Risk, ethics and compliance requirements are a daily reality for most organisations. Regulators and stakeholders (including employees) demand more of most organisations, from equality, to anti-corruption, to supply chain ethics. Start-ups stutter and unicorns crash to earth when they get risk wrong. What should be done? Where should you start? How can risk management enable, not hinder, the organization's strategic goals? This book answers these questions -- rightsizing risk for every organization -- using frontline-tested tools, tips, and techniques. Whether you're (...) a purpose-driven changemaker or just struggling to comply with a seemingly unending stream of regulation, we will make risk work for you. (shrink)

The idea that immoral behaviour can sometimes be admirable, and that moral behaviour can sometimes be less than admirable, has led several of its supporters to infer that moral considerations are not always overriding, contrary to what has been traditionally maintained. In this paper I shall challenge this inference. My purpose in doing so is to expose and acknowledge something that has been inadequately appreciated, namely, the moral aspect of nonmoral goods and evils. I hope thereby to show that, (...) even if immorality can be admirable, this poses no threat to morality. (shrink)

The defense of necessity, also known as the “choice of evils,” reflects popular moral intuitions and common sense: sometimes, breaking the rules is the right—indeed, the only—thing to do in order to avoid a greater evil. Citing a classic example, mountain climbers may break into a cabin to wait out a deadly snow storm and appropriate the owner’s provisions because their property violations are a lesser evil compared to the loss of life. At the same time, this defense contradicts (...) the fundamental principles of criminal responsibility in that it authorizes violation of rights of innocent bystanders. By allowing the mountain climbers to override the property rights of the cabin owner, the defense effectively forbids the cabin owner to use force in response—a different rule would perpetuate violence. This outcome is at odds with the basic criminal law doctrines. There is no general duty to rescue in Anglo-American law. Yet, by forbidding the cabin owner to use force, the defense of necessity essentially imposes on him the duty to forego his interests in favor of those of the mountain climbers. The paper explores the origins and boundaries of the defense of necessity. It argues that the existing public and private theories of necessity are unsatisfactory and concludes that a viable theory of necessity should be able to explain why it is sometimes permissible to override individual rights of citizens without their consent or fault. (shrink)

The practice of killing day-old chicks in the Dutch egg sector is a recurrent subject of societal debate. Preventing the killing of young animals and in ovo sex determination are the two main alternatives for this problem available. An online questionnaire was held to ask the opinion of the Dutch public about these alternatives. The results show that no alternative will be fully accepted, or accepted by more than half of Dutch society. However, the survey does provide an insight to (...) what people think is important for their choice: food safety and a good treatment of animals. Irrespective of the alternative chosen, these values should be safeguarded and communicated clearly. (shrink)

In The Atrocity Paradigm, Claudia Card suggests we forgiveness as a potentially valuable exercise of a victim's moral powers. Yet Card never makes explicit just what 'moral powers' are, or how to understand their grounding or scope. I draw out unacknowledged implications of her framework: namely, that others than the primary victim may forgive, and -- conversely -- that some victims may find themselves morally dis-empowered. Furthermore, talk of "moral powers" allows us to appropriately acknowledge the value of refusals to (...) forgive and the issue of "forgivable" evils, in ways that talk of forgiveness as a duty or virtue cannot. (shrink)

This book offers a new account of Aristotle's practical philosophy. Pavlos Kontos argues that Aristotle does not restrict practical reason to its action-guiding and motivational role; rather, practical reason remains practical in the full sense of the term even when its exercise does not immediately concern the guidance of our present actions. To elucidate why this wider scope of practical reason is important, Kontos brings into the foreground five protagonists that have long been overlooked: spectators or judges who make non-motivational (...) judgments about practical matters that do not interact with their present deliberations and actions; legislators who exercise practical reason to establish constitutions and laws; hopes as an active engagement with moral luck and its impact on our individual lives; prayers as legislators' way to deal with the moral luck hovering around the birth of constitutions and the prospect of a utopia; and people who are outsiders or marginal cases of the responsibility community because they are totally deprived of practical reason. Building on a wide range of interpretations of Aristotle's practical philosophy, Kontos offers new insights about Aristotle's philosophical contribution to the current debates about radical evil, moral luck, hope, utopia, internalism and externalism, and the philosophy of law. Aristotle on the Scope of Practical Reason will appeal to researchers and advanced students interested in Aristotle's ethics, ancient philosophy, and the history of practical philosophy. (shrink)

I examine the evidential argument from inscrutable evil, evil for which we can see no morally adequate reason. Such evils are often thought to provide evidence for the existence of gratuitous evil that God could not be justified in allowing, but arguments for this are often informal and intuitive. I try to contribute greater rigor by developing a probabilistic argument that large numbers of inscrutable evils are strong evidence for the existence of gratuitous evil. Then, I consider and (...) reject two plausible replies on behalf of the theist. (shrink)

The release of over 6,000 genetically modified mosquitoes (GMM) into uninhabited Malaysian forests in 2010 was a frantic step on the part of the Malaysian government to combat the spread of dengue fever. The field trial was designed to control and reduce the dengue vector by producing offspring that die in the early developmental stage, thus decreasing the local Aedes aegypti population below the dengue transmission threshold. However, the GMM trials were discontinued in Malaysia despite being technologically feasible. The lack (...) of systematic studies in terms of cost-benefit analysis, questionable research efficacy and safety-related concerns might have contributed to the termination of the field trial. Hence, this research aims to evaluate the feasibility of GMM release in Malaysia by using a holistic approach based on an Islamic ethical-legal assessment under the maslahah-mafsadah (benefit-risk) concept. Three main strategies based on the maslahah-mafsadah concept approach have been applied: 1) an evidence-based approach, 2) an impact-based approach and, 3) a priority approach. The analysis concluded that GMM could be categorised as zanniyyah (probable). GMM is a promising alternative for dengue control, but many issues must be addressed before its widespread adoption. (shrink)

An extract from Williams' The Ground of Induction (1947): "The sober amateur who takes the time to follow recent philosophical discussion will hardly resist the impression that much of it, in its dread of superstition and dogmatic reaction, has been oriented purposely toward skepticism: that a conclusion is admired in proportion as it is skeptical; that a jejune argument for skepticism will be admitted where a scrupulous defense of knowledge is derided or ignored; that an affirmative theory is a mere (...) annoyance to be stamped down as quickly as possible to a normal level of denial and defeat. It is an age which most admires the man who, as somebody has said, 'has a difficulty for every solution'. Whether or not this judgment is fair, however, it is safe to say, with Whitehead, that 'the theory of induction is the despair of philosophy - and yet all our activities are based upon it'. [A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York, 1925, p. 35] So prodigious a theoretical contretemps cannot remain a tempest in the professors' teapot. The news that no foundation is discoverable for the procedures of empirical intelligence, and still more the proclaimed discovery that there is no foundation, and still more the complacency which recommends that we reconcile ourselves to the lack, condemn the problem as a 'pseudoproblem', and proceed by irrational faith or pragmatic postulate, will slowly shatter civilized life and thought, to a degree which will make the modernist's loss of confidence in Christian supernaturalism, so often cited as the ultimate in spiritual cataclysms, seem a minor vicissitude. The demand that rational man adjust himself to a somewhat bleaker universe than he once hoped for is only one large and picturesque instance of the sort of re-orientation which inductive intelligence, in its very nature,continually imposes, and well within the proved capacities of human reason and good-will.. (shrink)

What remains of moral judgment when truth itself is mistrusted, when the validity of every belief system depends on its context, when power and knowledge are inextricably entangled? Is a viable moral theory still possible in the wake of the postmodern criticism of modern philosophy? The Order of Evils responds directly to these questions and dilemmas with one simple and brilliant change of focus. Rather than concentrating on the age-old themes of justice and freedom, Adi Ophir offers a moral (...) theory that emphasizes the existential and political nature of evil. Ophir's main contention is that evil is neither a diabolical element residing in the hearts of men nor a meaningless absence of the good. Rather, it is the socially structured order of "superfluous evils." Evils, like pain, suffering, loss, and humiliation, are superfluous when they could have been -- but were not -- prevented. Through close analysis of seminal works by modern and postmodern philosophers -- from Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Sartre, and Arendt to Foucault, Levinas, Derrida, and Lyotard -- Ophir forges a new perspective for thinking about what it means to be a moral being: to be moral, he argues, is to care for others, and to be committed to preventing, at all costs, their suffering and distress.A theoretically sophisticated work, The Order of Evils also bears the traces of Ophir's own political and personal experiences as an Israeli philosopher and activist. Two major events in recent Jewish history have profoundly influenced his thinking: the Holocaust and the prolonged Israeli domination of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Ophir does not compare the two events. Instead, he introduces a typology of disasters that allows them to be located within the wide spectrum of humanly generated calamities whose specificity and general patterns emerge clearly and distinctly as what they are and are not. (shrink)

This article distinguishes and evaluates the various forms of legal moralism from a liberal vantage point. It devotes special attention to the most plausible form of the theory, That which is often called "the conservative thesis," and to that supporting argument which is based on the need to prevent "freefloating social-Change evils." freefloating evils are defined as evils that are imputable to human beings but which do not give rise to personal grievances as harms, Offenses, And "harmless (...) exploitative injustices" do. I conclude that the need to prevent such evils is a relevant, But generally inferior, Reason for coercion. (shrink)

I am persuaded both by the theory of evil advanced by Claudia Card in The Atrocity Paradigm and by the idea that there are evils done to the environment; however, I argue that the theory of evil she describes has difficulty living up to her claim that it "can make sense of ecological evils the victims of which include trees and even ecosystems" (2002, 16). In this paper, I argue that Card's account of evil does not accommodate the (...) kinds of harms inflicted on ecosystems and such nonhuman individuals as trees. I consider the possibility that Card intends a much broader version of evils than the language of the atrocity paradigm lets on, with its attention to sentience and dignity. I'm so persuaded by the atrocity paradigm, however, that I retain the centrality of suffering and introduce the idea that atrocities are intuitively massive, that is, done to groups or generations and not an individual person, animal or tree, so that the paradigm encourages us to think of evil as it relates to far more holistic entities which include the sentient. Evil may require the sort of suffering that only sentience can give rise to, which is not to say we let out trees but says rather that it is impossible to identify wrongs to ecosystems and groups that are not also intertwined with the fates of their sentient dependents. I conclude that Card is right to emphasize victims' suffering as a chief component of evil, and that the ontology of what constitutes a victim must be interpreted broadly, not the notion of suffering. (shrink)

Many atheists argue that because gratuitous evil exists, God (probably) doesn’t. But doesn’t this commit atheists to wishing that God did exist, and to the pro-theist view that the world would have been better had God existed? This doesn’t follow. I argue that if all that evil still remains but is just no longer gratuitous, then, from an atheist perspective, that wouldn’t have been better. And while a counterfactual from which that evil is literally absent would have been impersonally better, (...) it wouldn’t have been better for anyone, not even for those who suffered such evils. (shrink)

Replying to James Sterba’s argument for the incompatibility of the world’s evils with the existence of the God of traditional theism, I argue for their compatibility, using the proposition that God has reasons for permitting these evils. Developing this case involves appeal to an enlarged version of both the Free Will Defence and Hick’s Vale of Soul-Making Defence, in the context of God’s decision to generate the kind of natural regularities conducive to the evolution of a range of (...) creatures, including free and rational ones. Sterba writes as if God would be required to authorise frequent infringements of these regularities. Sterba’s arguments from ethics and from the inadequacy of post-mortem compensation are problematised. Predicates used of God must bear a sense appropriate to the level of creator, and not of a very powerful cosmic observer. The ethics that applies within creation should not be confused with the ethics of creating. (shrink)

In 1937 Joan Robinson proposed that “when capitalism is rightly understood, the rate of interest will be set at zero and the major evils of capitalism will disappear”. A permanent zero rate would abolish capitalist profit except in limited cases, leaving nearly all output to be claimed by labour as wages. It would allow capital to be allocated on the basis of prospective social benefit rather than short-term profitability and a collateral basis that favours the wealthy. It would remove (...) some of the economic pressure to use resources unsustainably. So why not do this? I argue that the few available philosophical arguments for positive interest rates are unsatisfactory. Those who want a just and sustainable form of capitalism should target net zero for the interest rate. (shrink)

Dormandy argues that stubborn counterevidence provides a reason for Evidentialists to form negative beliefs about God. Focusing on ‘horrendous evils’ as a kind of stubborn counterevidence, I discuss two possible interpretations of Dormandy’s account (a stronger and a weaker view). Against the stronger view, I consider the case of a Committed Theistic Evidentialist, that is, an evidentialist who possesses a defeater belief against horrendous evils. I argue that it would be improbable that she would form negative beliefs about (...) God on the basis of horrendous evils alone. I consider the response of a Committed Theistic Evidentialist towards horrendous evils, arguing that for her, ‘honesty’, which results in a psychological struggle, is an excellent-making property of her faith. (shrink)

1. Comparing the weight of different evils is highly problematic; neither a positivist, interpretive account nor an exclusively aspirational account is satisfactory. 2. Alexander is correct that choosing a lesser evil is sometimes a mandate, not a mere permission, but the point has wider application than he indicates. 3. Is a choice of lesser but not least evil justifiable? Alexander’s affirmative answer is only partially convincing. 4. Alexander endorses a striking claim: the very notion of a reckless belief or (...) reckless mistake (as to the factual grounds for a justification) is incoherent. This claim is insupportable, but the flaws in his argument demonstrate the complexity of the concept of reckless belief, especially in the context of justification defenses, where the probabilistic aspect of the distinction between permissible and impermissible risk-taking is especially salient. 5. Alexander aptly notes that the legislatively preclusion doctrine (which denies application of the lesser evils defense) creates a fundamental tension between legal actors’ power to articulate the content of the defense and the democratic pedigree of the criminal law. I conclude that genuinely democratic principles can be served by permitting juries considerable latitude to recognize a defense when the legislature has not yet had occasion to formulate an exception, or even, in some cases, by authorizing de facto civil disobedience. (shrink)

In Book 3 of the Tusculans, Cicero reports that the Cyrenaics practised the premeditation of future evils. This article focuses on the philosophical consistency of this exercise with other Cyrenaic testimonies. It argues for the authenticity of Cicero’s report and provides a critical survey of previous attempts to reconstruct the theory underlying Cyrenaic premeditation, which addresses crucial questions about the management of future pleasures and pains, and the duration of affections. New evidence from Diogenes Laertius 2.94 is then used (...) to support an alternative interpretation of the Cyrenaic praemeditatio malorum. (shrink)

American transcendentalists were eager to oppose structural evils such as slavery and poverty. The 1840s were characterized by experiments and debates about whether and how such evils could be opposed. Orestes Brownson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, following Thomas Carlyle and William Ellery Channing, set the terms of this debate. In the end, despite their different anthropologies, ecclesiologies, and prescriptions for opposing evil, they agree that spiritual reform is integral to sociopolitical reform. This transcendentalist debate illuminates (...) the role of personal responsibility and reform in efforts to oppose structural evil in our own time. (shrink)

According to the “Lesser of Two Evils Argument,” deployment of solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering in a climate emergency would be morally justified because it likely would be the best option available. A prominent objection to this argument is that a climate emergency might constitute a genuine moral dilemma in which SRM would be impermissible even if it was the best option. However, while conceiving of a climate emergency as a moral dilemma accounts for some ethical concerns about SRM, (...) it requires the controversial claim that there are genuine moral dilemmas, and it potentially undermines moral action guidance in emergency scenarios. Instead, it is better to conceive of climate emergencies as situations calling for agent-regret. This alternative allows us coherently to hold that SRM may be morally problematic even if it ought to be deployed in some scenario. (shrink)

We develop and knit together several theodicies in order to find a more complete picture of why certain forms of animal suffering might be permitted by a perfect being. We focus on an especially potent form of the problem of evil, which arises from considering why a perfectly good, wise, and powerful God might use evolutionary mechanisms that predictably result in so much animal suffering and loss of life. There are many existing theodicies on the market, and although they offer (...) helpful resources, we combine and further develop several proposals to produce a composite theodicy that avoids certain shortcomings of the individual theodicies. An important element of our project is locating a role for randomness in cosmic and biological evolution. In particular, we show how randomness might enhance or enable certain goods, including everlasting goods, at the risk of temporary evils. (shrink)