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Applied Ethics

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Philosophy

An Ethical Framework For Library Publishing, Jason Boczar, Nina Collins, Rebel Cummings-Sauls, Terri Fishel, Valerie Horton, Harrison W. Inefuku, Sarah Melton, Joshua Neds-Fox, Wendy C. Robertson, Charlotte Roh, Melanie Schlosser, Jaclyn Sipovic, Camille Thomas, Monica Westin Oct 2019

An Ethical Framework For Library Publishing, Jason Boczar, Nina Collins, Rebel Cummings-Sauls, Terri Fishel, Valerie Horton, Harrison W. Inefuku, Sarah Melton, Joshua Neds-Fox, Wendy C. Robertson, Charlotte Roh, Melanie Schlosser, Jaclyn Sipovic, Camille Thomas, Monica Westin

Wendy C Robertson

Inspired by discussions at the 2017 Library Publishing Forum, An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing 1.0 was created by the members of the Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Task Force, with the assistance of many community members who served as peer reviewers and workshop participants, as well as the staff of the Educopia Institute. The Framework introduces library publishers to important ethical considerations in a variety of areas and provides concrete recommendations and resources for ethical scholarly publishing. As the version number in the title suggests, the document is meant to evolve - to be updated and expanded over time. …

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Fish Sentience Denial: Muddy Moral Water, Robert C. Jones Sep 2019

Fish Sentience Denial: Muddy Moral Water, Robert C. Jones

Robert C. Jones, PhD

Sneddon et al. (2018) authoritatively summarize the compelling and overwhelming evidence for fish sentience, while methodically dismantling one rather emblematic research paper (Diggles et al. 2017) intended to discount solid evidence of fish sentience (Lopez-Luna et al. 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, & 2017d). I explore the larger practical moral contexts within which these debates take place and argue that denials of animal sentience are really moral canards.

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Application Of Fraser’S “Practical” Ethic In Veterinary Practice, And Its Compatibility With A “One Welfare” Framework, Anne Fawcett, Siobhan Mullan, Paul Mcgreevy Jul 2019

Application Of Fraser’S “Practical” Ethic In Veterinary Practice, And Its Compatibility With A “One Welfare” Framework, Anne Fawcett, Siobhan Mullan, Paul Mcgreevy

Paul McGreevy, PhD

Ethically challenging situations are common in veterinary practice, and they may be a source of moral stress, which may in turn impact the welfare of veterinarians. Despite recognition of the importance of ethical reasoning, some veterinary students may struggle to apply theoretical ethical frameworks. Fraser developed a “practical” ethic consisting of four principles that can be applied to ethically challenging situations. We apply Fraser’s “practical” ethic to three cases that veterinarians may encounter: animal hoarding, animal neglect, and treatment of wildlife. We argue that Fraser’s “practical” ethic is consistent with a One Welfare framework, and may have increasing currency for …

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Legal And Ethical Considerations For Policing Nongovernmental Actors In Space, Sara Langston Jun 2019

Legal And Ethical Considerations For Policing Nongovernmental Actors In Space, Sara Langston

Sara Langston


The increasing scope of private actors engaging in the use and exploration of outer space, now and in the future, is proffering a myriad of activities directed towards and conducted in outer space. These include human space transportation, space resource utilization, space tourism, space stations and prospective human settlements, as well as an influx of supporting space-based assets and platforms. Consequently, it is likely that as access to space opens and the number of multi-national/ multi-cultural space actors expands, the interests and concerns for protecting the rights, safety and security of these nongovernmental entities and their agents will become a …

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Legal Personhood For Artificial Intelligence, Tyler Jaynes Jun 2019

Legal Personhood For Artificial Intelligence, Tyler Jaynes

Tyler Jaynes

The concept of artificial intelligence is not new nor is the notion that it should be granted legal protections given its influence on human activity. What is new, on a relative scale, is the notion that artificial intelligence can possess citizenship—a concept reserved only for humans, as it presupposes the idea of possessing civil duties and protections. Where there are several decades’ worth of writing on the concept of the legal status of computational artificial artefacts in the USA and elsewhere, it is surprising that law makers internationally have come to a standstill to protect our silicon brainchildren. In this …

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Guantánamo Bodies: Law, Media, And Biopower, Cary Federman, Dave Holmes Apr 2019

Guantánamo Bodies: Law, Media, And Biopower, Cary Federman, Dave Holmes

Cary Federman

The idea of the Guantánamo detainee as a Muselmann, the lowest order of concentration camp inmates, contains within it important implications for the new understanding of sovereignty in the era of Guantánamo, in an age of exception. The purpose of this article is to explain the status of those who are detained at Guantánamo Bay. Stated broadly, in assessing that status, we will emphasize the connection between the altered meaning of sovereignty that has accompanied the placing of prisoners in an American penal colony in Cuba and the biopolitical status of the prisoners who reside there. More particularly, we …

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An Uber Ethical Dilemma: Examining The Social Issues At Stake, Florence Chee Mar 2019

An Uber Ethical Dilemma: Examining The Social Issues At Stake, Florence Chee

Florence Chee

This paper aims to engage with the social issues emerging from the increasing reliance upon app-driven services, as they pertain to precarious labor and ethical standpoints in a digital era. Popular ride services such as Uber have been lauded for bringing much needed transportation services that are superior to expensive taxis or unpleasant or inaccessible public transit.

Design/methodology/approach

As a result of over three years of ongoing research and analysis, this paper is a comprehensive assessment of a number of social issues facing the integration of practices both signified and enacted in an economy driven by apps such as Uber. …

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Towards Quantifiable Metrics Warranting Industry-Wide Corporate Death Penalties, Joshua M. Pearce Mar 2019

Towards Quantifiable Metrics Warranting Industry-Wide Corporate Death Penalties, Joshua M. Pearce

Joshua M. Pearce

In the singular search for profits, some corporations inadvertently kill humans. If this routinely occurs throughout an industry, it may no longer serve a net positive social purpose for society and should be eliminated. This article provides a path to an objective quantifiable metric for determining when an entire industry warrants the corporate death penalty. First, a theoretical foundation is developed with minimum assumptions necessary to provide evidence for corporate public purposes. This is formed into an objective quantifiable metric with publicly-available data and applied to two case studies in the U.S.: the tobacco and coal mining industries. The results …

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Hate Speech As Theater, Adam White Jul 2018

Hate Speech As Theater, Adam White

Adam White

More public and philosophical attention has recently been given to hate speech.  Hate speech does not merely hurt feelings; it is public communication that implies that the targeted group does not merit the constitutional protections assured the speaker.  Hate speech poses a riddle given the liberal commitment to freedom of speech independent of content. 

This paper argues that philosophers misdiagnose hate speech.  The novel claim is that hate speech is a tactic in a game being played by the speakers.  The game’s prize is the same kind of personal buzz felt by effective theater actors.  Winning requires manipulating the audience’s …

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Crime Futures Market, Adam White Jul 2018

Crime Futures Market, Adam White

Adam White

Responding to the legally guilty is typically presented as a choice between incarceration and rehabilitation.  This paper suggests a third option: preemptive rehabilitation.  The argument presents an innovative institutional approach and a unique moral justification.  The vision is a crime futures market that transfers the risk of potential crime away from undeserving victims and into the portfolios of willing investors.  Instead of taxpayers paying exclusively for prisons, the proposal would allow young adults to sign contracts to not get involved in crime, but pay the award only upon their future success.  Because the contracts represent a future payment they are …

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Term Accountability, Adam White Jun 2018

Term Accountability, Adam White

Adam White

Democratic constitutions allow citizens to hold officeholders accountable via election. Legislative elections are typically held either by the calendar or at the legislature’s own discretion, i.e., “no confidence”. But both are inferior to a third option: having citizens decide when the next election will be. This procedure, “Term Accountability”, optimally aligns policymaker motivations with citizen interests. Ideally, pathological legislatures would serve short terms while productive legislatures would serve long terms.

Our generation is familiar with contesting and perfecting constitutional practices as they pertain to citizen rights. But there is an apparent intellectual bias against institutional revision. This supports a presumption …

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Corruption Cop, Adam White Jun 2018

Corruption Cop, Adam White

Adam White

Corruption is a primary descriptor of politics, and of course corruption is bad on its merits. But what is wrong about the practice it is the lack of an adequate response. Assume then that corruption persists, not primarily because of bad moral character on the part of officers, but because of poor constitutional design.

It is curious however that contemporary constitutional theory resists innovation. This paper takes up the challenge by proposing a new, fourth constitutional branch and office: a “corruption cop”. A corruption cop possesses the exclusive authority to remove corrupt officers from public office.

The authority to remove …

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Can One Love The Distant Other? Empathy, Affiliation, And Cosmopolitanism, Gregory R. Peterson Nov 2017

Can One Love The Distant Other? Empathy, Affiliation, And Cosmopolitanism, Gregory R. Peterson

Gregory Peterson

An ongoing debate in political and moral philosophy concerns the nature of international obligations. While cosmopolitans argue that duties of justice are independent of national borders, statists argue otherwise, sometimes basing their account on the limitations of our empathic concern, a line of argument found much earlier in Adam Smith. Although critics argue that empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality, and although statists imply that psychological limitations of the kind that would be based in empathy prevent the realization of commitments to distant others beyond humanitarian aid, I argue that both these views are incorrect. While the possession …

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Fortifying The Self-Defense Justification Of Punishment, Zac Cogley Sep 2017

Fortifying The Self-Defense Justification Of Punishment, Zac Cogley

Zac Cogley

David Boonin has recently advanced several challenges to the self-defense justification of punishment. Boonin argues that the self-defense justification of punishment justifies punishing the innocent, justifies disproportionate punishment, cannot account for mitigating excuses, and does not justify intentionally harming offenders as we do when we punish them. In this paper, I argue that the self-defense justification, suitably understood, can avoid all of these problems. To help demonstrate the self-defense theory’s attraction, I also develop some contrasts between the self-defense justification, Warren Quinn’s better known ‘auto-retaliator’ argument, and desert-based justifications of punishment. In sum, I show that the self-defense justification of …

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You're Probably Not Really A Speciesist, Travis Timmerman Dec 2016

You're Probably Not Really A Speciesist, Travis Timmerman

Travis Timmerman

I defend the bold claim that self-described speciesists are not really speciesists. Of course, I do not deny that self-described speciesists would assent to generic speciesist claims (e.g. Humans matter more than animals). The conclusion I draw is more nuanced. My claim is that such generic speciesist beliefs are inconsistent with other, more deeply held, beliefs of self-described speciesists. Crucially, once these inconsistencies are made apparent, speciesists will reject the generic speciesist beliefs because they are absurd by the speciesists' own lights.

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Sometimes There Is Nothing Wrong With Letting A Child Drown, Travis Timmerman Dec 2014

Sometimes There Is Nothing Wrong With Letting A Child Drown, Travis Timmerman

Travis Timmerman

Peter Singer argues that we’re obligated to donate our entire expendable income to aid organizations. One premiss of his argument is "If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so." Singer defends this by noting that commonsense morality requires us to save a child we find drowning in a shallow pond. I argue that Singer’s Drowning Child thought experiment doesn’t justify this premiss. I offer my own Drowning Children thought experiment, which should reveal that commonsense morality entails that premiss two is actually false.

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