In Intricate Ethics, Kamm questions the moral importance of some non-consequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of ...

Morality, Mortality as a whole deals with certain aspects of ethical theory and with moral problems that arise primarily in contexts involving life‐and‐death decisions. The importance of the theoretical issues is not limited to their relevance to these decisions; however, they are, rather, issues at the heart of basic moral and political theory. This first volume comprises three parts. Part I, Death: From Bad to Worse, has with four chapters, and an appendix, discussing death and why it is bad for (...) the person who dies. Part II, Saving Lives: General Issues, has six chapters, and explores a cluster of moral problems that arise in saving lives. The general question raised is whether we should always, in aiding life, act so as to save the greater number of lives or to produce the greatest amount of good. Part III, Scarce Resources: Theoretical Issues, Specific Recommendations, and Organ Transplants, has five chapters, and deals with the problem of the acquisition and distribution of organs for transplantation. It allows us to apply the theoretical discussion of saving lives and relevant/irrelevant utilities presented in the previous parts. However, the discussion can be understood independently of the first two parts, and the conceptual issues and procedures on which it focuses are relevant to dealing with any scarce resource, including money and time, which are needed to use other plentiful resources. Although the book contains much theoretical and methodological argument, it is firmly grounded in practical ethical issues, and is illustrated throughout by examples. (shrink)

This volume continues the examination of issues of life and death which F.M. Kamm began in Morality, Mortality, Volume I. Kamm continues her development of a non-consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems. She looks at the distinction between killing and letting die, and between intending and foreseeing, and also at the concepts of rights, prerogatives, and supererogation. She shows that a sophisticated non-consequentialist theory can be modelled which copes convincingly with practical ethical issues, and throws considerable (...) light on some of the key distinctions and concepts of ethical discourse. (shrink)

This article examines arguments concerning enhancement of human persons recently presented by Michael Sandel (2004). In the first section, I briefly describe some of his arguments. In section two, I consider whether, as Sandel claims, the desire for mastery motivates enhancement and whether such a desire could be grounds for its impermissibility. Section three considers how Sandel draws the distinction between treatment and enhancement, and the relation to nature that he thinks each expresses. The fourth section examines Sandel's views about (...) parent/child relations and also how enhancement would affect distributive justice and the duty to aid. In conclusion, I briefly offer an alternative suggestion as to why enhancement may be troubling and consider what we could safely enhance. (shrink)

The Trolley Problem Mysteries considers whether who turns the trolley and/or how it is turned affect the moral permissibility of acting and suggests general proposals for when we may and may not harm some people to help others.

Based on a non-consequentialist ethical theory, this book critically examines the prevalent view that if a fetus has the moral standing of a person, it has a right to life and abortion is impermissible. Most discussion of abortion has assumed that this view is correct, and so has focused on the question of the personhood of the fetus. Kamm begins by considering in detail the permissibility of killing in non-abortion cases which are similar to abortion cases. She goes on to (...) consider the case for the permissibility of abortion in many types of pregnancies, including ones resulting from rape, voluntary pregnancy, and pregnancy resulting from a voluntary sex act, even if the fetus is considered a person. This argument emerges as part of a broader theory of creating new people responsibly. Kamm explores the implications of this argument for informed consent to abortion; responsibilities in pregnancy that is not aborted, and the significance of extra-uterine gestation devices for the permissibility of abortion. (shrink)

Bioethical Prescriptions collects F.M. Kamm's articles on bioethics -- revised for publication in book form -- which have appeared over the last 25 years and which have made her among the most widely-respected philosophers working in this field.

This article considers the possible relation between the idea of parity and some past work on the allocation of scarce resources. Parity of value is first connected with the idea of some goods being irrelevant in interpersonal comparisons. The notion of moral parity is introduced to describe the recognition that people who are moral equals (even when they are not on a par in terms of value) as not substitutable. The relation between a Separability Test and nonsubstitutability of persons is (...) considered. These ideas are then used to discuss various cases in which one must choose to whom to provide medical assistance, including whether and when to distinguish morally between a disabled and a nondisabled person. (shrink)

I begin by reconsidering the arguments of John Taurek and Elizabeth Anscombe on whether the number of people we can help counts morally. I then consider arguments that numbers should count given by F. M. Kamm and Thomas Scanlon, and criticism of them by Michael Otsuka. I examine how different conceptions of the moral method known as pairwise comparison are at work in these different arguments and what the ideas of balancing and tie-breaking signify for decision-making in various types of (...) cases. I conclude by considering how another moral method that I call virtual divisibility functions and what it helps reveal about an argument by Otsuka against those who do not think numbers count. (shrink)

Lecture I begins with a brief history of changing views on what the Trolley Problem is and attempts to solve it. The lecture then critically examines Judith Thomson’s recent view that a moral distinction between killing and letting die, and between what a conductor of the trolley or a mere bystander may do to save people from the trolley, eliminates what she now thinks of as the Trolley Problem. The last part considers a different argument for the conclusion that Thomson (...) now favors, but ultimately attempts to resurrect the Trolley Problem, suggesting that it is not who turns the trolley that makes the turning permissible. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

This survey report is a follow-up to the survey done by the Center for Business Ethics in 1984/85 which was published in the Journal for Business Ethics under the title of 'Are Corporations Institutionalizing Ethics?' (Volume 5, 1986, pp. 85-91). This 1989/90 survey was again sent to Fortune 1000 industrial and service companies to find out what they have done to build ethical values into their organizations. It reveals some interesting comparisons with the 1984/85 survey with regard to expanding efforts, (...) objectives, progress, and methods of implementation, along with some new information on their perception of public pressure for ethics programs and the need for ethics education. The survey shows where some progress in building ethics into corporations seems to be occurring and where much more work needs to be done. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical discussion of moral, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. One of its aims is to decide whether and when it might make sense to not resist or bring about the end of one's life. To answer this question it considers views about meaning in life and what makes life worth living. It also evaluates recent attempts to help the general public plan in advance for the end of life. It also considers (...) whether or not physician-assisted suicide is morally permissible and if it should be legalized. (shrink)

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it (...) is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible. (shrink)

Frances Kamm sets out to draw and make plausible distinctions that would show how and why it is, in some circumstances, permissible to kill some to save many more, but is not so in others. To do so she draws on a famous, and famously artificial, example of Judith Thomson, which illustrates the fact that people intutitively reject some instances of such killings but not others. The irrationality, implausibility and in many cases the self-defeating nature of such distinctions I had (...) attempted to expose in my 'The Survival Lottery' over 25 years ago. I still think these distinctions irrational and implausible and I will try, in this response, to show why this remains the case and why doctrines of additional effects, to however many powers they are taken, remain unhelpful in ethics. (shrink)

The placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens is a tiny hairy plate and more simply organized than any other living metazoan. After its original description by F.E. Schulze in 1883, it attracted attention as a potential model for the ancestral state of metazoan organization, the “Urmetazoon”. Trichoplax lacks any kind of symmetry, organs, nerve cells, muscle cells, basal lamina, and extracellular matrix. Furthermore, the placozoan genome is the smallest (not secondarily reduced) genome of all metazoan genomes. It harbors a remarkably rich diversity of (...) genes and has been considered the best living surrogate for a metazoan ancestor genome. The phylum Placozoa presently harbors three formally described species, while several dozen “cryptic” species are yet awaiting their description. The phylogenetic position of placozoans has recently become a contested arena for modern phylogenetic analyses and view‐driven claims. Trichoplax offers unique prospects for understanding the minimal requirements of metazoan animal organization and their corresponding malfunctions. (shrink)

This chapter considers the relation between supererogation and duties (also here referred to as obligations) from a nonconsequentialist point of view. It first considers whether supererogation may sometimes take precedence over positive and negative duties and how this relates to personal costs (including efforts) required to perform one’s duty. It then considers how acquiescence to having large costs imposed on one (even permissibly) can be supererogatory. Finally, it considers how what are usually duties can become supererogatory and how what is (...) usually supererogatory can become a duty. The relation between these topics and the trolley problem, the so-called ‘all or nothing problem,’ and the issue of abortion are examined. (shrink)

This response to a commentary on “Allocation of scarce resources, disability, and parity” considers whether a difference that would be morally relevant when choosing which of two people to save retains its relevance if this would affect other people’s chances of being saved.

The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Principle of Do No Harm raise important theoretical and practical issues, some of which are discussed by Boyle, Donagan, and Quinn. I argue that neither principle is correct, and some revisionist, and probably nonabsolutist, analysis of constraints on action and omission is necessary. In making these points, I examine several approaches to deflection of threat cases, discuss an argument for the permissibility of voluntary euthanasia, and present arguments relevant to medical contexts which justify (...) intentionally hanning some to aid others, with and without the consent of those harmed. Keywords: consent, double effect, euthanasia, harming, organ transplantation, scarce resources, trolley problem CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The Moral Target: Aiming at Right Conduct in War and Other Conflicts comprises essays that discuss aspects of war and other conflicts in the light of nonconsequentialist ethical theory. Topics include the relation between conditions that justify starting war and those that justify stopping it, the treatment of combatants and noncombatants in war, collaboration, justice after war and other conflicts, terrorism, resistance to communal injustice, and nuclear deterrence.

Book reviewed in this article: Morality, Mortality: Death and Whom to Save from It. By Frances Kamm.

This article begins by comparing terror and death and then focuses on whether killing combatants and noncombatants as a mere means to create terror, that is in turn a means to winning a war, is ever permissible. The role of intentions and alternative acts one might have done is examined in this regard. The second part of the article begins by criticizing a standard justification for causing collateral (side effect) deaths in war and offers an alternative justification that makes use (...) of the idea of group liability. (shrink)

In this essay, I shall discuss ethical issues that arise with our increasing ability to affect the genetic makeup of the human population. These effects can be produced directly by altering the genotype , or indirectly by aborting, not conceiving, or treating individuals because of their genetic makeup in ways made possible by genetic pharmacology. I shall refer to all of these sorts of procedures collectively as the Procedures. Some of the ethical issues the Procedures raise are old, arising quite (...) generally when we can affect the well-being of people, even in the absence of the ability to affect them in the ways just described. My examination of these issues is prompted by the recent at-length discussion of them, From Chance to Choice , by Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler. (shrink)

In this volume, F.M. Kamm explores how theories as well as hypothetical and practical cases help us understand rights and their limits. The book begins by considering moral status and its relation to having rights (including whether non-human animals have rights and what rights future persons have). The author then considers whether rights are grounded in duties to oneself, which duties are correlative to rights, and whether neuroscientific and psychological studies can help determine what rights we have. Kamm next investigates (...) the contours of the right not to be harmed by considering critiques of deontological distinctions, the costs that must be undertaken to avoid harming, and a proposal for permissibly harming someone (that allows for resisting the harm) in the Trolley Problem. Additional chapters cover possible implications of the Trolley Problem for such practical issues as correctly programming self-driving cars, providing medical treatments, and enacting redistributive economic policy. Kamm concludes the book by comparing the use of case-based judgments about extreme cases in moral versus aesthetic theory, and by exploring the significance of the right not to be harmed for morally correct policies in the extreme cases of torture and a pandemic. Where pertinent, Kamm considers the views of Derek Parfit, Tom Regan, Christine Korsgaard, Shelly Kagan, Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen, Allan Gibbard, Joshua Greene, Arthur Danto, and Judith Thomson, among others."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

In this article, I first compare positions I have taken in the past and those taken by Peter Singer on how the allocation of life-saving resources should be affected by the aggregation of expected quality of life, quantity of life, and need, both within the life of a person and across persons . I then reexamine the specific issue of whether and why differences in expected years of life and quality of life that a scarce resource can provide a disabled (...) and a nondisabled person should affect our allocation decisions. I attend to how the use of the veil of ignorance bears on this issue and also how the conclusions I reach differ in certain ways from my past positions. (shrink)

In this article, I shall present three arguments for thc pcrmissibility 0f physician-assisted suicide (PAS), and then examine several objections 0f 21 "K21nti2m" and non-Kantian nature against them. These are really 0bjcctions against certain types of suicide. I shall focus 0n active PAS (eg., when 21 patient takes 21 lethal drug given by E1 physician, in which case both thc physician and patient are active). I shall assume the patient is 21 competent, responsible, rational agent, who gives his being in (...) physical discomfort (pain, nausea, ctc.) as thc reason for intending his death. I am assuming, therefore, thc pain while 21 sourcc of suffering docs not undermine his rational agency in 21 way that threatens responsibility for choice.] Current legal proposals for permitting PAS focus 0n procedures.. (shrink)

Philosophers may play the role of insider, e.g., serving as advisor to government commissions, or of outsider, commenting on the work of such commissions. Each role may raise dilemmas. It is argued that as insider the philosopher's primary duties should be to clarify and inform, as well as philosophize with the commissioners, and help them stay on a course in which moral considerations are given their proper weight. Fulfilling these duties means that the philosopher will sometimes have to help produce (...) a weaker intellectual document than he would prefer, or lose a chance to directly promote the public good. The insider philosopher will also have to consider whether it is appropriate for a policy proposal from a commission to differ from much current government policy, and how morally appropriate compromise can be reached among commissioners. Given his understanding of how an insider philosopher should function and how commission reports are constructed, the outsider philosopher can comment both on how close a report comes to being perfect of its type, and how far short of an ideal philosophical analysis even a perfect government report is. It may be appropriate for him to give greater weight to the public good, if his comments are very likely to affect it, than the insider philosopher. Examples for discussion are drawn from government reports on organ transplantation, embryo research, terminating care, and compensation for research subjects. Keywords: embryo research, government commissions, moral conflict, moral compromise, organ transplants, philosophers and public policy CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In the first part of this article, I argue that even those entities that in their own right and for their own sake give us reason not to destroy them and to help them are sometimes substitutable for the good of other entities. In so arguing, I consider the idea of being valuable as an end in virtue of intrinsic and extrinsic properties. I also conclude that entities that have claims to things and against others are especially nonsubstitutable. In the (...) second part, I argue that cloning poses no threat to the nonsubstitutability of these entities (and in this sense, to the dignity of persons). I also consider the relation between cloning and (what I called) holistic identity, and between the latter and genetic identity. In the concluding part of the article, I try to distinguish cases where identity over time and so-called person-affecting acts have and do not have greater moral significance than nonidentity over time and nonperson-affecting acts. I try to apply my results to cases involving embryos, future generations, and to the so-called Non-Identity Problem. (shrink)