One of the distinctive ideas of contemporary liberal political philosophy is that the separateness of persons is somehow normatively momentous. A proper respect for separateness is supposed to lead us not only to reject aggregative theories such as utilitarianism, but to embrace some particular positive theory about the sorts of obligations and claims we have amongst each other. Typically, philosophers have focused on the way in which the separateness of persons is important to matters of (...) distribution. Given the intuitively unjust distributions often sanctioned by utilitarianism, such a focus makes sense. Much of the contribution of my dissertation, however, is to argue that separateness is relevant not just as a fact about persons as beneficiaries, but perhaps even more fundamentally, as agents. ;Chapter one explores the connection between respect for the separateness of persons and liberal theory, with reference to the cases of John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Chapter two defends the reasonableness of respect for separateness against the metaphysical critique of Derek Parfit. Chapters three and four spell out the main idea of respect for separateness as agents. Chapter five examines applies this analysis to free markets, and argues that while separateness provides some grounds for criticizing markets, it also provides some interesting, non-efficiency based grounds for praising them. (shrink)

Utilitarians are said to be indifferent between interpersonal and intrapersonal transfers. In doing so, they fail to register the separateness of persons. This ‘separateness of persons’ objection has been traditionally used against utilitarianism, but more recently against prioritarianism. In this paper, I examine how yet another distributive view, namely sufficientarianism, fares in this respect. Sufficientarians famously believe that while inequality as such does not matter, what does matter is that all individuals meet some adequate threshold. It (...) is often taken for granted that sufficientarianism does not violate the separateness of persons. In this paper, I seek to show that that is not the case. The main challenge, however, proves to be formulating an accurate understanding of what the separateness of persons precisely means. I offer several interpretations and argue that sufficientarianism, surprisingly, violates them all. Sufficientarianism, just like utilitarianism does not respect the separateness of persons. (shrink)

It is often said that consequentialism violates the separateness of persons. But what does this mean? Existing interpretations are often unclear, or let consequentialism off easy: because they target amendable parts of the consequentialist framework, they can be sidestepped by more subtle versions of the theory. Consequentialism's opponents, however, might hope for a stronger interpretation––one which suggests that the separateness of persons objection presses a distinct and powerful charge against consequentialist theory. This paper proposes such an (...) interpretation. It starts from the fact that, unlike other moral theories, consequentialism determines how to act by looking at features such as states of affairs or outcomes. Yet, crucially, states of affairs or outcomes often make reference to, or extend across, more than one person. Thus, they implicitly and necessarily group together different individuals. In the proposal of this paper, it is this part of consequentialism which violates the separateness of persons. (shrink)

Different people live different lives. Each life consists of experiences that are not shared with the other lives. These facts are sometimes referred to as the ‘separateness of persons.’ Some writers have appealed to the separateness of persons to support or to criticize moral views. John Rawls thinks that the separateness of persons supports egalitarianism, while Robert Nozick believes that it supports a rights view. I will call the claim that the separateness of (...) persons counts in favor of a particular moral view the ‘positive connection.’ Both these writers think that utilitarianism is objectionable because it ignores the moral importance of the separateness of persons. I will call the claim that the separateness of persons counts against a moral view the ‘negative connection.’In this paper I will discuss several different attempts at explaining the connection between the separateness of persons and specific moral views. I will begin by describing how egalitarianism, unlike utilitarianism, treats individual lives as morally important units. I will discuss the kind of egalitarianism that aims at equality, but the same points could be made about egalitarian views that give priority to helping the worst off or require that everyone should receive at least a specified minimum share of resources or happiness. (shrink)

I argue that the use of the separateness of persons in the debate between the priority view and the competing claims view is deeply flawed. In making the case, I argue for three points. First, that...

Let the fact of the separateness of persons be that we are separate individuals, each with his or her own life to lead. This is to be distinguished from the doctrine of the separateness of persons: the claim that the fact of our separateness is especially deep and important, morally speaking. In this paper, I argue that we ought to reject this doctrine. I focus most of my attention on the suggestion that the separateness (...) of persons best explains the importance we attach to moral rights. After criticizing Nozick's use of the doctrine, I formulate an alternative account of the significance of rights. I then show how proponents of the doctrine of separateness have no principled way of distinguishing between egoism and moral libertarianism. I suggest that rejecting the doctrine of our separateness for the reasons I propose ensures that we need have no fear of having to embrace consequentialism as a result. (shrink)

In morally grounding a public justification requirement, public reason liberals frequently invoke the idea that persons should be construed as “free and equal.” But this tells us little with regard to what it is about us that makes us free or how a claim about our status as persons can ultimately ground a requirement of public justification. In light of this worry, I argue that a public justification requirement can be grounded in a Nozick-inspired argument from the (...) class='Hi'>separateness of persons (one that is consistent with the idea that individuals are free and equal). As I claim, one particular feature of the fact of our separateness – the possession of a basic psychology consisting of beliefs, intentions, sentiments, and a variety of desire-like psychological states – does the most work in grounding both a principle of liberty (PL) and a requirement of public justification (RPJ). Together, PL and RPJ provide the basic framework for a theory of public reason liberalism. (shrink)

The fact that persons are separate in some descriptive sense is relatively uncontroversial. But one of the distinctive ideas of contemporary liberal political philosophy is that the descriptive fact of our separateness is normatively momentous. John Rawls and Robert Nozick both take the separateness of persons to provide a foundation for their rejection of utilitarianism and for their own positive political theories. So why do their respective versions of liberalism look so different? This paper claims that (...) the difference is based in Rawls' and Nozick's differing understandings of the morally significant aspects of personhood, and argues that respect for separateness is a value better suited to defend Nozickian libertarianism than Rawlsian liberalism. (shrink)

Luck egalitarians claim that disadvantage is worse when it emerges from an unchosen risk than when it emerges from a chosen risk. I argue that disadvantage is also worse when it emerges from an unchosen risk that the disadvantaged agent would have declined to take, had he or she been able to do so, than when it emerges from an unchosen risk that the disadvantaged agent would not have declined to take. Such a view is significant because it allows both (...) luck egalitarians and prioritarians to respond to Voorhoeve and Fleurbaey's charge that they fail to accommodate intuitions about the moral relevance of interpersonal boundaries – the so-called separateness of persons objection. I argue that the view is plausible independently of its ability to answer the separateness of persons objection, and is a natural extension of the luck egalitarian concern with the impact of unchosen circumstance. (shrink)

The difference between the unity of the individual and the separateness of persons requires that there be a shift in the moral weight that we accord to changes in utility when we move from making intrapersonal tradeoffs to making interpersonal tradeoffs. We examine which forms of egalitarianism can, and which cannot, account for this shift. We argue that a form of egalitarianism which is concerned only with the extent of outcome inequality cannot account for this shift. We also (...) argue that a view which is concerned with both outcome inequality and with the unfairness of inequality in individuals‘ expected utilities can account for this shift. Finally, we limn an alternative view, on.. (shrink)

The Rawlsian institutional approach holds that distributive principles apply to socioeconomic institutions rather than transactions within the institutional framework. Critics claim that the approach is baseless. I defend Rawls’s institutionalism by showing that it has a rational basis: Rawls “constructs” a theory of justice from considered judgments, especially ideas found in the political culture and historical conditions of democracy, including the fact of reasonable pluralism, which supports his institutionalism. I use Rawls’s “fact-sensitive constructivism” to interpret his claim that “utilitarianism does (...) not take seriously the distinction between persons.” Rawls’s claim refers to his contrast between impartial spectator reasoning for the classical principle of utility and his original position, which aims to motivate the original position’s use of mutually disinterested parties to an agreement as more accurately reflecting democracy’s fact of reasonable pluralism. Rawls then shows that these original position conditions, meant to reflect separate persons in democracy, justify his egalitarian principles over classical utility. I extend his contrast to act-egalitarianism to show that Rawls’s fact-sensitive constructivism supports his institutionalism. I argue that the original position, which reflects separate persons, only justifies the institutional difference principle and that the natural reasoning for act-egalitarianism does not take seriously the separateness of persons. (shrink)

RésuméLes philosophes appartenant à la tradition lockienne considèrent qu'en tant que personnes ou sujets de pensée et d'expérience, nous sommes distincts de nos organismes humains. Cela conduirait, selon des théoriciens qui veulent plutôt nous identifier à ces organismes, à un dédoublement paradoxal des sujets en question. Les objectifs principaux de cet article sont, premièrement, de soutenir à l'encontre de cet argument que la séparabilité des personnes par rapport à leurs organismes peut être comprise d'une manière non paradoxale; et deuxièmement, de (...) souligner qu'il ne faut par inférer de cette séparabilité que nous soyons identiques aux personnes plutôt qu'aux organismes humains. (shrink)

Many critics of utilitarianism claim that we should reject interpersonal aggregation because aggregative principles do not take the separateness of persons seriously. In this article, I will reject this claim. I will first elucidate the theoretical structure of aggregation. I will then consider various interpretations of the notion of the separateness of persons and clarify what exactly those critics are trying to reject by appealing to the notion of the separateness of persons. I will (...) argue that none of these interpretations can serve as the ground for rejecting aggregation. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Les philosophes appartenant à la tradition lockienne considèrent qu’en tant que personnes ou sujets de pensée et d’expérience, nous sommes distincts de nos organismes humains. Cela conduirait, selon des théoriciens qui veulent plutôt nous identifier à ces organismes, à un dédoublement paradoxal des sujets en question. Les objectifs principaux de cet article sont, premièrement, de soutenir à l’encontre de cet argument que la séparabilité des personnes par rapport à leurs organismes peut être comprise d’une manière non paradoxale; et deuxièmement, (...) de souligner qu’il ne faut par inférer de cette séparabilité que nous soyons identiques aux personnes plutôt qu’aux organismes humains. (shrink)

For a prioritarian by contrast to a utilitarian, whether a certain quantity of utility falls within the boundary of one person's life or another's makes the following moral difference: the worse the life of a person who could receive a given benefit, the stronger moral reason we have to confer this benefit on this person. It would seem, therefore, that prioritarianism succeeds, where utilitarianism fails, to ‘take seriously the distinction between persons’. Yet I show that, contrary to these appearances, (...) prioritarianism fails, in ways strikingly parallel to those in which utilitarianism fails, to take this distinction seriously. In so doing, I draw on and develop an earlier critique of prioritarianism by disentangling and pressing two distinct separateness-of-persons objections offered there. One objection is that prioritarianism is insensitive to ‘prudential justifications’. The other is that it is insensitive to the competing claims of different individuals. (shrink)

Most people accept that if they can save someone from death at very little cost to themselves, they must do so; call this the ‘duty of easy rescue.’ At least for many such people, an instance of this duty is to allow their vital organs to be used for transplantation. Accordingly, ‘opt-out’ organ procurement policies, based on a powerfully motivated responsibility to render costless or very low-cost lifesaving aid, would seem presumptively permissible. Counterarguments abound. Here I consider, in particular, objections (...) that assign a moral distinctiveness to the physical boundaries of our bodies and that concern autonomy and trust. These objections are singled out as they seem particularly pertinent to the stress I place on a distinctive benefit of the particular policy I defend. An opt-out system, resting not on the authority of ‘presumed consent’ but on the recognition of a duty to one another, has the prospect of prompting people to understand more richly the ways in which they are both physically embodied and communally embedded. (shrink)

This article considers the question of why labor income may be permissibly redistributed to the poor even though non-essential body parts should generally be protected from redistribution to the infirm – the body-income puzzle. It argues that proposed solutions that affirm self-ownership but reject ownership of labor income are unsuccessful. And proposed solutions that grant individuals entitlements to resources based on the centrality of those resources to the individual’s personal identity are also unsuccessful. Instead, this article defends a solution to (...) the body-income puzzle based on a novel conception of respect for the separateness of persons. This conception holds that the sphere of moral authority protected from interference by respect for the separateness of persons includes both the body and labor income. And the strength of the negative rights constituting this sphere vary based on these rights' importance to the personal identity of the right-holder. It is shown that a commitment to helping the disadvantaged tempered by this conception of respect for the separateness of persons can solve the body-income puzzle. (shrink)

The philosophical dispute about personal identity thrives in part because common sense supports both sides. That is, our commonsense notion of a person is rich enough to accommodate both the animalist view that we are human beings whose lives are bounded by the biological events of birth and death and, also, the Lockean view that our lives as reflective beings could in principle come apart from a given animal life. Consequently, there is no way to arrive at a consistent position (...) about personal identity without revising some aspect of our commonsense thinking about persons. This puts philosophers on a somewhat awkward footing. Other things being equal, they would prefer to provide conclusive arguments in favor of their views, arguments that rule out all of the alternatives as untenable. But this is not feasible in the case of personal identity. Any consistent account of personal identity that anyone wishes to defend must be put forward as a revisionary proposal that selects and develops some aspect of our inconsistent commonsense outlook over others. And anyone can resist the proposal by choosing to select and develop some other strand instead. (shrink)

How can we resist the repugnant conclusion? James Griffin has plausibly suggested that part way through the sequence we may reach a world—let us call it “J”—in which the lives are lexically superior to those that follow. If it would be preferable to live a single life in J than through any number of lives in the next one, then it would be strange to judge K the better world. Instead, we may reasonably “suspend addition” and judge J superior, as (...) if aggregating the lives in the larger world intrapersonally. I argue that the addition of new people with separate preferences renders this inference illicit when comparing J+ and K. When one pairwise comparison suspends addition and the other does not, the result is an intransitive value judgement: J < J+ < K < J, producing the mere addition paradox. (shrink)

One of the currently popular dogmata of anti-consequentialism is that consequentialism doesn't respect, recognize, or in some important way account for what is referred to as the The charge is often made, but rarely explained in any detail, much less argued for. In this paper I explain what I take to be the most plausible interpretation of the separateness of persons charge. I argue that the charge itself can be deconstructed into at least two further objections to consequentialist (...) theories. These objections amount to (i) the rejection of axiological aggregation, and (ii) the rejection of deontic aggregation. Of these two objections, I argue that the first one, though often made, is untenable. I also argue that the second objection, in its various forms, relies on distinctions whose moral significance is vigorously denied by almost all consequentialist theorists. I thus argue that the separateness of persons objection poses no special threat to consequentialism. (shrink)

In many countries and regions across the world, the initial response to the massive health risks posed by COVID-19 has been the institution of lockdown measures. Although they vary from place to place, these measures all involve trade-offs between ethical goods and imperatives, imposing significant restrictions on central human capabilities—including citizens’ ability to work, socialize, exercise democratic rights, and access education—in the name of protecting population health. As such, it seems imperative for philosophers to ask whether lockdown measures are ethical.This (...) is a difficult question. We are deeply uncertain about the possible effects of COVID-19 and of lockdown policies, raising questions about... (shrink)

The concept of first-personness is well defined in grammar, but it has developed two discrepant senses in common usage and in the psychology and philosophy literatures. First-personness is taken to mean phenomenal experience , and also to mean a person's point of view. However, since we can nonconsciously perceive, judge and behave, all from a point of view which we must name ‘our own', these acts can be called first-person acts even though they are nonconscious. Therefore, I propose that the (...) main idea behind first-personness is the point of view; that it is not a unique property of consciousness; and that consciousness will be easier to understand if it is not freighted with extraneous issues. This essay explores the concepts underlying point of view and entity. Entiticity is viewed as a matter of degree and as a matter of convention. It is found most coherent to consider an entity's point of view as the total set of discriminations or interactions made possible by the entity's present state and context. Whether or not an entity is a person or is conscious is irrelevant to its having a point of view referenced to itself. Even inanimate objects can receive input and act only in so far as they are enabled or limited by their points of view. Since humans find it awkward at first to say that non-human or non-biological entities have a first-person point of view, it would be best to drop the reference to person in this context. C.S. Peirce's term ‘firstness', developed in 1891, might do nicely. This analysis of first-personness applies equally to agents as it does to subjects. Once these terms are clarified, it is easier to see how a superordinate entity reconciles conflict when its relatively autonomous subsystems have points of view discrepant from each other or from the whole. This has application in untangling confusions concerning the duality of the cerebral hemispheres and the results of their disconnection in relation to the popular assumption of personal unity. (shrink)

The chief goal of this dissertation is to attain some clarity with respect to the interconnected issues which constitute the problem of personal identity. The logical and linguistic categories developed by Saul Kripke provide the tools through which these issues can be separated and put into perspective. In the first two chapters I examine the modal and other semantic features of rigid singular terms and such rigid predicates as natural kind terms. I defend both the transworld identity of named individuals (...) and the real essence of genuine natural kinds. ;In the third chapter this linguistic framework is used to explicate the distinction between the numerical identity of individuals and the qualitative identity of properties. I suggest that individual identity consists in a principle of uniqueness typically supplied through indexical identification and a principle of individuation through which a given individual can be tracked through qualitative change. Property identity is explicated as a form of qualitative similarity. ;In the final two chapters I consider personal identity as a form of individual identity and personal identity as a form of property identity. I reject the former interpretation on the grounds that 'person' fails to supply a principle of individuation for actual persons. I adopt the latter interpretation and suggest that person designates a necessary dispositional property of actual persons. I consider alternative theories of personal identity from the standpoint of a property identity theory of personal identity and I argue that the property identity theory provides a compelling account of a series of widely discussed problem cases. (shrink)

The development of electronic personal health records by independent vendors and national health systems is understood to empower patients and create a new kind of consumerism in healthcare. With more personal health information at hand, active participation in the management of health and rational purchasing of healthcare services will be possible. Healthcare systems will also be able to contain costs and achieve sustainability. Based on a careful examination of the literature, we argue that many of the declared benefits of this (...) technology are rather unattainable. As the boundaries between the public and private healthcare sectors become blurred and as employers struggle to reduce health insurance expenses, this proclaimed ‘consumer empowerment in healthcare’ is an attempt to introduce a technology and a business model for centralising all relevant PHI to render them economic. We reflect on the consequences for the ‘empowered’ user and we suggest that this new market device has to separate and individually address sufficiently issues of privacy, confidentiality and security before it can claim a place in the digital healthcare ecosystem. (shrink)

This chapter explains that the principle of personal good is a principle of separability in the dimension of people. Together with the coherence of good, it provides a basis for applying the separability theorem across the two dimensions of people and states of nature. This chapter starts by qualifying the principle of personal good in some ways, and explains the defence of the principle. One possible line of defence is metaphysical. It is to argue that suprapersonal entities such as nations (...) are simply aggregates of people, and therefore cannot possess a good of their own apart from the good of the people who make them up. The principle is intended to apply to probability‐relative goodness to the goodness of uncertain prospects. The chapter defends it as applied to outcomes, and then extends the argument to probability‐relative goodness. An argument is certainly needed to justify the principle of personal good for probability‐relative goodness. (shrink)

This study examines how our personal values influence our judgment of the morality of some workplace behaviours. Sixty-nine undergraduates were asked to rank order separately Rokeach''s instrumental and terminal values in terms of their importance as guiding principles in their life. Subjects then read four scenarios, each of which described ethically questionable behaviour of the sort that might be encountered in business. They were then asked to rate whether or not the behaviour of the person described in the scenario was (...) ethical, and whether or not they had any intentions to rectify the situation. People with different value hierarchies perceived the targeted behaviours differently. For example, subjects who valued honesty perceived the behaviour as more immoral than subjects who did not value honesty. While the ranking of the instrumental valuehonesty was the best predictor of people''s judgments about the morality of the behaviour, their ranking of the instrumental valueambition was the best predictor of their behavioural intentions. (shrink)

I argue that the separation of conjoined twins in infancy or early childhood is unethical. Cases may be divided into three types: both twins suffer from lethal abnormalities, only one twin has a lethal abnormality, or neither twin does. In the first kind of case, there is no reason to separate, since both twins will die regardless of treatment. In the third kind of case, I argue that separation at an early age is unethical because the twins are likely to (...) achieve an irreplaceably good quality of life—the goods of conjoinment—that separation takes away. Evaluation of this possibility requires maturation past early childhood. Regarding the second type, I point out that with conceivable but unrecorded exceptions, these cases will consistently involve sacrifice separation. I present an argument that sacrifice separation is unethical, but in some cases a moral dilemma may exist in which separation and refraining from separation are both unethical. Perhaps in such cases a decision can be made on non-moral grounds; however, the possibility of such a decision serves not to mitigate but to underscore the fact that the separation is unethical. My conclusion, which applies to all three types of cases, is that it is unethical to separate conjoined twins before their developing personalities give some reliable indication as to whether they desire separation and whether they will achieve those goods of conjoinment. (shrink)

Argument evaluation, the ability to separate prior belief from evaluation of the quality of an argument, is an essential element of critical thinking. The present study examined the ability of three personality traits (dogmatism, openness to experience, and open-mindedness) to predict argument evaluation quality and belief bias. One hundred and twelve undergraduate students completed the Argument Evaluation Test (Stanovich & West, 1997), measures of Dogmatism, Open-Mindedness, Openness to Experience, and a Vocabulary test. Argument Evaluation Quality was negatively related to Dogmatism, (...) and positively related to Openness to Experience and Vocabulary. Path analysis showed that, when controlling for Vocabulary, Dogmatism was the only personality variable that significantly (negatively) predicted Argument Evaluation Quality. None of the variables in our study were related to belief bias. Implications for future research and educational practice are discussed. (shrink)

A central aim of education has to do with the promotion of the pupil's and other people's well-being. Recent work by John O'Neill locates the strongest justification of the market in an individualistic preference-satisfaction notion of well-being. His own preference for an objective theory of well-being allows us to make a clear separation of educational values from those of the market. Problems in O'Neill's account suggest a third notion of well-being which better supports the separation mentioned.

The percentage of female entrepreneurs is far below the level of males, although it has increased over the past several years. Based on the theory of planned behavior, the purpose of this article is to specify a model in which the relationship among entrepreneurial potential, gender and entrepreneurial intention are explored, by analyzing how perceived behavioral control (PBC) and perceived entrepreneurial skills, as exogenous variables, affect expression of intention for business, and how these are mediated by their entrepreneurial motivations and (...) risk taking propensity. Control variables where also included in this model, such as necessity-driven motives for business, in order to observe whether these are an influential factor. An implementation of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze data collected from 677 students. Variables within the model were compared by gender using t-Test, and all multivariate analysis were done by each one separately as well in order to better gauge their perceptions. Results showed that mean differences between males and females are not abundant, and come only from intentions, PBC and subjective norm, which are higher in males; and motives for business higher in females. Multivariate analysis shows gender differences at the mediation level and that necessity-driven motives are an influencing factor, more so in males, and it hampers the significance of subjective norm. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications of the results within the framework of entrepreneurship in Spain and future alternatives to improve the entrepreneurial potential are discussed. (shrink)

Social effects represent the psychological reactions evoked in other people by the expression of traits in behavior and emotion. From the transactional view on personality, studying the psycholexical structures of social effects can help to discover unique vs. common thought and behavior patterns, affects, and motivations, which are primarily related to personality dispositions. Thus, we developed the comprehensive taxonomy of social effects following the principles of the psycholexical approach. In the first study, two judges selected 9,625 person-descriptive terms—adjectives, type-nouns, attribute-nouns, (...) and participles—from the Dictionary of the Standard Lithuanian Language. In the second study, six judges classified all the selected descriptors using German psycholexical methodology. Finally, a principal component analysis was performed, followed by varimax rotation for the 208 social-effect descriptors, separately for ipsatized self-ratings and observer-ratings from 203 to 204 Lithuanian students, respectively. We found out that the five-component solution was the best fit for self-ratings, whereas for observer-ratings it was a four-component structure. In this article, we present the results from the factor analyses and discuss our findings in the context of previous studies, as well as cross-language personality models. (shrink)

The issue of wrongful disability arises when parents face the choice whether to produce a child whose life will be unavoidably flawed by a serious disease or disorder (Down syndrome, for example, or Huntington’s disease) yet clearly worth living. The authors of From Chance to Choice claim, with certain restrictions, that the choice to produce such a child is morally wrong. They then argue that an intuitive moral approach––a “person-affecting” approach that pins wrongdoing to the harming of some existing or (...) future person––cannot account for that wrong since the choice to produce such a child cannot, under the logic of the nonidentity problem, harm that child. The authors propose that we supplement the person-affecting approach with an “impersonal” principle that takes the form of their well-known principle N. In this paper, I argue that the authors are mistaken to suppose that a plausibly articulated person-affecting approach cannot account for the wrong of wrongful disability. We can retain an intuitive, comparative, “worse for” account of harm and still identify serious harms imposed by the choice of wrongful disability. In particular, I argue that harm, both to the impaired child and to others, comes not in the form of that procreative choice’s procreative effect but rather in the form of its many distributive effects. I also argue that the rare, residual case in which a person-affecting approach would approve of the choice of wrongful disability does not function as a counterexample to that approach. As a separate matter, I address legal claims for wrongful disability, which are closely akin to claims for wrongful life. The legal claim is brought by the impaired child, not against the parents, but rather against health care providers whose negligent failure to diagnose or inform parents of an increased risk of a genetic or congenital impairment results in the birth of the impaired child. The authors’ treatment of the moral wrong that is done as impersonal in nature suggests that courts are correct to dismiss any such claim. Once we identify harm, however, the person-affecting approach can identify a clear foundation in the law for the wrongful disability claim. (shrink)

In this thesis I will defend a Reductionist criterion of personal identity, and show that that criterion supports certain commonsense claims about the morality and rationality of special concern and about the morality of the distribution of goods among persons. ;In Chapter 1 , I will introduce the problem of personal identity across time. We will see that a plausible theory of personal identity supports and motivates the commonsense claim that we should be specially concerned about our future selves (...) and intimates. ;In Chapter 2 , I will argue that we should reject a Non-Reductionist theory of personal identity. Non-Reductionism is unable to provide a coherent account of why persons persist through certain changes and not others, thereby committing us to a general skepticism about personal identity. Therefore, we should conclude that persons are not separately existing entities. ;In Chapter 3 , I present certain cases that suggest that we should reject our initial intuition that persons can swap bodies. I then consider whether we should accept the claim that it is not our identity that matters in our survival, and suggest that Reductionists can continue to claim that identity matters. ;In Chapter 4 , I defend the commonsense view of special concern. I claim that this commonsense view can be motivated and supported by the plausible Reductionist criteria discussed in Chapter 3. I show that the commonsense conception is more plausible than the Impersonalist view that tries to ground special concern in terms of impersonal values. ;In Chapter 5 , I show that Parfit's view of personal identity and what matters actually supports a moral theory in which the relationships in which persons stand to one another have intrinsic significance, rather than supporting the person-neutral theory of Utilitarianism. (shrink)

Locke's conceptualization of sovereignty and its uses, combining theological, social, and political perspectives, testifies to his intellectual profundity that was spurred by his endeavour to re-traditionalize a changing world. First, by relying on the traditional, personalistic notion of polity, Locke developed a concept of sovereignty that bore the same sense of authority as the “right of commanding” attributable only to real persons. Second, he managed to reconcile the unitary nature of sovereignty with the plurality of its uses, mainly through (...) a conception of the dual, vertical separation of functions, which implied degrees rather than kinds of sovereignty. While absolute sovereignty belongs to God, Locke argued, relative sovereignty, separated into “potential” and “actual” sovereignty, is vested in the community on the grounds of the Edenic testament with God. The community, established by a fundamental, single contract, is divided into “society”—to fulfil the function of legislation, which signifies the potential sovereignty of the community, so as to cultivate common law , and into “government”—to undertake the execution, which signifies the actual sovereignty of the king, of common law so as to procure common wealth. (shrink)

Today it became quite relevant in philosophical, religious studies and theological thought to turn to such a concept as value. Values ​​- these are certain general norms and principles that determine the direction of human activity, the motivation of human actions. The theory of values ​​began to be developed even during antiquity. Beings and values ​​then were not yet separated. Plato, for example, believed that the knowledge of values ​​and their realization in real life - is one and the same. (...) Therefore, truly gentler and wise man is one who knows what such high spiritual values ​​are and performs their actions in accordance with them. Aristotle had his point of view on this problem and believed that knowledge of values ​​and real human behavior - not one-way phenomenon. Supreme for Aristotle are diacotic values ​​- truth, wisdom, morality. Kant also developed his theory of values. He believed that the values ​​themselves are not being, they are the demands that are directed to the will of the individual, to the purposes that it sets itself. (shrink)

The problem of personality in philosophy has been significant since the emergence of Christianity. In Soviet Russia, this problem has been actualized since the 2nd half of the twentieth century, since the Thaw, when the books of Russian religious philosophers became known. We were the original heirs of Christian ontology and ethics, which assumed that a personal appeal to God on You (Tu) testified to a change of places in the interior of being itself, which becomes intimate, close, because the (...) infinite God, being in a person, makes him the same infinite person. The Latin term "persona" is translated as "mask" (personality). V.V. Vinogradov in the "History of Words" says that the word "personality", associated with Latin and Greek meanings (persona, prosopon), was not used massively in the Old Russian language until the XVII century, and in the XVII and XVIII centuries it began to denote only the official position of a person. It is impossible to associate this meaning of the face with what was in antiquity and the Middle Ages. This is a homonym. Reflecting on Greek literature, S. S. Averintsev wrote that the term "creativity" is poorly applicable to the Greek philosophers: "poyesis" is a matter understood as an invention. The Greeks invented an objectified type of communication-through-literature, i.e. dialogue, consciously separated from life communication. Dialogue as an invention revealed the fundamental undialogical nature of Greek literature, and Socrates is the ideal of a radically undialogical person who cannot be internally hurt by the word of the interlocutor. Therefore, for Averintsev, a personality is a mind free from a "dialogical situation", it is a mask, an individual understood as an eidos. It is the mask — "immobile-clear, fully revealed and appeared" — that is the semantic limit of a continuously emerging face. By opening the "mask", the Greeks emphasized the importance of individuality. V. S. Bybler, criticizing Averintsev, argues that dialogue is not a construction, it is an internal dispute of the philosopher taking place in his own soul. He is in the thought itself, pushing its definitions to the limit and reaching the border of other possible definitions, concepts, understandings. According to Bybler, the thought itself is dialogical, communicating with itself within itself and forming a gap between itself and the other "I". At the same time, Bibler defines his philosophy as the philosophy of an eternally borderline culture. Dialogue is a tense collaboration between an author who worked in a past culture and a reader who lives in a modern culture. Personality for the Bibler is the ultimate embodiment of the individual — the reverse course of Averintsev. M. Ya. Gefter and V. V. Bibikhin worked out this problem 20 years later. Gefter, based on the unmotivated appearance of homo sapiens and the unexplained appearance of speech, emphasized that speech destroyed the limit of understanding between people. This is also connected with his reliance on the concept of the World of Worlds and the definition of personality, which, in his opinion, is not a higher form built over the individual, but a later phenomenon that entered into a dispute with individuation. Personality is a choice, a form of overcoming oneself with access to others, a case. Bibikhin, not agreeing with the theoretical positions of Averintsev and Bybler, turns out to be closer to Gefter. It does not proceed from the development of the individual or personality, having changed the aspect of reasoning. He posed the problem of the wholeness of a human (homo) who initially deals not with knowledge, but with being and non-being. Before knowledge there is affirmation and negation, which sound in speaking silence before any speech and push a person to act. A human (homo), i.e. not an individual or a person, begins with an act; he is, first of all, such an act. The difference between Bibikhin's approach, which is closely related to the ideas of hesychasm, from Averintsev and Bybler lies in his understanding of philosophy as timeless. For him, everything known is the World, not even modernity. Personal properties (prosopon) are possessed only by God, who is "personal" and "hypostatic", because He expresses energy. This problem of the action of the energetic Word is the most important witness of the world given through man and recognized through language. Language poses the problem of understanding, assuming an initial misunderstanding between people. (shrink)

In Existence and the Existent, Jacques Maritain speaks about the difficulty of knowing persons as subjects. Typically we know persons as objects, or “from without,” and this explains why we describe people as instantiations of various qualities that can be shared in common with others. But according to Maritain, “To be known as object... is to be severed from oneself and wounded in one’s identity. It is to always be unjustly known.” In this paper, I consider the epistemological (...) means by which knowing persons as subjects is possible. I argue that we can find parallels between knowing persons and what Maritain refers to as the “intuition of being”, and that reflecting on these parallels can help us to see a solution to the problem of knowing persons—just as the act of existence is not known through a concept, but through a judgment that separates what a thing is from the act by which it exists, so too, I argue, one’s subjectivity is known not through a concept but through a judgment that separates one’s shareable qualities from the self/person underlying these qualities. (shrink)

This article explores traditional views of advance care planning in the broader context of advance personal planning, which also accounts for legal and financial matters. Criticisms of existing processes are noted, while the significance of interprofessional collaboration is highlighted. Reframing the purpose of advance personal planning as planning for the rest of life, rather than the end-of-life, and adopting a more holistic perspective informed by theory may help individuals to view advance personal planning as a routine, preventative exercise that safeguards (...) their autonomy and well-being. Both lawyers and healthcare providers have an important role to play in reframing the purpose of advance personal planning. This revised approach is underpinned by the unification of two separate theoretical lenses: Preventive Law Theory and Therapeutic Jurisprudence. This combination enhances our understanding of what it means for people to truly achieve “the good result” (Holtz 2017) when planning ahead for their future legal, financial, health, and personal interests. Preventive Law Theory encourages an ongoing, collaborative relationship between lawyers and their clients, or healthcare providers and their patients, while Therapeutic Jurisprudence ensures an ethical approach to advance personal planning that accounts for all aspects of the individual’s well-being, including consideration of vulnerability, autonomy, and empowerment. (shrink)

This essay proposes that liberal democracy cannot survive unless a monistic virtue ethics permeates its culture, A monistic philosophical conception of virtue ethics has its roots in natural law theory and, for that reason, offers a rationally defensible basis for a unified moral vision in a pluralistic society. Such a monistic virtue ethics--insofar as it is a virtue ethics--forms individual character so that a person not only knows how to act, but desires to act that way and, moreover, possesses the (...) integration of character to be able to act that way. This is a crucial consideration, for immoral choices create a bad character that inclines the individual to increasingly worse choices, A nation whose members lack moral virtue cannot sustain its commitment to freedom and equality for all. (shrink)

The separation of biomedical and psychosocial approaches to mental illness has hampered both research and treatment because only a fully integrated view of life permits a person to develop wisdom and well-being. In this long-awaited work, psychiatrist Robert Cloninger argues that all persons have spontaneous needs for happiness, self-understanding, and love, and he describes a way toward achieving psychological coherence that satisfies these basic human needs. The novel synthesis that he provides is based on the latest findings and concepts (...) in neuroscience, genetics, long-term biopsychosocial research, and complex networks, combined with a reliable, quantitative way of measuring human thought, social relationships, and creativity. (shrink)

This article considers whether any interpretation of the idea of equal claims to the natural world can resolve the Canyon Dilemma (i.e. can justify protecting the Grand Canyon but not a small canyon from mining by a poor generation). It first considers and ultimately rejects the idea of subjecting natural resource rights to an intergenerational equal division. It then demonstrates that a pluralist theory of environmental justice committed to both respect for the separateness of persons and to the (...) collective good can justify a type of intergenerational non-absolute equal division of natural resource rights that can navigate the Canyon Dilemma. (shrink)

Catholic philosophical anthropologists have defended views of the human person on which we are not reducible to anything non-personal. For example, it is not the case that we are nothing but matter, souls, or parts of society. Nevertheless, most Catholic anthropologies have been reductionistic in other ways. Mark K. Spencer presents a philosophical portrait of human persons on which we are entirely irreducible to anything non-personal, by synthesizing claims from many strands of the Catholic tradition. These include Thomism, Scotism, (...) phenomenology, personalism, nouvelle théologie, analytic philosophy, Greek and Russian thought, and several others. It adjudicates among these traditions' claims by considering whether they are grounded in how we appear in experience and whether they are non-reductionistic. While many metaphysical claims about persons are defended, the picture that ultimately results is one on which persons are best grasped not through abstract concepts but through aesthetic perception, as unique kinds of beauty. This portrait also shows how we have many irreducible parts, principles, and powers. Various chapters explore the irreducibility of our subjectivity, senses, intellect, freedom, and affections, and of our souls, bodies, acts of existence, and activities. Readers will also find explorations of divine simplicity and causality, the nature of matter, organisms, and artifacts, all of which must be understood to fully grasp our own irreducibility. In considering how to synthesize various traditions' claims, the book also offers new solutions to a number of prominent debates in contemporary Catholic philosophy. These include debates over natural law, the natural desire to see God, the separated soul, the nature of gifts, integralism and personalism, idealist and realist phenomenology, and various scholastic accounts of the act of existence. The picture of persons thereby developed helps the reader to perceive persons more perfectly. (shrink)

By investigating one of the major inconsistencies that Hume's parallel treatment of the identity of persons and objects issues, this essay offers an unconventional account of what it needs to avoid a dualist picture of mind and world. It will be argued that much hinges on the question of whether or not one is willing to allow the principally unperceivable to enter into one's concept of reality. Hume, as will be shown, rejects this approach: he denies that we have (...) reason to think that there are substances that divide the world into two separate realms. The strategic value of this move is that it enables us to think of minds in terms similar to those underlying our conception of physical objects without urging us to engage in reductionist or eliminativist projects. (shrink)

Western culture has a few traditions of representing the human body – among them mortuary art (gisants), the freak show, the culture of the relics, renaissance art and pre-modern and modern anatomy. A historical analysis in the spirit of Norbert Elias is offered with regard to body – person relationship in anatomy. Modern anatomy is characterized by separating the story of the person from the story of the body, a strategy that is incompatible with the bio-psycho-social paradigm of clinical medicine. (...) The paper discusses different aspects of the above traditions and how they might bear on this conflict and on contemporary bioethics and bedside practice. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarians have been wary of being orientated by the empathetic understanding of others lest it offends the separateness of persons. This worry can be overcome by embracing second‐order as well as first‐order empathetic‐imagination, while doing so strengthens liberal‐egalitarian claims to treat all with equal concern and respect. ‘First‐order’ empathic‐imagination, which accesses objective knowledge about a person’s experience, is a necessary but not sufficient part of relating to others as agents. ‘Second‐order’ empathic‐imagination, encompassing a ‘disposition of surprise’ at (...) an agent’s ability to have a valued life contrary to what is normally and reasonably expected, should also be encouraged. This disposition accepts that making fundamental mistakes in empathic‐imagination is inevitable, but by being disposed to recognize these as mistakes a person is more open to understanding and identifying with ‘disadvantaged others’ who are agents. As a result, policy‐makers and practitioners must recognize a potential tension between promoting social systems that redistribute resources and the image those defined as ‘worse‐off’ hold of themselves. Such interventions need to be sensitive to the positive image those they view as disadvantaged may hold of themselves, while nevertheless recognizing their entitlement to resources to improve their condition. (shrink)