Privacy is a puzzling concept. From the backyard to the bedroom, everyday life gives rise to an abundance of privacy claims. In the legal sphere, privacy is invoked with respect to issues including abortion, marriage, and homosexuality. Yet privacy is surrounded by a mire of theoretical debate. Certain philosophers argue that privacy is neither conceptually nor morally distinct from other interests, while numerous legal scholars argue that constitutional and tort privacy law protect merely a disparate melange of interests. Inness offers an escape from this mire. She suggests that intimacy is the core of privacy, including privacy appeals in tort and constitutional law. Conceptually, privacy's protection of intimate decisions distinguishes it from other legal interests, such as liberty from undue state intervention. Intimacy is also the source of privacy's distinctive value. Privacy embodies our respect for people as creators of their own plans of intimacy and of their own emotional destinies. By arguing that intimacy is the core of privacy, Inness undermines privacy skepticism, while also providing a new account of privacy that explains our everyday and legal privacy disagreements, including the controversial constitutional right to privacy.

This book takes a multi-disciplinary critique of economics' first principles: the fundamental and inter-related structuring assumptions that underlie the neo-classical paradigm. These assumptions, that economic agents are rational, self-interested individuals, continue to influence the teaching of economics, research agendas and policy analyses. The book argues that both the theoretical understanding of the economy and the actual working of real-world market economies diminish the scope for thinking about the relation between ethics, economics, and the economy. It highlights how market economies may "crowd out" ethical behavior and our evaluation of them elides ethical reflection. The book calls for a more pluralistic and richer approach to economic theory, one that allows ample room for ethical considerations. It provides insight into understanding human motivations and human flourishing and how a good economy requires reflection on the ethical relations between the self, world, and time.

Known terrorists are often targeted for death by the governments of Israel and the United States. Several thousand have been killed by drones or by operatives on the ground in the last twenty years. Is this form of killing justified, when hundreds or thousands of lives are possibly at risk at the hands of a known terrorist? Is there anything about it that should disturb us? Ethically-sound and practical answers to these questions are more difficult to come by than it might seem. Renowned political theorists Jeremy Waldron and Tamar Meisels here defend two competing positions on the legitimacy of targeted killing as used in counterterrorism strategy in this riveting and essential for-and-against book. The volume begins with a joint introduction, briefly setting out the terms of discussion, and presenting a short historical overview of the practice: what targeted killing is, and how it has been used in which conflicts and by whom. It then hones in on killings themselves and the element of targeting. The authors tackle difficult and infinitely complex subjects, for example the similarities and differences between targeted killing of terrorists and ordinary killings in combat, and they ask whether targeted killing can be regarded as a law enforcement strategy, or as a hybrid between combat and law enforcement. They compare the practice of targeted killing with assassination and the use of death squads. And they consider the likelihood that targeted killing has been or will be abused against insurgents, criminals, or political opponents. Meisels analyzes the assassination by Israeli operatives of nuclear scientists working for regimes hostile to Israel. Meisels and Waldron carefully consider whether this sort of killing can ever be justified in terms of the danger it, in theory, averts. The conclusions drawn are at once as surprising as they are insightful, cautioning us against a world in which targeted killing is the norm as it proliferates rapidly. This is essential reading not only for students of political and war theory and military personnel, but for anyone interested in or concerned by the future of targeted killing.

While rights are indispensable to our moral and political thinking, they are also mysterious and controversial. What is it for someone to have a moral right to something? What kinds of creatures are capable of having rights? Which rights do they have? As long as these questions remain unanswered, rights will remain vulnerable to sceptical doubts. This book provides the moral foundation necessary to dispel these doubts. The author does this by constructing a coherent concept of a moral right and a workable substantive theory of rights. The former arises from his analysis of moral rights as morally justified conventional rights, while the necessary justificatory framework is supplied by a consequentialist moral theory.

This title contains original essays on the subject of evil in international relations. Backlist potential: With violence and tension serving as constants in the realm of international relations, the topic of the book will be pertinent to discussions of past events, current affairs, and future concerns. Lack of Competition: While there are numerous books that cover ethics in international relations, none of these competitors focus specifically on evil in relation to the international community. This book offers original essays on the subject of evil in international relations. It considers questions of moral agency associated with the perpetration of evil acts by individuals and groups in the international sphere, and the range of ethical responses the international community has to it in the aftermath of large-scale evils.

There are at least three times as many nations as states in the world today. This book addresses some of the special challenges that arise when two or more national communities re the same (multinational) state. As a work in normative political philosophy its principal aim is to evaluate the political and institutional choices of citizens and governments in states with rival nationalist discourses and nation-building projects. The first chapter takes stock of a decade of intense philosophical and sociological debates about the nature of nations and nationalism. Norman identifies points of consensus in these debates, as well as issues that do not have to be definitively resolved in order to proceed with normative theorizing. He recommends thinking of nationalism as a form of discourse, a way of arguing and mobilizing support, and not primarily as a belief in a principle. A liberal nationalist, then, is someone who uses nationalist arguments, or appeals to nationalist sentiments, in order to rally support for liberal policies. The rest of the book is taken up with the three big political and institutional choices in multinational states. First, what can political actors and governments legitimately do to shape citizens' national identity or identities? This is the core question in the ethics of nation-building, or what Norman calls national engineering. Second, how can minority and majority national communities each be given an adequate degree of self-determination, including equal rights to carry out nation-building projects, within a democratic federal state? Finally, even in a world where most national minorities cannot have their own state, how should the constitutions of multinational federations regulate secessionist politics within the rule of law and the ideals of democracy? More than a decade after Yael Tamir's ground-breaking Liberal Nationalism, Norman finds that these three great practical and institutional questions have still rarely been addressed within a comprehensive normative theory of nationalism.

Most people (including moral philosophers), when faced with the fact that some of their cherished moral views lead up to the Repugnant Conclusion, feel that they have to revise their moral outlook. However, it is a moot question as to how this should be done. It is not an easy thing to say how one should avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, without having to face even more serious implications from one's basic moral outlook. Several such attempts are presented in this volume. This is the first volume devoted entirely to the cardinal problem of modern population ethics, known as 'The Repugnant Conclusion'.

This book is a must for (moral) philosophers with an interest in population ethics.

In a world permeated by digital technology, engineering is involved in every aspect of human life. Engineers address a wider range of design problems than ever before, raising new questions and challenges regarding their work, as boundaries between engineering, management, politics, education and art disappear in the face of comprehensive socio-technical systems. It is therefore necessary to review our understanding of engineering practice, expertise and responsibility. This book advances the idea that the future of engineering will not be driven by a static view of a closed discipline, but rather will result from a continuous dialogue between different stakeholders involved in the design and application of technical artefacts. Based on papers presented at the 2016 conference of the forum for Philosophy, Engineering and Technology (fPET) in Nuremberg, Germany, the book features contributions by philosophers, engineers and managers from academia and industry, who discuss current and upcoming issues in engineering from a wide variety of different perspectives. They cover topics such as problem solving strategies and value-sensitive design, experimentation and simulation, engineering knowledge and education, interdisciplinary collaboration, sustainability, risk and privacy. The different contributions in combination draw a comprehensive picture of efforts worldwide to come to terms with engineering, its foundations in philosophy, the ethical problems it causes, and its effect on the ongoing development of society.

Repression receives little attention in philosophical literature. This study of cases of repression that inhibit an agent's deliberative access to his reasons argues that an agent cannot correctly deliberate about a reason to overcome repression as if he did so, he would already have overcome repression and so would have no reason to do so.

While procreation is ubiquitous, attention to the ethical issues involved in creating children is relatively rare. In Debating Procreation, David Benatar and David Wasserman take opposing views on this important question. David Benatar argues for the anti-natalist view that it is always wrong to bring new people into existence. He argues that coming into existence is always a serious harm and that even if it were not always so, the risk of serious harm is sufficiently great to make procreation wrong. In addition to these "philanthropic" arguments, he advances the "misanthropic" one that because humans are so defective and cause vast amounts of harm, it is wrong to create more of them. David Wasserman defends procreation against the anti-natalist challenge. He outlines a variety of moderate pro-natalist positions, which all see procreation as often permissible but never required. After criticizing the main anti-natalist arguments, he reviews those pronatalist positions. He argues that constraints on procreation are best understood in terms of the role morality of prospective parents, considers different views of that role morality, and argues for one that imposes only limited constraints based on the well-being of the future child. He then argues that the expected good of a future child and of the parent-child relationship can provide a strong justification for procreation in the face of expected adversities without giving individuals any moral reason to procreate

A fresh set of concerns face the twenty-first century British novelist. In this study of the four key novelists Zadie Smith, Nadeem Aslam, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell, the the changes in narrative approaches and critical directions of a new post-1989 fiction are explored. Close readings of the writers are informed by a range of contemporary theorists, critics and commentators to reveal the emphases of twenty-first century fiction. Terror, fear, consumerism, multinationalism, and corporatism: the terms circulating in culture and social networks are evident in Smith's faith in ethical living, Aslam's consideration of multiculturalism, the novels Kunzru builds around the politics of identity and in the importance Mitchell places on the interconnectedness of human life. By putting the emergence of a new British literary dynamic in the context of ethical as well as global contexts, this study analyzes the transformed fictional perceptions of a world no longer defined by the stand off of super powers.

This book explores the relevance of Japanese ethics for the field of ethics of technology. It covers the theories of Japanese ethicists such as Nishida Kitaro, Watsuji Tetsuro, Imamichi Tomonobu, Yuasa Yasuo, as well as more contemporary ethicists, and explores their relevance for the analysis of energy technologies, ICT, robots, and geoengineering. It features contributions from Japanese scholars, and international scholars who have applied Japanese ethics to problems in the global condition. Technological development is considered to cause new ethical issues, such as genetically modified organisms fostering monocultures, nanotechnologies causing issues of privacy, as well as health and environmental issues, robotics raising issues about the meaning of humanity, and the risks of nuclear power, as witnessed in the Fukushima disaster. At the same time, technology embodies a hope for mankind, such as ICT improving relationships between human beings and nature, and smart systems assisting humans in leading a more ethical and environmentally friendly life. This book explores these ethical issues and their impact from a Japanese perspective.

A collection of essays discussing Herbert Hart's writings on responsibility. The essays focus upon Hart's work on causation in the law and on the justification of punishment. Specific topics discussed include senses of 'responsibility', voluntariness, Mill's harm principle, mens rea, excuses, the Hart-Wootton debate, and negligence.

How should neuroscience, psychology and behavioral genetics impact legal responsibility practices? Recent findings from these fields are sometimes claimed to threaten the moral foundations of legal responsibility practices by revealing that determinism, or something like it, is true. On this account legal responsibility practices should be abolished because there is no room for such outmoded fictions as responsibility in an enlightened and scientifically-informed approach to the regulation of society. However, the chapters in this volume reject this claim and its related agenda of radical legal reform. Embracing instead a broadly compatibilist approach - one according to which responsibility hinges on psychological features of agents not on metaphysical features of the universe - this volume's authors demonstrate that the behavioral and mind sciences may impact legal responsibility practices in a range of different ways, for instance: by providing fresh insight into the nature of normal and pathological human agency, by offering updated medical and legal criteria for forensic practitioners as well as powerful new diagnostic and intervention tools and techniques with which to appraise and to alter minds, and by raising novel regulatory challenges. Science and law have been locked in a philosophical dialogue on the nature of human agency ever since the 13th century when a mental element was added to the criteria for legal responsibility. The rich story told by the 14 essays in this volume testifies that far from ending this philosophical dialogue, neuroscience, psychology and behavioral genetics have the potential to further enrich and extend this dialogue.

This book defends a form of ethical intuitionism, according to which (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know some of these truths through a kind of immediate, intellectual awareness, or "intuition"; and (iii) our knowledge of moral truths gives us reasons for action independent of our desires. The author rebuts all the major objections to this theory and shows that the alternative theories about the nature of ethics all face grave difficulties.

Questions of Judgment: Determining What's Right opens a new window on knowledge by examining judgment as exercise, an aspect that has received little notice since Aristotle. To label a contentious issue "a question of judgment" is widely regarded as a cognitive put-down that relegates judgment to the realm of the subjective. Challenging this view, F. H. Low-Beer begins by collecting what little has been said about the subject, and uncovers diverse meanings attributed to judgment generally. Identifying the critical elements of the exercise of judgment and relating them to cognitive functions, he argues for an autonomous status for judgment not traditionally acknowledged. Accepting its central place in cognition and everyday practice leads him to look at the extent to which judgment can be learned and its reciprocal relationship to character. Problems usually dealt with under the headings of practical reasoning, decision theory, and interpretation are examined in this new light. But apart from new theoretical insights, a singular contribution of Questions of Judgment lies in its examination of the overlooked place of judgment in everyday practice.

This is an examination of the contemporary ethical problems of business in a philosophical context. This book analyzes various types of capitalism, in particular, the Anglo-American type which is practised primarily in the English-speaking world, and is exemplified by the commercial and financial systems of Wall Street and the City of London. This analysis includes an examination of the corporation, the ethics of the stock market, the morality of take-overs and the problem of business and the environment.