Do philosophers have an obligation to public philosophy, that is, do they owe the pubic an effort to explain their work in a form that the public can understand and make use of? A prior question is whether public philosophy is possible, and this question is open because the role of the public philosopher may not be a possible role in our society. In Plato’s view, public philosophy was not possible in a democracy, as the only role for public philosophy was in a society in which philosophers were rulers. But the differences between our conception of democracy and Plato’s may show that his view of the social fate of the potential philosopher in a democracy does not hold for us.

Governments have used several mechanisms to deal with intractable policy conflicts about issues in bioethics. One mechanism is the installment of an ethics committee and another one is the organization of public debates. Often, ethics committees have an implicit or explicit role in the stimulation of such public debate. However, this role is not self-evident and we therefore analyse the relation between committees and public debate. What should the function of biotechnology ethics committees be, how does this relate to their composition, and to what extent are these functions met in practice? To this end, we have examined the three national committees of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia in the field of animal and plant biotechnology. We argue that there is often a mismatchbetween the goals one wants to reach by stimulating public debate and the way this has been given shape, partly through ethics committees. In fact, installing (biotechnology) ethics committees is to a certain extent a premature move that contains rather than stimulates public debate.

On the one hand, most of us would take honesty to be a key ethical virtue. Corporations and other organizations often include it in their codes of ethics, we legislate against various forms of dishonesty, we tend to be ashamed (or at least defensive) when we are caught not telling the truth, and honesty is often regarded as a key element in relationships. Yet on the other hand, dishonesty, that is, lying and deceit, seems to be commonplace in contemporary public life even amongst those leading figures in our society whom we might otherwise take to be the exemplars of public virtue. So, is the emphasis on truth and honesty just a sham? Does the fact of our actual practice mean that truth and honesty matter only rhetorically, and, if so, does that mean that whatever it is we mean by ‘ethics,’ truth and honesty are not a part of it? What I will suggest is that truth is indeed central to ethical practice, and not only to ethical practice, but also to a properly democratic politics, and that the apparent breakdown in the commitment to truth in public life is indicative of a deeper ethical, as well as political, breakdown.

In most countries, failed criminal attempts are punished less severely than those that succeed. Many philosophers, including myself, have argued that differential punishment can be justified. However, in a recent paper, Hanna raises objections to defenses of differential punishment, claiming that such policy goes against our “desert intuitions” and also cannot be justified on utilitarian grounds. I argue in this paper that Hanna’s desert-based and utilitarian objections can be undermined. Further, they are valid only within moral theories that take the agent to be an independent self, whose responsibility rests on his or her intentions and deliberations alone. However, differential punishment can be justified in a different kind of moral theory, in which there are good reasons to give luck a role to play.

The most common argument in favor of torture in the current literature is the ticking bomb argument. It asks us to imagine a case where only torture can prevent the detonation of a bomb that will kill millions. In this paper, I argue that the seeming effectiveness of this argument rests on two things: 1) the underdetermined semantic content of the term ‘torture,’ and 2) a philosophical attitude that regards the empirical facts about torture as irrelevant. Once we pay attention to the facts about torture, and particularly about the role time plays in actual torture, the ticking bomb argument becomes incoherent, and hence cannot provide a basis for accepting torture.

In this paper I develop and defend a social conception of dignity. To that end, I look at what Holocaust survivors say about dignity (and the related Hebrew word, kavod) since many have described their experiences in these terms. Unlike traditional conceptions, on my account dignity admits of degrees—one can have more or less dignity.

In this paper, I argue that character alone grounds desert. I begin by arguing that desert is grounded by a person’s character, action, or both. In the second section, I defend the claim that character grounds desert. My argument rests on intuitions that other things being equal, it would be intrinsically better for virtuous persons to flourish and vicious persons suffer than vice versa. In the third section, I argue that actions do not ground desert. I give three arguments in support of this claim. First, there is little intuitive support for this supposed ground and to the extent that there is support, it is undermined when we consider what causes character and acts to diverge. Second, this type of desert doesn’t fit with a unifying account of the different aspects of intrinsic value. Third, the most plausible version of act-based desert leaves it unclear why acts should ground desert.

Where does domestic policy leave off and foreign policy begin? I point out that many domestic policies have major repercussions forother countries, some of them of a kind that are conducive to violence if not outright warfare. My examples are the drug laws, which create huge incentives for foreign criminals as well as domestic ones; concerns about “global warming” which are likely to impoverish many poor countries or prevent them from advancing; and the penchant for extensive government intervention in the economy, which affects both directly and indirectly the progress of other countries.

Just War Theorists have neglected that a lack of “just military preparedness” on the side of a country seriously undermines its capability to resort justly to military force. In this paper, I put forth five principles of “just military preparedness” and show that since the new Obama administration will seek to maintain the United States’ dominant military position in the world, it will violate each of the principles. I conclude on this basis that we should anticipate that the Obama administration will add another page to the United States’ history of unjust military interventions.

I defend the thesis that a person’s sexual fantasies function autonomously from his desires, beliefs, and intentions, a fact I attributeto their different forms of intentionality: the contents of sexual fantasies, unlike those of the latter, lack a direction of fit and thus fail to express satisfaction conditions. I then show how the autonomy thesis helps to answer important questions about the ethics of sexual fantasy. I also argue that the autonomy thesis can claim empirical support from several areas, including interesting recent work on meta-representation and simulation theory.

As the United States is currently prosecuting two wars, it is important to consider whether those wars, and the resulting noncombatantcasualties, can be morally justified. Such consideration can be initiated by considering some of Alan Donagan’s work in his book The Theory of Morality. In that book Donagan sets out to develop, as a philosophical system, that part of the common morality according to the Hebrew-Christian tradition, which does not depend on any theistic beliefs. According to that tradition it is sometimes morally permissible to resort to war. This poses a problem because also part of the tradition is a near absolute prohibition on harming innocent people. Since innocent people die in war, there is a tension here.Donagan claims that this problem can be solved by assigning the blame for some such deaths to the aggressor, thereby permitting (some) resorts to war. This paper shows that this solution is inadequate; and defends a more plausible (and more traditional) justification for some innocent deaths. This justification is consistent with the system Donagan develops, and thus may have application in the consideration of the justification of the two wars currently being prosecuted by the United States.

Practically all modern definitions of war rule out that individuals can wage war. They conceive of war as a certain kind of conflict between groups. In fact, many definitions even restrict the term “war” to sustained armed conflicts between states. Instead of taking such definitions as points of departure, the article starts from scratch. I first explain what an explication of the concept of “war” should achieve. I then introduce the fundamental, and frequently overlooked, distinction between war as an historical event and war as an action. It is war as action—which, unlike events, can be right or wrong—that I explicate. Testing our linguistic intuitions with different examples of conflict I isolate several criteria that a war proper has to fulfill and try to demonstrate that not only collectives but individuals, too, can wage war. In conclusion I examine alternative definitions of war and show that in comparison to them mine fares rather well.

Originally presented at a forum sponsored by Concerned Philosophers for Peace at the Eastern Division annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Philadelphia, PA: 29 December 2008), this essay discusses two ethical challenges in foreign policy likely to be confronted by the new U.S. presidential administration. The increased reliance on private military contractors, including security contractors, poses a number of difficulties, the most troubling of which is the erosion of civil-military relations. Modern military campaigns cannot be waged without some degree of reliance on the logistical support such contractors provide, but their use makes it easier for governments to hide the true risks and costs of modern war from the electorate, serving to undermine key conceptions of “just war” principles like “legitimate authority” and “public declaration” of war. On the other hand, the dramatic increase in maritime piracy forces an unpleasant choice between either increasing defense spending on appropriate weapons systems and personnel during a global economic crises in order to provide enhanced maritime security, or else, ironically, relying even more on private security contractors to protect global shipping and transportation. Both these and similar foreign policy challenges focus attention on the need for “ethical interoperability,” the ability to share common notions of military ethics, public service, and professional responsibility among coalition military forces otherwise drawn from a variety of disparate national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.

Because of the recent meltdown in our capitalistic system, even former President Bush and conservative Republicans favor the government interference in free markets in which privately owned businesses were “bailed out.” This government action to save our economic system had long previously been denounced as “socialism.” However, this current acceptance of a sort of democratic socialism at home now would allow President Obama to respect and even promote democratic socialism abroad. In fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights demands respect for democratic socialism in both a nation’s domestic and foreign affairs. I explain three differences this should mean in President Obama’s conduct of foreign affairs. These relate to 1. which nations are our enemies and which our friends, 2. helping foreign nations reduce their poverty by other than market means, and 3. no longer using our military abroad to promote capitalism and thus doing less to create anti-American terrorists.

Given the specific educational, psychological, and sociological factors of juvenile inmates, I developed a course to teach such students moral concepts and reasoning without high level theorizing. I combined Hume’s account of sympathy with current philosophical and psychological research to develop the students’ natural sympathy as an aid in developing emotional, contextual, and moral literacy. In this paper, I explain (1) how the course developed the students’ natural sympathy, (2) how sympathy can provide a simple and familiar process of moral deliberation, (3) how sympathy aids in learning moral concepts, and (4) some interesting implications for public policy regarding moral education and recidivism, early childhood moral education, and teaching ethics courses generally.

Recently available social scientific evidence suggests strongly that harmful aggressive behavior by mentors aimed at their mentees(mentor-on-mentee-aggression, or MOMA) is a common occurrence in such relationships. This paper seeks to characterize such aggression and to account for its persistence by means of confluence of three etiological perspectives: ethological (mentoring as a form of “alloparenting” and as a form of coalition building), broadly evolutionary (MOMA as a form of “handicap” attaching to the bonds that constitute mentoring coalitions), and psychodynamic (MOMA as a function of “normal narcissism”). The net result is that MOMA is an expectable feature of most mentoring relationships.

Menzel and Light have argued that the conservative principle of self-sufficiency gives good reasons to strive for universal health coverage. This paper gives further reasons for connecting universal health care with self-sufficiency and continues Menzel’s and Light’s project in four more ways. First, a more extended analysis of a conservative conception of government shows how a general opposition to welfare programs is consistent with guaranteeing universal basic health care. Second, common fears about the abuse of health care when universal access is guaranteed are unfounded. Third, worldwide experience shows that the most effective way to bring high quality health care to a population is through a government mandate, not the free market. Fourth, while socioeconomic status is an important determinant of health independent of the accessibility of health care itself, this does not undermine the case for universal health care based on a minimal, conservative conception of equality of opportunity.

The statistics on plagiarism are staggering. No wonder, then, that many colleges and universities have started using plagiarism detection services (PDSs) such as Turnitin. But there are problems—and more problems than most critics have recognized. Whereas critics typically focus on legal issues related to intellectual property and privacy rights, I argue that unless we can reasonably suspect academic dishonesty, it’s morally problematic to require submission through a PDS. Even if we insist that the benefits of PDS use are worth the costs of saddling students with an undeserved burden of proof, blanket PDS use—that is, using PDSs across the boardand without reasonable suspicion—is problematic because it conflicts with one of the aims of educational institutions: to cultivate students’ characters. Although blanket PDS use may in fact deter plagiarism, it doesn’t create an environment conducive to the formation of honor, and it may even be a hindrance.

President Barack Obama should strive to realize the ideal goals expressed in the UN Charter. Accordingly, the concept of U.S. foreign policy should be replaced by a concept of UN global policy. Relatedly, the traditional concept of national security should be replaced by a cosmopolitan concept of global state and human security. Topics discussed include the role of the Security Council, the responsibility to protect (R2P), just war principles, UN peacekeeping operations, genocide in Darfur, treaties and other sources of international law, nuclear abolition, climate change, the role of diplomacy, and the common good.

The use of torture for interrogational purposes is frequently justified by a ‘ticking-bomb’ case, claiming that serious harms will come to a large group of people if a suspect is not tortured for the location of the bomb. In this paper, I will argue that an important recent defense of interrogational torture (Seumas Miller’s) faces several practical and epistemological problems. In this paper, I argue that these epistemological problems lead to the failure of Miller’s argument. I also argue that a minimalist conception of epistemological duties gives us further reason to reject both Miller’s argument and torture more generally. I conclude that arguments for torture that are based on ticking-bomb cases are bound to face an irresolvable epistemological problem, closing one of the more prominent avenues used to justify torture.