of love must not be underestimated as we forge ahead to reconnect with nature. (shrink)

The organization of the modern police is a contingent social choice about how to engage in the process of governance when regulating public order on the street. The police are the agency authorized to act upon the state’s duty to govern in response to public emergencies. The duty to govern exists when there is some urgent social need that could be resolved by acting, and some person or institution has the resources and ability to do that act. The duty is (...) impersonal: anybody with the relevant skill set is obligated to act to address the relevant need. Problems can arise, however, when too few individuals respond or too many compete to resolve the need. A core feature of governance, then, is to create publicly recognized institutions with special authority, resources, and abilities to address the demand for public services when someone needs to step in and do something to the exclusion of ordinary members of the public. Police agencies are further characterized by various powers and duties. These powers are normative powers to change the legal status of the people with whom the police interact, rather than physical powers to use some amount of violence to coerce individuals to comply with police demands. The core powers of the police include the powers to make authoritative determinations about how to respond to an emergency, to detain individuals, and to trespass upon their person or property, along with conjoined duties to govern, to protect, and to intervene at risk to themselves. The dominant approach attempts to distinguish the police from other institutions using the police ability to use violent to respond to public emergencies. On the governance based model of the police, however, the ability to use force is simply one of the resources available to the police, and does not mark them off as different from other public governance agencies. (shrink)

Novelty—the value of saying something new—appears to be a good-making feature of a philosophical contribution. Beyond this, however, novelty functions as a metric of success. This paper challenges the presumption and expectation that a successful philosophical contribution will be a novel one. As I show, the pursuit of novelty is neither as desirable nor as feasible as it might initially seem.

The Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation on 19 October 2005 is an important step in the search for global minimum standards in biomedical research and clinical practice. As a member of UNESCO International Bioethics Committee, I participated in the drafting of this document. Drawing on this experience, the principal features of the Declaration are outlined, before responding to two general charges that have been levelled at UNESCO’s bioethical activities (...) and at this particular document, are outlined. One criticism is to the effect that UNESCO is exceeding its mandate by drafting such bioethical instruments—in particular, the charge is that it is trespassing on a topic that lies in the responsibility of the World Health Organization. The second criticism is that UNESCO’s reliance on international human rights norms is inappropriate. (shrink)

There is currently a stalemate over the correct approach to legal liability. To take a prominent example, it remains a point of contention whether land owners should be held liable for injuries to trespassers. Many of those who insist that land owners should be held liable for injuries to trespassers maintain this for purely economic or pragmatic reasons. In contrast, those on the other side frequently defend their view on the grounds that, in such trespass cases, owners are not (...) morally responsible for the injuries. We maintain that the best way forward for all parties in this debate is to recognize the existence of “morally responsible liability ”—of cases where owners qua owners are morally responsible for damages caused by their property. Once this is recognized, the debate can be framed in terms of whether there are economic or pragmatic reasons for legal liability to diverge from morally responsible liability. Unfortunately, there is no good account of morally responsible liability in the literature. Taking lessons from the failings of the few extant accounts, we draw on the work of A. M. Honoré and Jeremy Waldron to develop an account of our own. We argue that owners are morally responsible for damages caused by their property when and because their taking ownership of something leads to increased risk to others. We explain how and why such increases in risk come about, and how our account captures our intuitions concerning various cases, including those concerning injuries to trespassers. (shrink)

Two days following her arrest, a forty-four-year-old woman died in jail from aspiration pneumonia secondary to Untreated opiate withdrawal. The New York State Commission of Corrections concluded in its final report that had adequate medical evaluation and treatment been afforded, her death would have been prevented. A forty-six-year-old male with a history of alcohol dependence was arrested for trespassing and held in the county jail. Three days later he became agitated and aggressive. Following physician orders, deputies placed him in restraints. (...) He subsequently vomited and seized. Fifteen minutes later, he experienced respiratory arrest and died.These cases highlight a serious, but neglected problem in jails across the country: inadequate assessment and treatment of drug and alcohol withdrawal among arrestees. In this article, we show that untreated drug or alcohol withdrawal is associated with adverse outcomes including needless pain and suffering, medical morbidity, and in some instances, death. (shrink)

Background: Older, frail patients with multimorbidity are at an especially high risk for disease severity and death from COVID-19. The social restrictions proved challenging for the residents, their relatives, and the care staff. While these restrictions clearly impacted daily life in Norwegian nursing homes, knowledge about how the pandemic influenced nursing practice is sparse. Aim: The aim of the study was to illuminate ethical difficult situations experienced by Norwegian nurses working in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design (...) and participants: The research design involved semistructured individual interviews conducted with 15 nurses working in 8 nursing homes in 3 health regions in Norway, within both urban and rural areas. Ethical considerations: Oral and written information about the study was provided before the participants gave their written consent. The transcribed interviews were de-identified. The study was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Findings: Four ethical difficult situations were identified: (a) turning the nursing home into a prison; (b) using medication to maintain peace and order; (c) being left alone with the responsibility; and (d) s. impact on decision-making. Conclusions: The nurses’ ethical challenges were intertwined with external factors, such as national and local guidelines, and the nurses’ own internalized factors, which were connected to their subjective professionality. This duality inflicted emotional distress and gave nurses few opportunities to perform nursing in a professionally sound and safe manner. (shrink)

The new business opportunities and prospects emerging in Europe within the Common Market and other Western and European countries also raise important ethical challenges. This work comprises a collection of ethical insights to enhance the conduct of business in an evolving Europe.

Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount (...) of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? (shrink)

Background The smart home-based elder care presents a promising technological solution to address the challenges of aging. However, it has also unveiled a spectrum of ethical concerns, which may cause older adults to submit to negative emotions and psychological pressure. Aim To delineate the ethical dilemmas encountered by older adults in the context of smart home-based elder care, and to construct a model that elucidates the ethical issues across different dimensions. Research design This study follows a qualitative (...) phenomenological research design. Participants and research context The sample comprised 15 older adults and 10 adult children in two communities in Jinan, Shandong, China. Structured, in-depth interviews were performed to collect data and the Colaizzi descriptive analysis framework was adopted to analyze data. An ethical dilemma model was constructed based on framework of the Society Ecosystems Theory. Ethical considerations The proposal was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Second Hospital of Shandong University, China. Participation in this study was voluntary. Written and verbal consent was gained. All recordings were kept under the principle of confidentiality. Results Ethical dilemmas of smart home-based elder care were grouped into three themes with 10 sub-themes, and a model composed of three systems was built based on these findings. Discussion The ethical dilemmas experienced by the older adults with smart home-based elder care were various and multi-layered, which could be elucidated by the ethical dilemma model. Conclusion The model emphasizes the necessity for collaborative efforts among the whole society and the elderly individuals. Tailored support strategies should be implemented to address the ethical dilemmas of the macro, meso, and micro system. The results may improve the elderly population to receive a more content and convenient elder care experience. (shrink)

Nursing, a scientific and practical discipline, faces continuing challenges of finding new direction in order to decipher its core values and develop current ethical codes for nursing practice. In 2009–10, 28 nurses were purposely selected and interviewed using a semi-structured format in focus groups and individually. Thematic Content Analysis helped explore the perception of Iranian nurses on ethical values in patient care. Seven major themes emerged: respect for dignity, professional integrity, professional commitment, developing human relationships, justice, honesty, and (...) promoting individuals and the nursing profession. Iranian nurses revealed a unique and culture-based set of ethical values. This study found that Iranian nurses place a greater emphasis on preserving the dignity of those accompanying the patient and in showing regard for patients' religious beliefs in a gender appropriate environment. (shrink)

When ethical decisions have to be taken in critical, complex medical situations, they often involve decisions that set the course for or against life-sustaining treatments. Therefore the decisions have far-reaching consequences for the patients, their relatives, and often for the clinical staff. Although the rich psychology literature provides evidence that reasoning may be affected by undesired influences that may undermine the quality of the decision outcome, not much attention has been given to this phenomenon in health care or ethics (...) consultation. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the sensitization of the problem of systematic reasoning biases by showing how exemplary individual and group biases can affect the quality of decision-making on an individual and group level. We are addressing clinical ethicists as well as clinicians who guide complex decision-making processes of ethical significance. Knowledge regarding exemplary group psychological biases (e.g. conformity bias), and individual biases (e.g. stereotypes), will be taken from the disciplines of social psychology and cognitive decision science and considered in the field of ethical decision-making. Finally we discuss the influence of intuitive versus analytical (systematical) reasoning on the validity of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

The seven ethical issues and principles explored in the target article (i.e., privacy, responsibility, access, stigma, user control, family impact, enhancement) reflect important considerations for...