This paper examines the debate between permissive and impermissive forms of Bayesianism. It briefly discusses some considerations that might be offered by both sides of the debate, and then replies to some new arguments in favor of impermissivism offered by Roger White. First, it argues that White’s (Oxford studies in epistemology, vol 3. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 161–186, 2010) defense of Indifference Principles is unsuccessful. Second, it contends that White’s (Philos Perspect 19:445–459, 2005) arguments against permissive views do not (...) succeed. (shrink)

Kirk Lougheed argues that active euthanasia (here ‘euthanasia’) is impermissible for people who are extremely sick and cannot exercise their vital forcei because (1) exercising vital force does not require volition but only being an object of caring relationships and (2) African philosophy entails other-regarding deontological duties to stay alive.1 In this commentary, we point out an implication of Lougheed’s view that is morally problematic and offer a revision that avoids this implication. We also argue for an additional advantage of (...) this revision. Lougheed’s view implies that a person who is the object of very few relationships has a much weaker duty to stay alive than a person who is well-loved and the object of many relationships. This is because he seems to think that duties to stay alive are derived entirely from one’s relationship with other people. While he is clear that a person, even if terminally ill or permanently unconscious, has a duty to stay alive so that they could remain the object of harmonious relationships, he is silent on whether duties to stay alive could be grounded in reasons that have to do with oneself. Plausibly, on this view, the strength of one’s duty to stay alive depends solely …. (shrink)

It is commonly held that unexcused impermissible acts are necessarily blameworthy, not praiseworthy. I argue that unexcused impermissible acts can not only be pro tanto praiseworthy, but overall praiseworthy—and even more so than permissible alternatives. For example, there are cases in which it is impermissible to at great cost to yourself rescue fewer rather than more strangers, yet overall praiseworthy, and more so than permissibly rescuing no one. I develop a general framework illuminating how praiseworthiness can so radically come apart (...) from deontic status. (shrink)

I raise three problems for Pummer’s account of impermissible yet praiseworthy actions. First, Pummer does not offer a plausible account of the motives of his agents, and this presents a major obstacle to evaluating those agents’ conduct. Second, the success of his argument hinges on a problematic way of individuating actions. Finally, there is a better candidate for a type of action that is both praiseworthy and impermissible, but this candidate presents novel challenges for Pummer’s account.

Samuel Kerstein argues that an asymmetry between moral worth and maxims prevents Kant from accepting a category of acts that are impermissible, but have moral worth. Kerstein contends that an act performed from the motive of duty should be considered as a candidate for moral worth, even if the action's maxim turns out to be impermissible, since moral worth depends on the correct moral motivation of an act, rather than on the moral lightness of an act. I argue that Kant (...) cannot consistently maintain that there are morally forbidden, though good, acts since one of the conditions of acting from the moral law should be that one has a true belief about what the moral law requires. My project, then, rejects the possibility of morally impermissible, worthy acts for Kant, and qualifies the conditions for moral worth Kerstein gives with an epistemological constraint on moral worth. (shrink)

This chapter offers a proceduralist argument against capital punishment. More specifically, it contends that the possibility of irrevocable mistakes precludes the just administration of the death penalty. At stake is a principle of political morality: legal institutions must strive to remedy their mistakes and to compensate those who suffer from wrongful sanctions. The incompatibility of remedy and execution is the crux of the irrevocability argument: because the wrongly executed cannot enjoy the morally required compensation, execution is impermissible. Along with defending (...) his key premises, Yost explains the complicated role that sentencing uncertainty plays in the argument. He concludes by noting some of the flaws in substantive consequentialist and retributivist justifications of capital punishment. (shrink)

An assumption underpinning the literature on human shields is that it is possible to distinguish between a voluntary shield and an involuntary shield. This is a claim I challenge with the purpose of demonstrating that the conventional basis on which we currently determine which human shields are liable to targeting is morally unjustifiable. Given the difficulty in tracking intentions, any presumption on the part of the targeting agent to know ex ante whether a civilian is volunteering to be a shield (...) cannot be adequately substantiated. I argue that, in lieu of categorising human shields as ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’, we accept our epistemic limitations and recognise that we cannot know whether a shield has volunteered in the relevant sense of the word. This leads me to the conclusion that shields ought not be considered direct participants in hostilities, but rather be presumed to be non-combatants. (shrink)

In the United Kingdom the law and medical guidance is supportive of women making choices in childbirth. NICE guidelines are explicit that a competent woman’s informed request for MRCS should be respected. However, in reality pregnant women are routinely denied MRCS. In this paper I consider whether there is sufficient justification for restricting MRCS. The physical and emotive significance of childbirth as an event in a woman’s life cannot be understated. It is, therefore, concerning that women are having their wishes (...) ignored, and we must ascertain whether the denial of agency is justifiable. To answer this question I first demonstrate that access to MRCS is a lottery in the UK. Second, I argue that there is nothing unique about pregnancy that displaces the ethical norm of respecting patents’ sufficiently autonomous choices. Thus, the starting presumption is that all informed choices regarding MRCS should be respected. To ascertain whether any restriction of MRCS is justifiable the burden of proof must be placed on those who argue that MRCS is ethically impermissible. I argue that the most common justifications in the literature against MRCS are insufficient to displace the presumption in favour of autonomous choice in childbirth. I conclude that MRCS should be available to pregnant women, and we must strive to reduce the lottery in access to choice. (shrink)

We present an argument against a standard evidentialist position on the ethics of belief. We argue that sometimes a person merits criticism for holding a belief even when that belief is well supported by her evidence in any relevant sense. We show how our argument advances the case for anti-evidentialism in the light of other arguments presented in the recent literature, and respond to a set of possible evidentialist rejoinders.

In this paper, I shall discuss what I call the Argument From Exploitation. This argument has as its conclusion that for-profit markets in personal information are morally impermissible. The main premise given for this conclusion is that markets in personal information involve exploitation of vulnerable people, and appertaining inequalities. I try to show that at least one of the premises of this argument is false. I then entertain an objection to my argument that holds that adding the option for vulnerable (...) people to sell their personal information is in itself harmful, even if these people would be better off if they took the option. I try to demonstrate why that objection is not successful. In the end, I conclude that the Argument From Exploitation is not sound, and that until proven otherwise, we should thus think that markets in personal information are morally permissible. (shrink)

I argue that inferences from highly probabilifying racial generalizations are not solely objectionable because acting on such inferences would be problematic, or they violate a moral norm, but because they violate a distinctively epistemic norm. They involve accepting a proposition when, given the costs of a mistake, one is not adequately justified in doing so. First I sketch an account of the nature of adequate justification—practical adequacy with respect to eliminating the ~p possibilities from one’s epistemic statespace. Second, I argue (...) that inferences based on demographic generalizations tend to disproportionately expose group members to the risks associated with mistakenly assuming stereotypical propositions, and so magnify the wrong involved in relying on such inferences without adequate justification. (shrink)

This is a response to Dr Joseph Mazor’s paper ‘The child's interests and the case for the permissibility of male infant circumcision.’ I argue that Dr Mazor fails to prove that bodily integrity and self-determination are mere interests as opposed to genuine rights in the case of infant male circumcision. Moreover, I cast doubt on the interest calculus that Dr Mazor employs to arrive at his conclusions about circumcision.

I have recently offered a defence of human equality, and consequently an argument against abortion. This has been objected to by Bozzo, on the grounds that my account of human equality is unclear and could be grounded in utilitarian or Kantian ethics, that my account struggles to ground the permissibility of therapeutic abortions, and that my proposed foundation for human equality itself is parasitic on a scalar property which generates the same difficulties I am attempting to solve. I provide an (...) account of human equality which cannot easily be grounded in utilitarianism or Kantianism, offer a variety of defences of therapeutic abortion consistent with treating the mother and child equally, and show that even if the value of humanness is ultimately grounded in a scalar quality, my argument succeeds. (shrink)

A standard example of a justified aggressor is the tactical bomber who is about to destroy an ammunitions factory in a proportionate, justified military attack, full well knowing that an innocent civilian bystander will also be killed by his attack (“collateral damage”). Intuitively it seems hard to believe that the innocent bystander threatened by the tactical bomber is morally prohibited from killing him in self-defense. Yet, Stephen R. Shalom indeed endorses such a prohibition. I shall argue that all the examples (...) Shalom offers in support of his view are disanalogous to the case in question, and provide examples that are analogous and strongly suggest that Shalom’s claim leads to counter-intuitive implications. Moreover, I will provide a clear-cut case that demonstrates that Shalom cannot rely on a general principle prohibiting lethal violence against permissible violence. Thus, I conclude that Shalom has failed to provide a convincing argument in support of his case. (shrink)

Certain theorists argue that intention cannot be a wrong-making feature of actions because (a) it is morally impermissible to encourage morally impermissible actions; (b) there are certain putatively impermissible actions that seem to be impermissible because of the intention with which they are performed; and (c) at least some of these actions can permissibly be encouraged. If one accepts (a) and (c), then one should conclude that these actions cannot really be impermissible. This paper rejects the premise that it is (...) always impermissible to encourage impermissible acts. The argument explores three ways one could encourage an act that would be permissible but for its being performed with a wrong-making intention. It argues that there is at most a strong but defeasible presumption against encouraging the performance of impermissible actions. (shrink)

Sandel (2009) has recently revisited the issue of the moral permissibility of telling misleading truths in a Kantian ethical framework. His defense of its permissibility relies on assimilating it to simple truth telling, and discounting its relationship with simple lying. This article presents a refutation of Sandel’s case. It is argued that comparison of misleading truths with telling truths or lies is inconclusive. Instead, comparison with telling of leading truths is appropriate. With this comparison in view, it is clear that (...) telling misleading truths is not consistent with the Categorical Imperative, meaning that they are not morally permissible from a Kantian perspective. (shrink)

abstract Even if a state would have been perfectly within its rights not to provide for people's welfare at all, it might still be wrong for it to exercise that discretion conditional upon something that claimants do (like ‘look for work’). What might make some conditions morally permissible and others impermissible? One answer is in terms of the consonance of the condition with the purposes of the policy. If a policy is supposed to be for one purpose — or, morally, (...) if it can be justified only by reference to one purpose — then that policy must not impose conditions that are appropriate only to some other purpose. It is an improper exercise of power for public officials to tack wholly inappropriate conditions onto programmes justified on some other grounds altogether. Tacking labour‐market conditions onto policies that are ostensibly designed to promote people's welfare can be a case in point. (shrink)

Gender dysphoria in children has become a hot-button topic; however, clinical data still remain sparse on the effects of hormone therapy and transitional surgery on the physical and psychological well-being of those children. The American College of Pediatricians cites studies indicating that anywhere from 77 to 94 percent of boys and 73 to 88 percent of girls desist in GD; that is, following puberty the majority of children who experience GD will identify with their assigned biological sex. After reviewing the (...) clinical studies, this paper addresses the notion of gender from a Thomistic perspective, locating gender as a differentiation in the matter of the person flowing from the essence of the soul, resulting from the power of generation as opposed to other differences such as sight, which functions the same regardless of material differences. As a result, the paper concludes that hormone therapy cannot be morally licit for children. (shrink)

Roman Catholic healthcare institutions in the United States face a number of threats to the integrity of their missions, including the increasing religious and moral pluralism of society and the financial crisis many organizations face. These organizations in the United States often have fought fervently to avoid being obligated to provide interventions they deem intrinsically immoral, such as abortion. Such institutions no doubt have made numerous accommodations and changes in how they operate in response to the growing pluralism of our (...) society, but they have resisted crossing certain lines and providing particular interventions deemed objectively wrong. Catholic hospitals in Belgium have responded differently to pluralism. In response to a growing diversity of moral views and to the Belgian Act of Euthanasia of 2002, Catholic hospitals in Belgium now engage in euthanasia. This essay examines a defense that has been offered of this practice of euthanasia in Catholic hospitals and argues that it is misguided. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBusiness actors often act in ways that may harm other parties. While the law aims to restrict harmful behavior and to provide remedies, legal systems do not anticipate all contingencies and legal regulations are not always well-enforced. This article argues that the logic of double effect, which has been developed and deployed in other areas of practical ethics, can be useful in helping business actors decide whether or not to pursue potentially harmful activities in commonplace business activity. The article illustrates (...) how LDE helps to explain the exploitative nature of payday lending, the distinction between permissible and impermissible forms of market competition, and the potential wrong of imposing risk of harm on others. The article also addresses foundational debates about LDE itself. We offer the article as an illustration of the sort of “midlevel” theorizing that can address directly the needs of practitioners. (shrink)

We argue that many modern marketing techniques are morally problematic because they take advantage of a phenomenon known as ‘ego-depletion’ according to which willpower is, similar to physical strength, a limited resource that can be depleted by predictable factors. We argue that this is impermissible for the same reason that spiking someone’s drink to impair their judgment is impermissible.

Saul Smilansky has argued that, since acts of petitionary prayer are best understood as requests, not desires, there may be many more impermissible prayer acts than one might expect. I discuss Smilansky’s analysis and argue that his conclusion follows only for those who do not believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly benevolent deity and take advantage of what Smilansky calls the theist’s ‘moral escape clause’. However, I take my argument to lead us to a variant of the problems of (...) evil and petitionary prayer instead of a problem with Smilansky’s reasoning, requirng us to either abandon at least one of three properties commonly assigned to God or else to abandon an intuitive account of prayer that makes it morally impermissible to pray for morally impermissible ends. (shrink)

The article stresses the consistency and agreement between Kant's categorical claim about impermissibility of lying and his moral philosophy. Rejecting the case-study approach to Kant's essay, the author treats it as a most appropriate illustration of the ethics of duty, seeing in the forbiddance of lying a necessary consequence of Kant's absolutist ethical. As a solution to some practical situations allegedly allowing ethical dishonesty, the author proposes to consider the norm "Do not lie" as a categorical requirement in the (...) realm of speech, thus giving the individual an ability to maintain his moral integrity and at the same time remain within the bounds of practical prudence. (shrink)

Consequentialist doctrines have often been criticized for their excessive demandingness, in that they require the thorough instrumentalization of each person’s life as a vehicle for the production of good consequences. In turn, the proponents of such doctrines have often objected to what they perceive as the irrationality of the demandingness of deontological duties. In this paper, I shall address objections of the latter kind in an effort to show that they are unfounded. My investigation of this matter will unfold by (...) reference to a scenario that strikingly and concretely exemplifies the demandingness of deontological duties. That scenario, which involves a situation of torture (specifically, placatory torture – in other words, torture undertaken for the purpose of appeasing people who have demanded that it be administered), will serve as a springboard for my endeavor to vindicate the rationality of deontological absolutes and will help to illuminate the endeavor’s practical implications. (shrink)

In a recent work, Kenneth Himma argues that the doctrines of exclusivism and hell in Christian theology lead to a reductio when combined with certain ethical principles about reproduction; he concludes that if both doctrines are true, then it is morally impermissible to procreate. Since the Christian tradition holds that procreation is at least morally permissible, if the argument is valid, then one or more of its premises should be abandoned. In response to this argument, I will present several theological (...) and philosophical objections, showing that no inconsistency has been demonstrated in holding Christian exclusivism, a traditional doctrine of hell, and the moral permissibility of procreation. (shrink)

A recent flurry of philosophical research on microaggression suggests that there are various practical and moral reasons why microaggression may be objectionable, including that it can be offensive, cause epistemic harms, express demeaning messages about certain members of our society, and help to reproduce an oppressive social order. Yet little attention has been given to the question of whether microaggression is also epistemically objectionable. This paper aims to further our understanding of microaggression by appealing to recent work on moral encroachment—the (...) idea that knowledge is sensitive to the moral stakes of believing—to argue that microaggression can be irrational in a distinctively epistemic sense, as it can involve relying on an epistemically unwarranted belief. This view suggests that the notion of epistemic justification may come apart from the notion of epistemic blame. (shrink)

This essay exposes how recent attempts at lethal injection reform have involved unethical and illegal research on prisoners. States are varying the doses and types of drugs used, developing methods designed for non-medical professionals to administer medical procedures, and gathering data or making provisions for the gathering of data to learn from executions gone wrong. When individual prisoners are executed under these conditions, states are conducting research on them. Conducting research or experimentation on prisoners in the process of reform is (...) problematic because it violates ethical frameworks and state laws. The Supreme Court has recently taken up the challenge of elucidating the standard for determining the constitutionality of lethal injection. If the Court suggests an approach to lethal injection reform that is akin to some of the more thoughtful and cautious approaches other courts have proposed, the Court's decision may also contravene state laws or ethical precepts regarding research with prisoners. Thus, this paper provides important limitations on the kinds of reform that may be permissible and outlines the open questions that must be addressed before it can be determined whether the risks and uncertainties involved in lethal injection can be remedied. (shrink)

The goal of my comments regarding the case study of Eve Hyde — presented in the introduction of this symposium — is not first and foremost to resolve the conflict between individual autonomy and medical paternalism regarding non-consensual psychiatric treatment. Instead, the goal is to step back far enough from what is generally accepted as the morally appropriate basis for non-consensual psychiatric treatment, including involuntary hospitalization and medication, and to ask very basic questions about when patients may permissibly be treated (...) without their consent. My goal, in short, is Socratic — to explore aspects of what we take for granted in order better to determine whether we ought to take them for granted. Commentators routinely urge that it is morally permissible forcibly to treat psychiatric patients, such as Eve Hyde, in order to preserve the patient’s best interests and restore the patient’s autonomy. Such arguments typically specify duties of beneficence toward others, while appreciating personal autonomy as a positive value to be weighed against other factors. (shrink)

Moving from simple to increasingly sophisticated candidate cases, I argue against the idea that there can be cases in which, due to no fault of the agent or to any ambiguity regarding how things will go depending on which option is selected, all the options available to an agent are rationally impermissible. Whether there are cases that fit this bill—qualifying as what I will label no-fault-or-ambiguity rational dilemmas—depends on the characteristics of conclusive reasons. My reasoning leads me to the view (...) that a key feature of conclusive reasons is that they capture or ground overall assessments that are relationally significant. I then argue that, while this view does not itself conflict with the most sophisticated candidate cases of purported dilemmas of the relevant sort, following the spirit of the view does lead to a conclusion that blocks counting even these cases as ones in which there is a conclusive reason against every available option. My conclusion is that there is no solid basis for the view that there are cases of no-fault-or-ambiguity rational dilemmas. (shrink)

In contrast to eminent historical philosophers, almost all contemporary philosophers maintain that slavery is impermissible. In the enthusiasm of the Enlightenment, a number of arguments gained currency which were intended to show that contractual slavery is not merely impermissible but impossible. Those arguments are influential today in moral, legal and political philosophy, even in discussions that go beyond the issue of contractual slavery. I explain what slavery is, giving historical and other illustrations. I examine the arguments for the impossibility of (...) contractual slavery propounded in the Enlightenment and their offspring expounded in recent writings, including those by Barnett, Cassirer, Ellerman, Rawls, Roberts-Thomson, Satz and Steiner. I show that they involve confusions between abilities and rights, free will and freedom, directing and doing, what may be true sequentially and what may be true simultaneously, default rights and universal rights, impermissibility and impossibility, and metaphorical and literal uses of language. (shrink)

Almost everyone in the philosophical literature, no matter their account of racism, adopts one of two views about the immorality of racist conduct. They either take it to be a function of the attitudes that issue in it or of the societally-imposed harms that result from it. This article seeks to show that neither view captures the complete picture. To properly account for the full range of cases, it helps to invoke a distinction between two senses of “immoral”: impermissible and (...) blameworthy. Doing so allows us to appreciate that racism is necessarily immoral, just not always in the same way. (shrink)

The set with the following members is inconsistent: F-Lesson: A person can be blameworthy for performing an action even though she cannot refrain from performing it. Equivalence: ‘Ought not’ is equivalent to ‘impermissible.’ OIC: ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’ and ‘ought not’ implies ‘can refrain from.’ BRI: Necessarily, one is morally blameworthy for doing something only if it is overall morally impermissible for one to do it. Since Equivalence seems unassailable, one can escape the inconsistency by renouncing any one of the other (...) members. I first argue against BRI and then motivate a replacement for it that ties blameworthiness to belief in impermissibility. (shrink)

Ethicists generally agree that there are supererogatory acts, which are morally good, but not morally obligatory. It is sometimes claimed that, in addition to supererogatory acts, there are suberogatory acts, which are morally bad, but not morally impermissible. According to Julia Driver (1992), the distinction between impermissible acts and suberogatory acts is legitimate and unjustly neglected by ethicists. She argues that certain cases are best explained in terms of the suberogatory. Hallie Rose Liberto (2012) denies the suberogatory on the grounds (...) that Driver's cases can be explained without invoking it. In order to make good on this claim, Liberto suggests an account of moral impermissibility that purportedly eliminates the need to posit suberogatory acts. We defend the suberogatory. Our defense is twofold. First, we argue that Liberto's account of moral impermissibility is dubious. Second, we attempt to show that it is possible to construct an argument against the supererogatory that is exactly analogous to Liberto's argument against the suberogatory. The upshot is that if the suberogatory is denied for the reasons that Liberto suggests, then the supererogatory should be denied as well. Few ethicists, however, are willing to deny the supererogatory. (shrink)

It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does not justify an (...) exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

It is morally impermissible for parents, educators, and others to initiate children into religious belief systems. That is the provocative conclusion of John Tillson’s Children, Religion and the Ethics of Influence—the book which is the focus of the present symposium. This introduction briefly summarizes the book’s arguments together with the criticisms levelled against them. The symposium includes critiques by Matthew Clayton, Anca Gheaus, Michael Hand, David Lewin, and Ruth Wareham. Clayton and Wareham propose alternative bases for prohibiting religious initiation, whilst (...) Hand, Lewin, and Gheaus propose conditions under which religious initiation may be permissible. The symposium concludes with a rejoinder by Tillson. (shrink)

It is widely accepted among medical ethicists that competence is a necessary condition for informed consent. In this view, if a patient is incompetent to make a particular treatment decision, the decision must be based on an advance directive or made by a substitute decision-maker on behalf of the patient. We call this the competence model. According to a recent report of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of (...) Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) presents a wholesale rejection of the competence model. The High Commissioner here adopts the interpretation of article 12 proposed by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. On this interpretation, CRPD article 12 renders it impermissible to deny persons with mental disabilities the right to make treatment decisions on the basis of impaired decision-making capacity and demands the replacement of all regimes of substitute decision-making by supported decision-making. In this paper, we explicate six adverse consequences of CRPD article 12 for persons with mental disabilities and propose an alternative way forward. The proposed model combines the strengths of the competence model and supported decision-making. (shrink)

impermissibly favorable to Jews? -- Humanist origins -- Humanism at court -- Discovery of Hebrew -- Johannes Pfefferkorn and the campaign against Jews -- Who saved the Jewish books? -- Inquisition -- Trial at Rome and the Christian debates -- The Luther affair -- As if the first martyr of Hebrew letters.

In 2008, researchers created human three-dimensional neural tissue – known as the pioneering work of “brain organoids.” In recent years, some researchers have transplanted human brain organoids into animal brains for applicational purposes. With these experiments have come many ethical concerns. It is thus an urgent task to clarify what is ethically permissible and impermissible in brain organoid research. This paper seeks (1) to sort out the ethical issues related to brain organoid research and application and (2) to propose future (...) directions for additional ethical consideration and policy debates in the field. Toward (1), this paper first outlines the current state of brain organoid research, and then briefly responds to previously raised related ethical concerns. Looking next at anticipated scientific developments in brain organoid research, we will discuss (i) ethical issues related to in vitro brain organoids, (ii) ethical issues raised when brain organoids form complexes or have relationships with other entities, and (iii) ethical issues of research ethics and governance. Finally, in pursuit of (2), we propose research policies that are mindful of the ethics of brain organoid research and application and also suggest the need for an international framework for research and application of brain organoids. (shrink)

On the one hand, bluffing in business seems to bear a strong resemblance to lying, and therefore might be thought to be prima facie impermissible. On the other, many people have the intuition that bluffing is an appropriate and morally permissible negotiating tactic. Given this tension, what is the moral standing of bluffing in business? In this paper, I will consider influential accounts of both Albert Carr and Thomas Carson, and I will present my criticisms thereof. Drawing off of these (...) accounts, I will then develop my own argument as to why bluffing in business is morally permissible, which will be that bluffing is a practice that should be endorsed by all rational negotiators. (shrink)