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172Why should we respect the privacy of donors of biological material?Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 14 (1): 43-52. 2011.Why should we respect the privacy of donors of biological material? The question is answered in the present article in general philosophical terms from the point of view of an ethics of honour, a libertarian theory of rights, a view of respect for privacy based on the idea that autonomy is of value in itself, and utilitarianism respectively. For different reasons the ethics of honour and the idea of the value of autonomy are set to one side. It surfaces that the moral rights theory and utilitari…Read more
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9Moral RealismRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1989.'...the book is very dense with ideas...arguments concerning innumerable interesting points are always worth pondering.'-THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
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67Understanding Through Explanation in EthicsTheoria 72 (3): 213-220. 2006.In morality, as in science, we seek understanding through explanation. While old fashioned non‐naturalistic moral realism renders such explanation available to us, neither moral irrealism nor moral naturalism does. This does not prove any of these theories wrong, of course. It does indicate, however, that, if we feel that we have to resort to them, there is a high intellectual price to be paid.
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2315 The genetic design of a new AmazonIn Claudio Marcello Tamburrini & Torbjörn Tännsjö (eds.), Genetic Technology and Sport: Ethical Questions, Routledge. pp. 181. 2005.
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83The morality of clinical research – a case studyJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 19 (1): 7-21. 1994.The paper is a record of a debate which took place between a group of clinicians and the author concerning a clinical trial of a drug supposed to postpone the time when HIV-patients develop AIDS. A problem with the trial was that on available (inconclusive) evidence it appeared that one patient out of 500 was killed by the drug. The question raised was whether, in view of this evidence, it was morally defensible to go on with the trial. The discussion came to involve general topics such as the a…Read more
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56Non-voluntary sterilizationJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 31 (4). 2006.We cannot easily condemn in principle a policy where people are non-voluntarily sterilized with their informed consent (where they accept sterilization, if they do, in order to avoid punishment). There are conceivable circumstances where such a policy would be morally acceptable. One such conceivable circumstance is the one (incorrectly, as it were) believed by most decent advocates of eugenics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to exist: to wit, a situation where the human race …Read more
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13Moral doubts about strict materialismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 30 (4): 451-458. 1987.It is argued that there are moral costs of our accepting ‘strict materialism’, the view that there is no such phenomenon as an irreducible first‐person point of view. If we accept strict materialism, then we have to give up some considered moral views, such as the principle of an agent‐relative morality and the hedonistic principle. The necessity involved is not logical, however, but pragmatic. Strict materialism does not imply that these moral views are false; it is our belief in them that is u…Read more
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122Taking Life: Three Theories on the Ethics of KillingOxford University Press USA. 2015.When and why is it right to kill? When and why is it wrong? Torbjörn Tännsjö examines three theories on the ethics of killing in this book: deontology, a libertarian moral rights theory, and utilitarianism. The implications of each theory are worked out for different kinds of killing: trolley-cases, murder, capital punishment, suicide, assisted death, abortion, killing in war, and the killing of animals. These implications are confronted with our intuitions in relation to them, and our moral int…Read more
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3In Defence of ScienceIn Dag Prawitz & Dag Westerståhl (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 345--354. 1994.
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Ethos ofElite SportIn Julian Savulescu & Nick Bostrom (eds.), Human Enhancement, Oxford University Press. pp. 315. 2009.
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24Aims The aim of this study was to examine if it is plausible to interpret the appearance of shame in a Swedish healthcare setting as a reaction to having one's honour wronged. Methods Using a questionnaire, we studied answers from a sample of long-term sick-listed patients who had experienced negative encounters (n=1628) and of these 64% also felt wronged. We used feeling wronged to examine emotional reactions such as feeling ashamed and made the assumption that feeling shame could be associated…Read more
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31Should we change the human genome?Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 14 (3). 1993.Should we change the human genome? The most general arguments against changing the human genome are here in focus. Distinctions are made between positive and negative gene therapy, between germ-line and somatic therapy, and between therapy where the intention is to benefit a particular individual (a future child) and where the intention is to benefit the human gene-pool.Some standard arguments against gene-therapy are dismissed. Negative somatic therapy is not controversial. Even negative, germ-…Read more
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376Applied Ethics. A DefenceEthical Theory and Moral Practice 14 (4): 397-406. 2011.Given a reasonable coherentist view of justification in ethics, applied ethics, as here conceived of, cannot only guide us, in our practical decisions, but also provide moral understanding through explanation of our moral obligations. Furthermore, applied ethics can contribute to the growth of knowledge in ethics as such. We put moral hypotheses to crucial test in individual cases. This claim is defended against the challenges from moral intuitionism and particularism
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47Responsibility and the explanatory view of consequencesPhilosophical Studies 42 (2). 1982.I conclude that the explanatory view of consequences is a fruitful one.This view accounts for our common sense view that actions are, in some sense, ‘sufficient’ for their consequences. It shows in a concrete and illuminating manner that we are or may be responsible for a vast number of events no matter how ‘innocently’ our actions may be described. It allows for the fact that individuals lack responsibility for consequences of collective actions, thereby explaining a generally felt ‘double effe…Read more
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15The secular model of the multi‐cultural stateInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 38 (1-2): 109-117. 1995.On what model should a modern multi?cultural democracy work? Spinosa et al. have argued that the political order should be sustained by a set of common values instilled in the citizens, without, however, any common rank order among these values. I argue that the multi?cultural state should rather conform to what I call the Secular Model, according to which the citizens need not share any basic values at all. On the Secular Model, people individually stick to the existing constitution (only) as l…Read more
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2Medical Enhancement and the Ethos of Elite SportIn Julian Savulescu & Nick Bostrom (eds.), Human Enhancement, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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38Conservatism. A defenceInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 36 (3): 329-334. 1993.Conservatism has an essence, or so I argue. Typical of the conservative attitude is to take what is an established fact or order to be worthy of preservation, precisely because it is well established. The question what fact is established must be answered in a context, and people of different political bent answer it differently. This is why we have left?wing as well as right?wing conservatism, sharing a common rationale. In my Conservatism for Our Time I discuss various different aspects of thi…Read more
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164On deviant causal chains - no need for a general criterionAnalysis 69 (3): 469-473. 2009.Donald Davidson brought to our attention deviant causal chains as a problem for causal theories of action. Consider Davidson's own example: " A climber might want to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope, and he might know that by loosening his hold on the rope he could rid himself of the weight and danger. This belief and want might so unnerve him as to cause him to loosen his hold, and yet it might be the case that he never chose to loosen his hold, nor did he d…Read more
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39Future People, the All Affected Principle, and the Limits of the Aggregation: Model of Democracy.”In T. Rønnow-Rasmussen B. Petersson J. Josefsson D. Egonsson (ed.), Hommage à Wlodek. Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Wlodek Rabinowicz, . 2007.
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |