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36Must We, the Reader and I, Make Great Sacrifices In Order to Save Starving Children?Theoria 66 (1): 115-122. 2000.Peter Unger, Living High and Letting Die. Our Illusion of Innocence (Oxford and New York Oxford University Press, 1996.
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12Ought We to Sentence People to Psychiatric Treatment?Bioethics 11 (3-4): 298-308. 1997.In principle, there seem to be three main ways in which society can react when people commit crimes under influence of mental illness. (1) The standard model. We excuse them. If they are dangerous they are detained in the interest of safety of the rest of the citizens. (2) The Swedish model. We hold them responsible for their criminal offence, we convict them, but we do not sentence them to jail. Instead, we sentence them to psychiatric treatment. (3) My model. We sentence them to jail, but offe…Read more
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55In Defence of Theory in EthicsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (4). 1995.Particularism is in vogue in ethics today. Particularism is sometimes described as the idea that what is a sufficient moral reason in one situation need not be a sufficient moral reason in another situation. Indeed, it has been held, on particularism, what is a reason for an action in one situation might be a reason against the same type of action, or might not be a reason at all, in another situation. However, this description is insufficient. Even a generalist, such as a utilitarian, may admit…Read more
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35Doom soon? (review)Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 40 (2). 1997.No abstract
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78Conservatism for our timeRoutledge. 1990.1 THE CONSERVATIVE ATTITUDE THE HARD CORE OF THE CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY What is conservatism? It may seem a hopeless task to characterize a timeless concept ...
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74Social psychology and the paradox of revolutionSouth African Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 228-238. 2007.No. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol.26 (2) 2007:228-238
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18A concrete view of intrinsic valueIn Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen & Michael J. Zimmerman (eds.), Recent Work on Intrinsic Value, Springer. pp. 207--211. 1999.
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Recension av Knut Erik Tranøy: Medisinsk etikk i vår tid (review)Norsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 1. 1993.
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163Why 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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5Moral 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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1915 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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82The 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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112Taking 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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47Non-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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6Moral 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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3In Defence of ScienceIn Dag Prawitz & Dag Westerståhl (eds.), Logic and Philosophy of Science in Uppsala, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 345--354. 1994.
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |