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In Better than Human?, noted bioethicist Allen Buchanan grapples
with the ethical dilemmas of the medical revolution now upon us.
Biomedical enhancements, he writes, can make us smarter, have
better memories, be stronger, quicker, have more stamina, live much
longer, be more resistant to disease and to the frailties of aging,
and enjoy richer emotional lives. They can even improve our
character, or at least strengthen our powers of self-control. In
spite of the benefits that biomedical enhancements may bring, many
people instinctively reject them. Some worry that we will lose
something important-our appreciation for what we have or what makes
human beings distinctively valuable. To think clearly about
enhancement, Buchanan argues, we have to acknowledge that nature is
a mixed bag and that our species has many "design flaws". We should
be open to the possibility of becoming better than human, while
never underestimating the risk that our attempts to improve may
backfire.
In The Kindness of Strangers, Deni Elliott examines ethically
questionable situations that have arisen in response to
institutional dependency on external benefactors. Major concerns
analyzed include: The increased professionalism of fundraising and
of donating, an increased willingness of institutions to cater to
the demands of donors, creation of dual roles for faculty, students
and staff when they are fundraisers and donors in addition to
playing their primary roles in higher education,
business-university research partnerships that put business values
in conflict of academic values and mission, commercialization of
student athletics, and endowment use and investment. Supplemented
by a series of carefully selected articles, The Kindness of
Strangers needs to be read by anyone who is concerned by higher
education's increasing dependency on corporate and individual
donors.
A provocative and probing argument showing how human beings can for
the first time in history take charge of their moral fate. Is
tribalism-the political and cultural divisions between Us and
Them-an inherent part of our basic moral psychology? Many
scientists link tribalism and morality, arguing that the evolved
"moral mind" is tribalistic. Any escape from tribalism, according
to this thinking, would be partial and fragile, because it goes
against the grain of our nature. In this book, Allen Buchanan
offers a counterargument: the moral mind is highly flexible,
capable of both tribalism and deeply inclusive moralities,
depending on the social environment in which the moral mind
operates. We can't be morally tribalistic by nature, Buchanan
explains, because quite recently there has been a remarkable shift
away from tribalism and toward inclusiveness, as growing numbers of
people acknowledge that all human beings have equal moral status,
and that at least some nonhumans also have moral standing. These
are what Buchanan terms the Two Great Expansions of moral regard.
And yet, he argues, moral progress is not inevitable but depends
partly on whether we have the good fortune to develop as moral
agents in a society that provides the right conditions for
realizing our moral potential. But morality need not depend on
luck. We can take charge of our moral fate by deliberately shaping
our social environment-by engaging in scientifically informed
"moral institutional design." For the first time in human history,
human beings can determine what sort of morality is predominant in
their societies and what kinds of moral agents they are.
This volume examines comparatively the views and principles of seven prominent ethical traditions on the issue of the making of state and national boundaries. The traditions represented are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, natural law, Confucianism, liberalism and international law. Each contributor is an expert within one of these traditions and demonstrates how that tradition can handle the five dominant methods of altering state and national boundaries: conquest, settlement, purchase, inheritance and secession. Readers range from upper-level undergraduates to scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and comparative religion.
Written by four internationally renowned bioethicists, From Chance to Choice is the first systematic treatment of the fundamental ethical issues underlying the application of genetic technologies to human beings. Probing the implications of the remarkable advances in genetics, the authors ask how should these affect our understanding of distributive justice, equality of opportunity, the rights and obligations as parents, the meaning of disability, and the role of the concept of human nature in ethical theory and practice. The book offers a historical context to contemporary debate over the use of these technologies by examining the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition, appendices explain the nature of genetic causation, gene-environment interaction, and expose widespread misconceptions of genetic determinism, as well as outlining the nature of the ethical analysis used in the book. The questions raised in this book will be of interest to any reflective reader concerned about science and society and the rapid development of biotechnology, as well as to professionals in such areas as philosophy, bioethics, medical ethics, health management, law, and political science.
This is the first attempt to provide an in-depth moral assessment
of the heart of the modern human rights enterprise: the system of
international legal human rights. It is international human rights
law-not any philosophical theory of moral human rights or any
"folk" conception of moral human rights-that serves as the lingua
franca of modern human rights practice. Yet contemporary
philosophers have had little to say about international legal human
rights. They have tended to assume, rather than to argue, that
international legal human rights, if morally justified, must mirror
or at least help realize moral human rights. But this assumption is
mistaken. International legal human rights, like many other legal
rights, can be justified by several different types of moral
considerations, of which the need to realize a corresponding moral
right is only one. Further, this volume shows that some of the most
important international legal human rights cannot be adequately
justified by appeal to corresponding moral human rights. The
problem is that the content of these international legal human
rights-the full set of correlative duties-is much broader than can
be justified by appealing to the morally important interests of any
individual. In addition, it is necessary to examine the legitimacy
of the institutions that create, interpret, and implement
international human rights law and to defend the claim that
international human rights law should "trump" the domestic law of
even the most admirable constitutional democracies.
For several decades the work of Joel Feinberg has been the most
influential in legal, political, and social philosophy in the
English-speaking world. This volume honors that body of work by
presenting fifteen original essays, many of them by leading legal
and political philosophers, that explore the problems that have
engaged Feinberg over the years. Among the topics covered are
issues of autonomy, responsibility, and liability. It will be a
collection of interest to anyone working in moral, legal, or
political philosophy.
Living in the age of American "hyperpower" the relevance of both
international law and conflict resolution have been called into
question. Hannum and Babbitt, highly respected practitioners in
these respective fields, have collected a series of experts to
examine the relationship between these two disciplines. Focusing on
self-determination, a particularly thorny issue of international
law, Negotiating Self-Determination takes an in-depth look at what
an understanding of conflict analysis can bring to this field and
the impact that international legal norms could potentially have on
the work of conflict resolvers in self-determination conflicts.
Allen Buchanan's philosophical writings consider the goals of
secessionists, Erin Jenne uses quantitative analysis to explain the
conditions under which secessionist movements come into existence,
and Anke Hoeffler and Paul Collier study the economic basis for
secessionist movements. This well-researched volume looks beyond
the international law and policy fields of the editors to
philosophy, anthropology, political science, and economy to assist
in gaining a more complete understanding of self-determination and
conflict prevention.
Living in the age of American 'hyperpower' the relevance of both
international law and conflict resolution have been called into
question. Hannum and Babbitt, highly respected practitioners in
these respective fields, have collected a series of experts to
examine the relationship between these two disciplines. Focusing on
self-determination, a particularly thorny issue of international
law, Negotiating Self-Determination takes an in-depth look at what
an understanding of conflict analysis can bring to this field and
the impact that international legal norms could potentially have on
the work of conflict resolvers in self-determination conflicts.
Allen Buchanan's philosophical writings consider the goals of
secessionists, Erin Jenne uses quantitative analysis to explain the
conditions under which secessionist movements come into existence,
and Anke Hoeffler and Paul Collier study the economic basis for
secessionist movements. This well-researched volume looks beyond
the international law and policy fields of the editors to
philosophy, anthropology, political science, and economy to assist
in gaining a more complete understanding of self-determination and
conflict prevention.
This volume examines comparatively the views and principles of seven prominent ethical traditions on the issue of the making of state and national boundaries. The traditions represented are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, natural law, Confucianism, liberalism and international law. Each contributor is an expert within one of these traditions and demonstrates how that tradition can handle the five dominant methods of altering state and national boundaries: conquest, settlement, purchase, inheritance and secession. Readers range from upper-level undergraduates to scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and comparative religion.
For several decades the work of Joel Feinberg has been the most influential in legal, political, and social philosophy in the English-speaking world. This volume honors that body of work by presenting fifteen original essays, many of them by leading legal and political philosophers, that explore the problems that have engaged Feinberg over the years. Among the topics covered are issues of autonomy, responsibility, and liability. It will be a collection of interest to anyone working in moral, legal, or political philosophy.
In The Evolution of Moral Progress, Allen Buchanan and Russell
Powell resurrect the project of explaining moral progress. They
avoid the errors of earlier attempts by drawing on a wide range of
disciplines including moral and political philosophy, evolutionary
biology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, history, and
sociology. Their focus is on one especially important type of moral
progress: gains in inclusivity. They develop a framework to explain
progress in inclusivity to also illuminate moral regression-the
return to exclusivist and "tribalistic" moral beliefs and
attitudes. Buchanan and Powell argue those tribalistic moral
responses are not hard-wired by evolution in human nature. Rather,
human beings have an evolved "adaptively plastic" capacity for both
inclusion and exclusion, depending on environmental conditions.
Moral progress in the dimension of inclusivity is possible, but
only to the extent that human beings can create environments
conducive to extending moral standing to all human beings and even
to some animals. Buchanan and Powell take biological evolution
seriously, but with a critical eye, while simultaneously
recognizing the crucial role of culture in creating environments in
which moral progress can occur. The book avoids both biological and
cultural determinism. Unlike earlier theories of moral progress,
their theory provides a naturalistic account that is grounded in
the best empirical work, and unlike earlier theories it does not
present moral progress as inevitable or as occurring in definite
stages; but rather it recognizes the highly contingent and fragile
character of moral improvement.
In this volume Allen Buchanan collects ten of his most influential
essays on justice and healthcare and connects the concerns of
bioethicists with those of political philosophers, focusing not
just on the question of which principles of justice in healthcare
ought to be implemented, but also on the question of the legitimacy
of institutions through which they are implemented. With an
emphasis on the institutional implementation of justice in
healthcare, Buchanan pays special attention to the relationship
between moral commitments and incentives.
The volume begins with an exploration of the difficulties of
specifying the content of the right to healthcare and of
identifying those agents and institutions that are obligated to
help ensure that the right thus specified is realized, and then
progresses to an examination of the problems that arise in attempts
to implement the right through appropriate institutions. In the
last two essays Buchanan pursues the central issues of justice in
healthcare at the global level, exploring the idea of healthcare as
a human right and the problem of assigning responsibilities for
ameliorating global health disparities.
Taken together, the essays provide a unique and consistent position
on a wide range of issues, including conflicts of interest in
clinical practice and the claims of medical professionalism, the
nature and justification for the right to health care, the
relationship between responsibility for healthcare and the nature
of the healthcare system, and the problem of global health
disparities. The result is an approach to justice in healthcare
that will facilitate more productive interaction between the
normative analysis of philosophers and the policy work of
economists, lawyers, and political scientists.
Institutionalizing the Just War offers a new approach to thinking
about the ethics of large-scale armed conflict. Allen Buchanan
takes a unique approach to just war theory, arguing that theories
that are content with articulating abstract moral norms specifying
right acts of war-making, provide too little guidance for
responding to the real world moral problems of war. Buchanan here
instead takes an institutional approach, combining moral analysis
with data on how institutions are designed, and providing concrete
proposals for morally progressive innovations at the institutional
level. Buchanan's institutional approach in this book - which is
based on the revision of previously published essays - is singular
and will be of great interest not just to scholars of just war
theory, but anyone interested in the morality of war within
political science, political philosophy, philosophy of
international law, and public policy.
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