Este trabalho pretende descrever a denominada questão normativa, apresentada pela Professora Christine M. Korsgaard em seu The Sources of Normativity, e, depois, apresentar a filosofia moral tomista, procurando, nela, uma possível resposta ao problema. O trabalho, primeiro, introduz o pensamento moral de Korsgaard, apresentando o problema, e o seu argumento para encontrar a fonte da normatividade. Em um segundo momento, apresenta os fundamentos da teoria moral de Tomás de Aquino, aprofundando-se, especialmente, no estudo do ato voluntário – dado seu caráter (...) central no estudo da moral – e da ordenação dos atos ao fim. Por fim, procura-se compreender a natureza da lei moral, com destaque para as noções de obrigação e de sanção. (shrink)

Julian Wuerth offers a radically new interpretation of major themes in Kant's philosophy. He explores Kant's ontology of the mind, his transcendental idealism, his account of the mind's powers, and his theory of action, and goes on to develop an original, moral realist account of Kant's ethics.

Human‐animal chimeras—creatures composed of a mix of animal and human cells—have come to play an important role in biomedical research, and they raise ethical questions. This article focuses on one particularly difficult set of questions—those related to the moral status of human‐animal chimeras with brains that are partly or wholly composed of human cells. Given the uncertain effects of human‐animal chimera research on chimeric animals’ cognition, it would be prudent to ensure we do not overlook or underestimate their moral status. (...) However, to assess moral status, we first need to determine what kinds of capacities are morally relevant. The standard view holds that it matters, morally, if chimeric animals develop uniquely human cognitive capacities. I argue that this view is mistaken, highlighting three problems with it: that we can think of examples of uniquely human cognitive capacities that are not morally significant, that we can think of examples of morally significant cognitive capacities that are not uniquely human, and that evidence that some cognitive capacity is shared with nonhuman animals does not undermine claims that this capacity is morally significant. We need a better framework for thinking about the moral status of part‐human beings. (shrink)

Our emotional lives are full of temporal asymmetries. Salient among these is that we tend to feel differently about painful or unpleasant events depending on their temporal location: we feel anxiety or trepidation about painful events we anticipate in the future, and relief when they are over. One question, then, is whether temporally asymmetric emotions such as relief have any ramifications for the metaphysics of time. On what has become the standard way of finessing this question, the asymmetry of relief (...) is an instance of the phenomenon of future-bias, a tendency to prefer painful events to be located in the past than in the future. The main question then posed is whether this pattern of preferences can be justified in the light of different metaphysical theories of time. In this paper I argue that this whole dialectic is misconceived. While many people may have future-biased preferences and these are a legitimate object of psychological study, this should be distinguished from the more basic phenomenon of relief that an unpleasant experience is over. Acknowledging the distinctness of these phenomena has two main consequences. First, if relief is not a manifestation of a time-biased preference, it is unclear what it would be for it to be justified or unjustified. This, in turn, should lead us to reassess how the psychology of relief bears on our metaphysical commitments. As I shall suggest, the real significance of the temporally asymmetric emotions for the metaphysics of time is that they manifest, and so reflection on them serves to draw our attention to, a structural feature of our awareness of the passage of time that resists re-articulation in other terms. (shrink)

For the last 40 years or so the is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy have figured prominently in ethical debates. This longevity, however, has had an adverse side effect. So familiar have they become that they—and their respective rationales—have tended to become blurred. It is the purpose of this paper to explain why they should be kept distinct.

In the wake of ChatGPT’s release, academics and journal editors have begun making important decisions about whether and how to integrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) into academic publishing. Some argue that AI outputs in scholarly works constitute plagiarism, and so should be disallowed by academic journals. Others suggest that it is acceptable to integrate AI output into academic papers, provided that its contributions are transparently disclosed. By drawing on Taylor’s work on academic norms, this paper argues against both views. Unlike (...) “traditional” forms of plagiarism, use of generative AI can be consistent with the norms that should underlie academic research. In these cases, its use should neither be prohibited nor required to be disclosed. However, some careless uses of generative AI do threaten to undermine the quality of academic research by mischaracterizing existing literature. This, not “AI plagiarism,” is the real concern raised by ChatGPT and related technologies. (shrink)

Our perceptual experiences stretch across time to present us with movement, persistence and change. How is this possible given that perceptual experiences take place in the present that has no duration? In this paper I argue that this problem is one and the same as the problem of accounting for how our experiences occurring at different times can be phenomenally unified over time so that events occurring at different times can be experienced together. Any adequate account of temporal experience must (...) also account for phenomenal unity. I look to Edmund Husserl's writings on time consciousness for such an account. (shrink)

Many have argued that individuals should receive income in proportion to their contribution to society. Others have believed that it would be fairer if people received income in proportion to the effort they expend in so contributing, since people have much greater control over their level of effort than their productivity. I argue that those who believe this are normally also committed, despite appearances, to increasing the social product — which undermines any sharp distinction between effort- and productivity-based distributive proposals. (...) However, effort-based proposals do emphasise more the importance of people having control over factors affecting their income. The second set of problems I consider is how to implement policies which hold true to this emphasis. I show that there are major problems with the accuracy of using any objective criteria to measure the level of effort a person is expending. Moreover, once any such criteria are employed the problem of ‘moral hazard’arises because people modify their behaviour in such a way as to maximise their income while minimising their effort. This violates the original motivation for using effort. Because of this and other empirical considerations, I argue that productivity may well be a better criterion on which to distribute income even if one is motivated by the same concerns which have prompted effort-based proposals. (shrink)

In Markets Without Limits and a series of related papers, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue that it is morally permissible to buy and sell anything that it is morally permissible to possess and exchange outside of the market. Accordingly, we should open markets in “contested commodities” including blood, gametes, surrogacy services, and transplantable organs. This paper clarifies some important aspects of the case for market boundaries and in so doing shows why there are in fact moral limits to the (...) market. I argue that the case for restricting the scope of the market does not turn on the idea that some things are constitutively non-market goods; it turns instead on the idea that treating some things according to market norms would threaten the realization of particular kinds of human interests. (shrink)

Genomic sequencing technologies (GS) pose novel challenges not seen in older genetic technologies, making traditional standards for fully informed consent difficult or impossible to meet. This is due to factors including the complexity of the test and the broad range of results it may identify. Meaningful informed consent is even more challenging to secure in contexts involving significant time constraints and emotional distress, such as when rapid genomic testing (RGS) is performed in neonatal intensive care units. In this article, we (...) propose that informed consent matters not for its own sake, but because obtaining it furthers a range of morally important goals, such as promoting autonomy, well‐being, and trust in medicine. These goals form the basis of a new framework [PROmoting Morally Important Consent Ends (PROMICE)] for assessing the ethical appropriateness of various informed consent models. We illustrate this framework with two examples: (a) a tiered and layered consent model for obtaining consent for GS, and (b) consent for RGS in critically ill newborns. We conclude that appropriately—rather than fully—informed consent provides the correct standard for genomic medicine and research. (shrink)

The recent judgement in the case of Re:M in which the Court held that it would be unlawful to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from a woman in a minimally conscious state raises a number of ethical issues of wide application. Central to these is the extent to which precedent autonomous decisions should be respected in the absence of a legally binding advance decision. Well-being interests can survive the loss of many of the psychological faculties that support personhood. A decision (...) to respect precedent autonomy can contradict the well-being interests of the individual after capacity is lost. These decisions raise difficult questions about personal identity and about the threshold of evidence that is required of an earlier decision in order for it to be respected. (shrink)

Greely’s target article outlines six categories of ethical issues associated with human brain surrogate research. Some of these issues are familiar from other research contexts; others, less...

Suppose rationality requires you to A if you believe you ought to A. Suppose you believe that you ought to A. How can you satisfy this requirement? One way seems obvious. You can satisfy this requirement by A-ing. But can you also satisfy it by stopping to believe that you ought to A? Recently, it has been argued that this second option is not a genuine way of satisfying the above requirement. Conditional requirements of rationality do not have two ‘symmetric’, (...) but only one ‘asymmetric’ satisfaction condition. This paper explores the consequences of this argument for a theory of the requirements of rationality. I seek to show that thisview conflicts with another powerful intuition about the requirements of rationality, i.e. ‘rational consistency’: if rationality requires you to X, then it is not the case that rationality requires you to not-X. I shall conclude that ‘asymmetric’ satisfying is based on a misleading intuition, for which we should not sacrifice ‘rational consistency’. (shrink)

Luke Semrau argues that the documented harms of existing organ markets do not undermine the case for establishing regulated systems of paid kidney donation. He offers two arguments in support of this conclusion. First, Semrau argues that the harms of kidney selling are straightforwardly amenable to regulatory solution. Second, Semrau argues that even in existing black markets, sellers would likely have experienced greater harm if the option of selling a kidney were not available. This commentary challenges both of Semrau’s claims. (...) I argue that there is no reason to believe that kidney sellers benefit from the current black market trade in organs, and highlight a number of potential issues regarding the effectiveness and feasibility of Semrau’s proposed market regulations. (shrink)

Corruption in higher education has raised concern among governments, citizens, and the education community worldwide. However, few papers have sought to explore the students’ willingness to engage in corrupt practices at the university level. The present study aimed to examine the influence of different corrupt behaviours and perceived corruption among peers on the corrupt intention of university students. 120 undergraduate students participated in a quasi-experimental design divided in 3 treatments to rate their willingness to engage in favouritism and embezzlement behaviours. (...) Results pointed out that students were more prone to committing a non-monetary behaviour favouritism– than a monetary behaviour –embezzlement–. Furthermore, there were not significant differences between the groups of control and high-corruption acceptance; while only the group of low-corruption acceptance showed significant lower rates when compared to the control and the high-corruption acceptance’s group. Practical recommendations need to address students’ perceptions of different corrupt practices, focusing on designing ethical training programmes aimed to raise awareness on the negative consequences of non-monetary activities. Future research directions could generate empirical support to prove if students are able to recognize the underlying mechanisms of subtle corrupt practices. (shrink)

The most obvious thing about the universe in which we find ourselves is its structure. Before the scientific revolution, the instinctive reaction of thinkers to the existence of perceived structure was to find a direct reason for that structure. This is reflected above all in the Pythagorean notion of the well-ordered cosmos: the cosmos has the structure it does because that is the best structure it could have. In fact, that is what the word cosmos really means—primarily order, but also (...) decoration, embellishment, or dress. Kepler and Galileo were no less entranced by the beauty of the world than was Pythagoras, and they formulated their ideas in the overall conceptual framework of the well-ordered cosmos. However, both studied the world so intently that they actually identified aspects of motion that fairly soon led to the complete overthrow of such a notion of cosmos. The laws of the new physics were found to determine not the actual structure of the universe, but the way in which structure changes from instant to instant. Ultimately, no explanation is provided for the currently observed structure; it is simply attributed to an initial structure that was never fashioned by the laws of nature but merely continually refashioned thereafter. The initial and boundary conditions for our universe lie outside the purview of science. But all of the structure we observe around us must ultimately be traced back to those mysterious initial and boundary conditions. (shrink)

Robert Trueman (2022) sets out and defends an ‘immodest’ identity theory of truth: that is, an identity theory in which the facts with which true propositions are identical are things whose totality is the world: i.e. obtaining states of affairs. This brief reply argues that Truman’s theory falls foul of a perennial objection to such immodest identity theories: namely, that it cannot explain how a candidate proposition’s putative elements can be unified into a proposition proper without this proposition being true.

Presents an additional one hundred philosophical puzzles that encourage readers to seek their own conclusions about a broad spectrum of moral, social, and personal issues.

One does not need to hold that western philosophy, or some subset of it, is superior to other kinds in order to worry about whether different strands of philosophy can meaningfully engage in dialogue together. Nor do these worries necessarily entail any arrogance. We can always learn form others, but that does not mean we should not prioritise some encounters over others.

The whole purpose of the UN is to bring nations together. In an era of globalisation and short term economic goals and values, we need to go back to reflect on the purposes of UNESCO as a place for foresight, a laboratory of ideas, exploring people’s identity and helping shape this. And I also hope that we can introduce these ideas backto the mainstream European and North American traditions, which tend to dominate, so that people can see there are different (...) traditions and cultures and there’s not only one way to see the world. (shrink)

Joint attention is recognised by many philosophers and psychologists as a fundamental cornerstone of our engagement with one another and the world around us. The most familiar paradigm of joint attention is joint perceptual—specifically visual—attention to an object in the present environment. However, some recent discussions have focused on a potentially different form of joint attention: namely, ‘joint reminiscing’ conversations in which two or more people discuss something in the past which they both remember. These exchanges are in some ways (...) comparable to joint perceptual attention to something present, and have been characterised by some as a form of joint attention to the past. In this paper, I will assess the prospects for characterising joint reminiscing as a genuine form of joint attention to the past, as understood on the model of joint perceptual attention to something present. My conclusions will be tentative, and my primary aim will be to explore how different commitments regarding the nature of both joint attention and episodic memory give rise to different possibilities for characterising joint reminiscing as a distinctive form of collective engagement with the past. I will suggest that joint reminiscing is unlike ordinary joint attention at least insofar as joint reminiscing trades on the participants’ mutual recognition of one another as having been present at an earlier experience. This is connected with joint reminiscing’s social function, and its role in facilitating the special kind of relationship conveyed by the idea of knowing a person. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Autonomy, Well-Being, Disease, and DisabilityJulian Savulescu (bio)Keywordsautonomy, well-being, mental disorder, psychiatric disease, disability, welfare, body integrity identity disorderVarelius seeks to redefine what constitutes mental disorder or mental illness. (I use these terms interchangeably.) "According to this account, 'a person is mentally disordered when her psychological capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared with that of a typical member of our species of her age-group" (Varelius 2009). This is a (...) stimulating and important paper. Varelius describes fruitfully the relationship between mental illness and autonomy, specifically the ways in which mental disorder can undermine autonomy. This is valuable in understanding the impact of mental illness on the lives of people who suffer from it, which is a serious issue in practical ethics. But is it what constitutes mental disorder or illness? There are logical, conceptual reasons why we should not redefine mental illness in this way.Incomplete Account of Mental DisorderThere are a family of related concepts: disease, injury, disorder, illness, disability. There are old and entrenched disputes about how we should define these concepts. Varelius' paper is a contribution to the definition of mental disorder and illness.The primary classificatory category that defines medical practice is that of health and disease. Disease, broadly construed, involves the presence of pathology. Pathology can result from processes primarily or predominantly internal to the organism, such as genetic disease (although external factors affect their expression), or from processes primarily or predominantly external to the organism, such as injuries.The concepts of disorder and illness relate to the concept of disease. Disorder could be defined in terms of the functional effect of pathology. Illness could be defined in terms of the experiential impact of disease.1 How these terms are precisely defined and related need not concern us at the present. What matters is that the primary category is disease.Psychiatry has evolved in its use of terminology. What used to be called psychiatric diseases are now often called mental disorders. I now claim, for the purposes of illustration of the argument (though it does not require this claim), that the dominant category is disease. Indeed, what are called mental disorders appear in the International Classification of Diseases.Disease can be divided into the mental and physical. I believe that the mental will one day be [End Page 59] shown to be shown to be entirely a subset of the physical. That is, that brain pathology will be a cause, if not the only cause, of mental disease. But others may believe the sets of mental and physical disease are intersecting but not coextensive.What matters is that mental disease is a subcategory of the more general category of disease. It must have the same definitional features as "disease" plus some extra ones specific to the "mental," or mind. (The same points apply if you use "disorder" as the dominant category rather than "disease.")One problem for Varelius is this: how does this autonomy account of "mental disease" relate to an account of "physical disease," and "disease" in general? If mental disease is defined in terms of its impact on the psychological capacities necessary for autonomy, how is "disease" in general, or physical disease, to be defined? One obvious response is to define these related concepts in a similar way:Disease: "a person is diseased when her capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared to that of a typical member of our species of her age-group." Physical disease: "a person is physically disordered when her physical capacity for autonomy is diminished as compared to that of a typical member of our species of her age-group."This interpretation is suggested by the following passage from Varelius:As contrasted with the actual condition of being autonomous, as a capacity of an individual autonomy means that a person has the psychological and bodily abilities that being autonomous... requires.(2009)It would be radical to define disease in general in terms of capacity for autonomy. There is no doubt that disease affects our autonomy, and that is morally significant, but these seem clearly separable concepts. Varelius could respond that he is not defining mental disease but rather the mental component... (shrink)

In their recent paper in this journal, Zümrüt Alpinar-Şencan and colleagues review existing dignity-based objections to organ markets and outline a new form of dignity-based objection they believe has more merit: one grounded in a social account of dignity. This commentary clarifies some aspects of the social account of dignity and then shows how this revised account can be applied to other perennial issues in bioethics, including the ethics of human embryo research and the ethics of creating part-human chimeras.

Katerina Jennings and Esther Braun identify an important problem with the current approach to defining categories of competitors in sport (Jennings and Braun 2024). They make a significant contribu...

There is a curious moment in the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Thinking she speaks in solitude, Juliet says, “Romeo, doff thy name, / And, for thy name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself”. Emerging from the shadows, Romeo replies, “I take thee at thy word” (Act 2, Scene 1, 92). Suddenly, Juliet’s utterance has seemingly become binding: because they have been overheard by Romeo, her words have become her word. But is Juliet truly bound (...) by her words given that she did not know they were being overheard, let alone intend for them to be binding? Using J. L. Austin’s notion of the performative, I consider the nature and status of Juliet’s utterance, its influence on the remainder of the scene, and what insight it might afford into the play as a whole. (shrink)

This essay revisits the metanormative version of the motivational critique of contemporary conceptions of cosmopolitan justice. I distinguish two ways of understanding this critique as leveling the charge of infeasibility against cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitan motivation can be understood to be infeasible because it is impossible or because it is not reasonably likely to be achieved if tried. The possibilistic understanding is not persuasive, given that examples show that cosmopolitan motivation is possible. The conditional probabilistic understanding is more compelling, by contrast, because (...) under certain social conditions it may not be reasonably likely that cosmopolitan motivation is achieved if tried. I argue, however, that whether cosmopolitan motivation is infeasible in the conditional probabilistic sense depends on malleable social conditions, given that, according to a plastic account of the human moral mind developed by Allen Buchanan, social conditions can undermine or favor the formation of cosmopolitan motivation. I illustrate this plastic account by showing how it can explain recent anticosmopolitan orientations as “tribalistic” reflexes to global crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, which involved competition for survival resources and (existential) threats. I conclude that cosmopolitan motivation is not infeasible under all social conditions and that cosmopolitanism therefore requires bringing about and maintaining those social conditions under which cosmopolitan motivation is feasible. (shrink)

Is it Possible to Experiment with Thought? Ernst Mach’s Notion of Thought Experiment and its Pedagogical Context around 1900. The article tries to establish the crucial importance of the pedagogical dimension of Ernst Mach’s ideas on experimenting with thought. The focus on contemporary pedagogics demonstrates, first, that Mach’s didactic approach to physics is part of a much broader stream of pedagogical writings that transcends national and disciplinary borders and comprises a diversity of authors, e.g. Wilhelm Jerusalem, William James or Alfred (...) N. Whitehead; second, that the much‐heralded controversy between Mach and the French philosopher of science Pierre Duhem about thought experiments does not only revolve around epistemological issues but rather stems from their antagonist vision of teaching physics; and finally, third, that G. Stanley Hall’s psychogenetic theory of pedagogics bears a strong resemblance with the evolutionary naturalism of Machian epistemology and helps explaining key tenets of Mach’s conception of thought experiment. By establishing a broad convergence between the work of all these authors despite their different academic upbringing, background and nationality the article argues for a complex and historically fine‐grained vision of the relations between natural, social and human sciences going beyond dichotomies like ‘Erklären’ and ‘Verstehen’ or the ‘Two Cultures’. (shrink)