We all have beliefs, even strong convictions, about what is just and fair in our social arrangements. How should these beliefs and the theories of justice that incorporate them guide our thinking about practical matters of justice? This wide-ranging collection of essays by one of the foremost medical ethicists in the USA explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence between our moral and non-moral beliefs. Amongst the practical issues addressed in (...) the volume are the design of health-care institutions, the distribution of goods between the old and the young, and fairness in hiring and firing. In combining ethical theory and practical ethics this volume will prove especially valuable to philosophers concerned with ethics and applied ethics, political theorists, bioethicists, and others involved in the study of public policy. (shrink)

The treatment-enhancement distinction draws a line between services or interventions meant to prevent or cure conditions that we view as diseases or disabilities and interventions that improve a condition that we view as a normal function or feature of members of our species. The line drawn here is widely appealed to in medical practice and medical insurance contexts, as well as in our everyday thinking about the medical services we do and should assist people in obtaining.

Ackn o wledgments I owe special gratitude to Professors Hugo Adam Bedau and John Rawls for many helpful discussions of the general idea and scope, ...

The Concept of Physical Law is an original and creative defense of the Regularity theory of physical law, the concept that physical laws are nothing more than descriptions of whatever universal truths happen to be instanced in nature. Professor Swartz clearly identifies and analyzes the arguments and intuitions of the opposing Necessitarian theory, and argues that the standard objection to the Regularity theory turns on a mistaken view of what Regularists mean by 'physical impossibility'; that it is impossible to construct (...) an empirical test that can distinguish between events Necessitarians call 'mere accidents' and those they call 'nornologically necessary', and that the Necessitarian theory cannot account fot human beings' free wills. Other topics in this important work include: the distinction between instrumental scientific laws and true physical laws; the distinction between failure and doom; potentialities; miracles and marvels; predictability and uniformity; statistical and numerical laws; and necessity-in-praxis. (shrink)

Introduction This book aims at continuing a conversation. It takes for interlocutor a writer who is himself today indefatigable in engaging with the ideas ...

In “Sweatshops and Respect for Persons” we argued on Kantian grounds that managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) have the following duties: to adhere to local labor laws, to refrain from coercion, to meet minimum health and safety standards, and to pay workers a living wage. In their commentary on our paper Sollars and Englander challenge some of our conclusions. We argue here that several of their criticisms are based on an inaccurate reading of our paper, and that none of the (...) remaining criticisms successfully challenge our main arguments. By highlighting the shortcomings of their arguments we hope to advance discussion of the ethical treatment of workers in global supply chains. (shrink)

An attempt is made to answer the question why wittgenstein might have found the analogy between speaking and playing games philosophically exciting. It is argued that on the face of it the two are strikingly disanalogous, But that on reflecting further one can find various features of games (9 are distinguished in all) which are also features of some speech episodes, And the awareness of which could be philosophically significant.

My station and its duties : the function of being a manager -- Stockholder management or stakeholder management -- The ethical treatment of employees -- The ethical treatment of customers -- Supply chain management and other issues -- Corporate social responsibility -- Moral imagination, stakeholder theory and systems thinking : one approach to management decision-making -- Leadership.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls defines a hypothetical contract situation and argues rational people will agree on reflection it is fair to contractors. He solves the rational choice problem it poses by deriving two lexically-ordered principles of justice and suggests the derivation justifies the principles. Its soundness aside, just what justificatory force does such a derivation have?On one view, there is no justificatory force because the contract is rigged specifically to yield principles which match our pre-contract moral judgments. (...) Rawls provides ammunition for this claim: “By going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances, at others withdrawing our judgments [about what is just] and conforming them to principle, I assume that eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted.”. (shrink)

Many societies, and nearly all wealthy, developed countries, provide universal access to a broad range of public health and personal medical services. Is such access to health care a requirement of social justice, or is it simply a matter of social policy that some countries adopt and others do not? If it is a requirement of social justice, we should be clear about what kinds of care we owe people and how we determine what care is owed if we cannot (...) possibly meet every health need, as arguably no society can. We should be clear about what constitutes appropriate access to that care, given that there are diverse barriers to access. We must also be able to say why we owe these things as a matter of justice, and, of course, different accounts of social justice will bake and serve this cake in different ways. (shrink)

How can health plans make fair determinations about when “experimental” (and costly) treatments such as high dose chemotherapy with autologous bone marrow transplantation should be covered despite lack of clear clinical consensus about their benefits? Different models for managing “last chance” therapies evolving in some health plans offer promising examples of how issues of fairness and legitimacy in decisionmaking can be addressed.

There is a hoary tradition in moral philosophy that assumes we cannot determine which moral theory is acceptable or correct unless we have available a correct theory of human nature, or, in its more modern form, of the person. With such a theory of the person, however, we could at least narrow down the choice among competing ethical theories. A more recent tradition, at least in one of its standard interpretations, agrees it would be necessary to have a correct theory (...) of the person before we could determine an acceptable moral theory, but it denies there is a determinate nature of the person to be captured in such a theory. The plasticity of the person, according to this strand of Marxist theory, rules out the possibility of there being universal moral theory at all. In this paper, I would like to explore a view that treads an intermediate path. It agrees with the Marxist denial that there is a determinate nature of the person, a deep fact of the matter, that can be abstracted from the social matrix and made the subject of a theory of the person. And, it agrees with both traditions that moral theory depends on and embodies a theory of the person. But, by making the problem of arriving at an acceptable view of the person itself something that depends on overall theoretical considerations, including moral ones, the intermediary, view may be able to avoid the type of moral relativism associated with the Marxist view. (shrink)

I was seven or eight years old. In Hebrew school we had just learned the Aleph-Bet and were, haltingly, beginning to sound out words. As we spoke the ancient text, our teacher translated: "... And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. ..."[note 2] Here was magic; here was the supernatural; here was the creation of the universe. I resonated to the story. I was filled with wonder, far more than had ever been elicited by any fairy (...) tale my parents had read to me. I pictured in my imagination the majesty of it: God speaks and Nature obeys. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [271]-285) and index.

This chapter argues that just‐cause theories of secession are superior to nationalist and choice rivals because only it represents a reasonable institutional response to secessionist politics. It also examines the possibilities for a secession clause within domestic constitutions.

I analyze the hierarchy of large cardinals between a supercompact cardinal and an almost-huge cardinal. Many of these cardinals are defined by modifying the definition of a high-jump cardinal. A high-jump cardinal is defined as the critical point of an elementary embedding j:V→M\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${j: V \to M}$$\end{document} such that M is closed under sequences of length sup{j|f:κ→κ}\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\sup\{{j\,|\,f: \kappa \to \kappa}\}}$$\end{document}. Some of the other (...) cardinals analyzed include the super-high-jump cardinals, almost-high-jump cardinals, Shelah-for-supercompactness cardinals, Woodin-for-supercompactness cardinals, Vopěnka cardinals, hypercompact cardinals, and enhanced supercompact cardinals. I organize these cardinals in terms of consistency strength and implicational strength. I also analyze the superstrong cardinals, which are weaker than supercompact cardinals but are related to high-jump cardinals. Among the results, I highlight the following. Vopěnka cardinals are the same as Woodin-for-supercompactness cardinals.There are no excessively hypercompact cardinals.Furthermore, I prove some results relating high-jump cardinals to forcing, as well as analyzing Laver functions for super-high-jump cardinals. (shrink)

Arnauld's criticisms as "a model of confusion confounded.” In a review of Wilson's book, R. McRae refers to "the difficult and not too coherent subject of material falsity. '' J. Cottingham describes the Descartes-Arnauld debate on the material falsity of adventitious ideas as "an involved and rather inconclusive exchange " and claims that the example of the material falsity of such ideas espoused by Descartes in Meditation III is "needlessly complicated. " A. Kenny, in turn, notes that several things are (...) "confusing in Descartes' account of false ideas. " Later reference is made to the fact that "Descartes appears confused. [...] and that "Descartes, it seems, cannot give a consistent answer. '' As will become clear, I take issue with each of these assessments. When Descartes' position on material falsity is understood in the light of late Scholastic sources, especially Suarez, whence it draws its strength and inspiration, the alleged confusion and incoherency vanishes. .. (shrink)

The anecdote of Zhuangzi and Hui Shi's brief discussion on a bridge above the Hao river gives us a nice piece of reasoning in ancient Chinese texts that may serve as a platform for a productive philosophical exchange between the East and the West. The present study examines Hansen's inferential analysis of Zhuangzi and Hui Shi's discussion in this spirit. It is argued that Hansen's analysis founders. To do justice to both Hui Shi and Zhuangzi, the present study proposes that (...) we apply the logic developed in the later Mohist text, the Lesser Pick, to an analysis of their discussion. The re-analysis shows that the intricate dialectic of the reasoning in which Zhuangzi and Hui Shi engage, neatly accords with the pattern of discourse expounded in the Lesser Pick, and gives us global insight into Zhuangzi's final statement in the anecdote, which is notoriously recondite, or confusing. (shrink)

The paper challenges a minimalist strategy in business ethics that maintains if it's legal, it's moral. In hard cases, judges decide legal issues by appealing to moral ideals. Investigation shows that the bedrock concept is fairness. Often judges define fairness in terms of non-coerciveness or equality of bargaining power. The prudent manager must look beyond the legal department to the ethical notion of fairness. Moreover, if the courts were to consistently appeal to non-coerciveness and equality of bargaining power, some practices (...) now considered morally acceptable would be neither moral nor legal. (shrink)