Emissions arising from the production and consumption of food are acknowledged as a major contributor to climate change. From a consumer’s perspective, however, the sustainability of food may have many meanings: it may result from eating less meat, becoming vegetarian, or choosing to buy local or organic food. To explore what food sustainability means to consumers, and what factors lead to changes in food practice, we adopt a sociotechnical approach to compare the food consumption practices in North West England with (...) two differing consumer groups. The first, supermarket shoppers ‘embedded’ in the mainstream food regime; and the second, who self-identify as sustainable food practitioners, and who perform a range of sustainable food consumption practices. We examine how our two groups experience changes in food practices and identify ‘fractures’ stemming from lifecourse and public events that emerge as points where change might occur. We suggest that ‘sharing spaces’ would be one possibility for prompting and nurturing fractures that can lead to greater sustainability in food practices. (shrink)

ObjectivePatient involvement is used to describe the inclusion of patients as active participants in healthcare decision-making and research. This study aimed to investigate incoming year 1 medical (MBChB) students’ attitudes and opinions regarding patient involvement in this context.MethodsWe established a staff–student partnership to formulate the design of an online research survey, which included Likert scale questions and three short vignette scenarios designed to probe student attitudes towards patient involvement linked to existing legal precedent. Incoming year 1 medical students (n=333) were (...) invited to participate in the survey before formal teaching commenced.ResultsSurvey data (49 participants) indicate that students were broadly familiar with, and supportive of, patient involvement in medical treatment. There was least support for patient involvement in conducting (23.9%), contributing to (37.0%) or communicating research (32.6%), whereas there was unanimous support for patients choosing treatment from a selection of options (100%).ConclusionIncoming members of the medical profession demonstrate awareness of the need to actively involve patients in healthcare decision-making but are unfamiliar with the utility and value of such involvement in research. Further empirical studies are required to examine attitudes to patient involvement in healthcare. (shrink)

Kant's ethics, like others, has unavoidable anthropocentric starting points: only humans, or other 'rational natures', can hold obligations. Seemingly this should not make speciesist conclusions unavoidable: might not rational natures have obligations to the non-rational? However, Kant's argument for the unconditional value of rational natures cannot readily be extended to show that all non-human animals have unconditional value, or rights. Nevertheless Kant's speciesism is not thoroughgoing. He does not view non-rational animals as mere items for use. He allows for indirect (...) duties 'with regard to' them which afford welfare but not rights, and can allow for indirect duties 'with regard to' abstract and dispersed aspects of nature, such as biodiversity, species and habitats. (shrink)

Knowledge aims to fit the world, and action to change it. In this collection of essays, Onora O'Neill explores the relationship between these concepts and shows that principles are not enough for ethical thought or action: we also need to understand how practical judgement identifies ways of enacting them and of changing the way things are. Both ethical and technical judgement are supported, she contends, by bringing to bear multiple considerations, ranging from ethical principles to real-world constraints, and while we (...) will never find practical algorithms - let alone ethical algorithms - that resolve moral and political issues, good practical judgement can bring abstract principles to bear in situations that call for action. Her essays thus challenge claims that all inquiry must use either the empirical methods of scientific inquiry or the interpretive methods of the humanities. They will appeal to a range of readers in moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

Towards Justice and Virtue challenges the rivalry between those who advocate only abstract, universal principles of justice and those who commend only the particularities of virtuous lives. Onora O'Neill traces this impasse to defects in underlying conceptions of reasoning about action. She proposes and vindicates a modest account of ethical reasoning and a reasoned way of answering the question 'who counts?', then uses these to construct linked accounts of principles by which we can move towards just institutions and virtuous lives.

Why has autonomy been a leading idea in philosophical writing on bioethics, and why has trust been marginal? In this important book, Onora O'Neill suggests that the conceptions of individual autonomy so widely relied on in bioethics are philosophically and ethically inadequate, and that they undermine rather than support relations of trust. She shows how Kant's non-individualistic view of autonomy provides a stronger basis for an approach to medicine, science and biotechnology, and does not marginalize untrustworthiness, while also explaining why (...) trustworthy individuals and institutions are often undeservingly mistrusted. Her arguments are illustrated with issues raised by practices such as the use of genetic information by the police or insurers, research using human tissues, uses of new reproductive technologies, and media practices for reporting on medicine, science and technology. Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics will appeal to a wide range of readers in ethics, bioethics and related disciplines. (shrink)

In this collection of essays Onora O'Neill explores and argues for an account of justice that is fundamentally cosmopolitan rather than civic, yet takes serious account of institutions and boundaries, and of human diversity and vulnerability. Starting from conceptions that are central to any account of justice - those of reason, action, judgement, coercion, obligations and rights - she discusses whether and how culturally or politically specific concepts and views, which limit the claims and scope of justice, can be avoided. (...) She then examines the demands and scope of just institutions, arguing that there are good reasons for taking the claims of distant strangers seriously, but that doing so points not to a world without boundaries but to one of porous boundaries and dispersed power. Bounds of Justice will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

We say we can no longer trust our public services, institutions or the people who run them. The professionals we have to rely on - politicians, doctors, scientists, businessmen and many others - are treated with suspicion. Their word is doubted, their motives questioned. Whether real or perceived, this crisis of trust has a debilitating impact on society and democracy. Can trust be restored by making people and institutions more accountable? Or do complex systems of accountability and control themselves damage (...) trust? Onora O'Neill challenges current approaches, investigates sources of deception in our society and re-examines questions of press freedom. 2002's Reith Lectures present a philosopher's view of trust and deception, and ask whether and how trust can be restored in a modern democracy. (shrink)

In this commentary, John O'Neill concentrates upon three themes in the goal Merleau-Ponty set for himself, namely "to restore to things their concrete physiognomy, to organisms their individual ways of dealing with the world, and to subjectivity its inherence in history." O'Neill considers the three objectives in their original order: first, the study of animal and human psychology; then, the phenomenology of perception; and finally, certain extensions of these perspectives in the historical and social sciences.

This collection of essays on communicative theory and praxis from the eminent Merleau-Ponty scholar and translator John O'Neill explores the thesis that the human body is the exemplary ground of all other communicative processes.

Cameras, microphones, and other sensors continue to proliferate in the world around us. I offer a new metaphor for conceptualizing these technologies: they are _digital wormholes_, transmitting representations of human persons between disparate points in space–time. We frequently cannot tell when they are operational, what kinds of data they are collecting, where the data may reappear in the future, and how the data can be used against us. The wormhole metaphor makes the mysteriousness of digital sensors salient: digital sensors have (...) brought us to a strange place. If humans are to be capable of making sensible decisions while under observation by digital sensors, we must improve the epistemic position of potential sensor subjects. (shrink)

The fast pace of technological change necessitates new evaluative and deliberative tools. This article develops a general, functional approach to evaluating technological change, inspired by Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity. Nissenbaum introduced the concept of contextual integrity to help analyze how technological changes can produce privacy problems. Reinterpreted, the concept of contextual integrity can aid our thinking about how technological changes affect the full range of human concerns and values—not only privacy. I propose a generalized concept of contextual integrity that (...) is applicable to a broader variety of circumstances, and I outline a new, general procedure for technological evaluation. Among the attractive features of the proposed approach to evaluating technological change are its context-sensitivity, adaptability, and principled presumptive conservatism, enabled by the mechanism the approach supplies for reevaluating existing practices, norms, and values. (shrink)

This collection of essays brings together the central lines of thought in Onora O'Neill's work on Kant's philosophy, developed over many years. Challenging the claim that Kant's attempt to provide a critique of reason fails because it collapses into a dogmatic argument from authority, O'Neill shows why Kant held that we must construct, rather than assume, the authority of reason, and how this can be done by ensuring that anything we offer as reasons can be followed by others, including others (...) with whom we disagree. She argues that this constructivist view of reasoning is the clue to Kant's claims about knowledge, ethics and politics, as well as to his distinctive accounts of autonomy, the social contract, cosmopolitan justice and scriptural interpretation. Her essays are a distinctive and illuminating commentary on Kant's fundamental philosophical strategy and its implications, and will be a vital resource for scholars of Kant, ethics and philosophy of law. (shrink)

'Two things', wrote Kant, 'fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within'. Many would argue that since Kant's day, the study of the starry heavens has advanced while ethics has stagnated, and in particular that Kant's ethics offers an empty formalism that tells us nothing about how we should live. In Acting on Principle Onora O'Neill shows that Kantian ethics has practical as well as philosophical importance. First published (...) in 1975, the book is regarded as a classic account and defence of the Kantian ethical position. It addresses Kant's account of reasoning about action, in particular his controversial claim that the Categorical Imperative guides action and is basic to ethics and justice. This second edition offers a substantial new introduction and updated bibliography, and will be valuable for a wide readership in Kant studies and those studying ethics. (shrink)

For the Enlightenment, science represented an ideal of rational argument, behaviour and community against which could be judged the arbitrary power and authority of other spheres of human practice. This Enlightenment ideal runs through much liberal and socialist theory. However, the Enlightenment picture of science has appeared to many to be increasingly uncompelling. What explains the apparent decline of the Enlightenment vision? This book explores one neglected answer originally proposed by Husserl, that its decline is rooted in formalism, in the (...) view that all there is to theoretical science is the construction and mastery of formal systems. O'Neill demonstrates formalist accounts of mathematics and natural science to be inadequate, and then considers and rejects Husserl's views on the origin of the formalization of the sciences. The book concludes by arguing that the rise of a formalist view of the sciences is founded in the professionalization of modern science, and discusses the significance of this professionalization for the fate of the Enlightenment view of science. Worlds Without Content: Against Formalism tackles an important set of issues which have been neglected in recent philosophy of science, and in so doing highlights themes in Husserl's later works which have been ignored by most commentators. It will be of particular interest for philosophers of mathematics, science and social theory, and for historians of mathematics and philosophy. (shrink)

The examples of which he complained were trivial in either or both of two ways. Some were examples of the minor perplexities of life, such as returning library books or annoying the neighbours with one's music; some were examples described only in outline rather than in depth; and some examples were both minor and schematic.

This review essay looks at two important recent books on the empirical social science of inequality, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's The Spirit Level and John Hills et al .'s Towards a More Equal Society? , situating these books against the important work of Michael Marmot on epidemiology and health inequalities. I argue that political philosophy can gain a great deal from careful engagement with empirical research on the nature and consequences of inequality, especially in regard to empirical work on (...) the relationship between socioeconomic inequality, status, self-respect, domination, autonomy, the quality of social relations, and societal health outcomes. The essay also raises some methodological questions about the approach taken by Wilkinson and Pickett, as well as questioning the ways in which their argument is (or is not) best understood as being fundamentally egalitarian in character. It concludes with some reflections, prompted by Hills et al ., on the lessons that should be learned by egalitarians from the experience of the Blair and Brown governments in the UK. (shrink)

William L. O'Neill's lively history of American women's struggle for equality is written with style and a keen sense for the variety of possible interpretations of 150 years of the feminist movement, from its earliest stirring in the 1830's to the latest developments in the 1980s. O'Neill's most controversial thesis is that the feminist movements of the past have largely failed, and for reasons that remains of deep concern; the movements have never come to grips with the fact that marriage (...) and the family are the chief obstacles to women's emancipation. O'Neill also holds that the sexual revolution of the 1920s, far from liberating women, actually undermined their role in American life. O'Neill treats seriously the ideas of the great feminist leaders and their organizations. His was the first book to deal directly with the failure of feminism as a social force in American society; to tie together the scattered people and events in the history of American women; and to examine seriously feminist experience in the twentieth century. Since the women's agenda is hardly complete, the women's movement remains active, often militantly so. In this new revised edition, O'Neill interprets and illumines not only the history of feminism, but aspects of feminism that still trouble us today. O'Neill's book was widely heralded upon its initial publication. Elizabeth Janeway, writing for Saturday Review, calls it "a truly intelligent discussion...an extraordinary perceptive analysis." Carl Degler, in the Magazine of History calls A History of American Feminism "the most challenging and exciting book on the subject of women to appear in years." And Lionel Tiger, writing for the NewRepublic, says that "O'Neill has turned his mastery of a wide range of historical sources into a lively, engaging, and almost faultlessly sensible book.". (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of recent political and economic theory is that, in spite of a period of extended economic difficulty, there has been a growing consensus concerning the virtues of the market economy. In particular, there has been a trend in socialist theory to argue that not only are socialism and the market not incompatible, but that some version of market socialism is the only feasible, practicable, and ethically and politically desirable form of socialism. Notable proponents of this view (...) with whom this paper will be particularly concerned are Selucky, Nove and Hodgson. I will not, in this paper, address the question of whether the market and socialism are necessarily incompatible. Neither will I examine the whole gamut of political and ethical issues surrounding the relation of the market to democracy, freedom, individual rights, and so on – not because they are unimportant, but because they require more extended attention than I could give here. My concern will rather be with some of the economic arguments to which defenders of market socialism have appealed. (shrink)

Trust is valuable when placed in trustworthy agents and activities, but damaging or costly when placed in untrustworthy agents and activities. So it is puzzling that much contemporary work on trust – such as that based on polling evidence – studies generic attitudes of trust in types of agent, institution or activity in complete abstraction from any account of trustworthiness. Information about others’ generic attitudes of trust or mistrust that take no account of evidence whether those attitudes are well or (...) ill placed can offer little or no help for those who aim to place or refuse trust well. Information about attitudes is evidently useful to those who aim to influence those who hold them, which explains why polls about attitudes are popular with political parties, advertisers and other campaigning organisations. But where we aim not to influence others, but to place and refuse trust intelligently we must link trust to trustworthiness, and must focus on evidence of honesty, competence and r... (shrink)

Maclntyre's refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics aims to restore both intelligibility and rationality to moral discourse. In After Virtue he concentrates on showing how intelligible action requires that lives be led within institutional and cultural traditions. But he does not offer a developed account of practical reason which could provide grounds for seeking some rather than other intelligible continuations of lives and traditions. Despite Maclntyre's criticisms of Kant's ethics, a Kantian account of practical reasoning may complement his account of intelligibility. An (...) appropriate interpretation of Kantian ethics is outlined, which escapes Maclntyre's criticisms, allows both for the universal character of basic moral principles and for the historical variability of intelligible action, and which makes moral worth or virtue the centre of the moral life. The refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics may be achieved by a Kantian completion. (shrink)

Who ought to do what, and for whom, if global justice is to progress? In this collection of essays on justice beyond borders, Onora O'Neill criticises theoretical approaches that concentrate on rights, yet ignore both the obligations that must be met to realise those rights, and the capacities needed by those who shoulder these obligations. She notes that states are profoundly anti-cosmopolitan institutions, and that even those committed to justice and universal rights often lack the competence and the will to (...) secure them, let alone to secure them beyond their borders. She argues for a wider conception of global justice, in which obligations may be held either by states or by competent non-state actors, and in which borders themselves must meet standards of justice. This rich and wide-ranging collection will appeal to a broad array of academic researchers and advanced students of political philosophy, political theory, international relations and philosophy of law. (shrink)

Revealing flaws in both 'green' and market-based approaches to environmental policy, O'Neill develops an Aristotolian account of well-being. He examines the implications for wider issues involving markets, civil society an.

There have been calls for mandatory vaccination legislation to be introduced into the UK in order to tackle the national and international rise of vaccine-preventable disease. While some countries have had some success associated with mandatory vaccination programmes, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health insist this is not a suitable option for the UK, a country which has seen historical opposition to vaccine mandates. There is a lack of comprehensive data to demonstrate a direct link between mandatory vaccination (...) legislation and increased uptake. While there are examples whereby there has been an improvement, some studies suggest that comparable results can be obtained by strongly recommending vaccinations instead. The RCPCH insist that healthcare workers are ideally placed to engage and inform parents to make every interaction a ‘vaccine opportunity’. This paper calls for a principled, rational approach to interpretations of autonomy which underpin parental informed consent. MacLean’s concept of mutual persuasion could be a vehicle to ensuring parents are suitably informed of both the material risks associated with vaccine choices and to consider the rationality of their decisions, while ultimately upholding parental autonomy. It is argued that this, alongside infrastructural improvement, could create a more sustainable, long-term improvement in childhood vaccination rates in the UK than mandatory vaccination. (shrink)

Communication is complicated, and so is the ethics of communication. We communicate about innumerable topics, to varied audiences, using a gamut of technologies. The ethics of communication, therefore, has to address a wide range of technical, ethical and epistemic requirements. In this book, Onora O'Neill shows how digital technologies have made communication more demanding: they can support communication with huge numbers of distant and dispersed recipients; they can amplify or suppress selected content; and they can target or ignore selected audiences. (...) Often this is done anonymously, making it harder for readers and listeners, viewers and browsers, to assess which claims are true or false, reliable or misleading, flaky or fake. So how can we empower users to assess and evaluate digital communication, so that they can tell which standards it meets and which it flouts? That is the challenge which this book explores. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

In this reply to van de Poel’s (Philosophy & Technology, 35(3), 82, 2022) commentary on O’Neill (Philosophy & Technology, 35(79), 2022), I discuss two worries about the general contextual integrity approach to evaluating technological change. First, I address van de Poel’s concern that the general contextual integrity approach will not supply the right guidance in cases where morally problematic technological change poses no threat to contextual integrity. Second, I elaborate on how the approach supplies mechanisms for balancing caution with (...) the need for change. (shrink)

The traditional image of northern Iberian mountain settlements is that they are largely egalitarian, homogeneous, and survivals of archaic forms of 'agrarian collectivism'. In this book, based both on extensive fieldwork and detailed study of local records, Brian Juan O'Neill offers a different perspective, questioning prevailing views on both empirical as well as theoretical and methodological grounds. Through a detailed examination of three major areas of social life - land tenure, cooperative labour exchanges, and marriage and inheritance practices - in (...) one particular hamlet, the author demonstrates the predominance of forms of institutionalized economic inequality and social differentiation within the peasantry. Situating the local study within a wider European and Mediterranean ethnographic and geographical framework, O'Neill offers a refreshing and challenging way of combining the research methods of anthropology with those of social and economic history. His book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, sociologists, geographers and demographers interested in the present and past social structure of European village communities, as well as to those concerned with the growing links between anthropology and history. (shrink)

There is a special problem with respect to our obligations to future generations which is that we can benefit or harm them but that they cannot benefit or harm us. Goodin summarizes the point well:No analysis of intergenerational justice that is cast even vaguely in terms of reciprocity can hope to succeed. The reason is the one which Addison… puts into the mouth of an Old Fellow of College, who when he was pressed by the Society to come into something (...) that might rebound to the good of their Successors, grew very peevish. ‘We are always doing’ says he, ‘something for Posterity, but I would fain see Posterity do something for us’. (shrink)

Over the course of the past twenty-five years, feminist theory has had a forceful impact upon the history of Western philosophy. The present collection of essays has as its primary aim to evaluate past women’s published philosophical work, and to introduce readers to newly recovered female figures; the collection will also make contributions to the history of the philosophy of gender, and to the history of feminist social and political philosophy, insofar as the collection will discuss women’s views on these (...) issues. The volume contains contributions by an international group of leading historians of philosophy and political thought, whose scholarship represents some of the very best work being done in North and Central America, Canada, Europe and Australia. (shrink)

Logical positivism is widely associated with an illiberal technocratic view of politics. This view is a caricature. Some members of the left Vienna circle were explicit in their criticism of this conception of politics. In particular, Neurath's work attempted to link the internal epistemological pluralism and tolerance of logical empiricism with political pluralism and the rejection of a technocratic politics. This paper examines the role that unified science played in Neurath's defence of political and social pluralism. Neurath's project of unified (...) science addressed problems that lie at the centre of recent debates around liberalism concerning the possibility of social co-operation in conditions of pluralism. His response is distinctive in calling upon an empiricist tradition that differs from Kantian proceduralist approaches that have predominated in recent liberalism. While Neurath's position has problems, it deserves reconsideration, especially in so far as it questions the Kantian assumption that a thin language of abstract rights provides the best basis for the cosmopolital lingua franca required by conditions of social pluralism. An investigation of the role that unified science plays in Neurath's politics also gives reasons for revising common misconceptions about the nature of the unity of science programme itself. (shrink)