•  155
    Food aid and the famine relief argument (brief return)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (3): 209-227. 2010.
    Recent publications by Pogge ( Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul: Paragon House 2008 ) and by Singer ( The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty. New York: Random House 2009 ) have resuscitated a debate over the justifiability of famine relief between Singer and ecologist Garrett Hardin in the 1970s. Yet that debate concluded with a general recognition that (a) general considerations of development ethics presented more compelling ethical problems than famine relief; and (b) s…Read more
  •  77
    Collective responsibility and professional roles
    Journal of Business Ethics 5 (2). 1986.
    Flores and Johnson (Ethics 93 No. 3 (1983) pp. 537, 545.) offer a solution to the problem of individual and collective responsibility which obscures the fundamental requirement for responsibility ascriptions, namely, moral agency. Close attention to matters of individual and collective agency provides a simple yet defensible criterion for establishing when an individual is and isn't responsible for the untoward consequences of a collective act.
  •  27
    Thinking About Thinking About Technology
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 5 (1): 29-34. 2000.
  •  31
    Borgmann on commodification: A comment on real american ethics
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21 (1): 75-84. 2008.
  •  14
    Report of the nabc ad-hoc committee on ethics
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 10 (2): 105-125. 1997.
    1. Each NABC member institutions should ensure that subject matter on ethical issues associated with food and agricultural biotechnology is systematically integrated into the curriculum of their institution. The pattern of implementation will vary a teach institution, but we expect that some combination of the following three strategies will be employed at most institutions. a) Modules Included in Basic and Applied Science Courses b) Modules Included in General Courses on Applied Ethics c) Speci…Read more
  •  25
    Animal biotechnology: How not to presume
    American Journal of Bioethics 8 (6). 2008.
    No abstract
  •  6
    Review of Risk (review)
    Environmental Ethics 9 (1): 91-95. 1987.
  •  19
    The first European Congress on Agriculturaland Food Ethics was held at Wageningen University andResearch Center (WUR), Wageningen, The Netherlands, March 4–6, 1999. This was the inaugural conference forthe newly forming European Society for Agricultural andFood Ethics – EUR-SAFE – and around two hundredpeople from across Europe (and a handful of NorthAmericans) participated. Following theCongress/conference, a small (16 people), two-dayworkshop funded in part by the US National ScienceFoundation…Read more
  •  11
    From Synthetic Bioethics to One Bioethics: A Reply to Critics
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 18 (2): 215-224. 2015.
    Replies to commentaries on my 2012 article ‘Synthetic Biology Needs a Synthetic Bioethics,’ note that I do not, in fact, call for some ‘new’ kind of ethics. The focus then and now is on integrating questions that relate to distributive justice and environmental quality more faithfully into the topics that have come to preoccupy mainstream bioethics as institutionalized in medical schools and medical research institutions
  •  90
    Ethics in agricultural research
    Journal of Agricultural Ethics 1 (1): 11-20. 1988.
    Utilitarian ethics provides a model for evaluating moral responsibility in agricultural research decisions according to the balance of costs and benefits accruing to the public at large. Given the traditions and special requirements of agricultural research planning, utilitarian theory is well adapted to serve as a starting point for evaluating these decisions, but utilitarianism has defects that are well documented in the philosophical literature. Criticisms of research decisions in agricultura…Read more
  •  22
    The Economy of the Earth (review)
    Environmental Ethics 31 (3): 327-330. 2009.
  •  105
    The agricultural ethics of biofuels: A first look (review)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21 (2): 183-198. 2008.
    A noticeable push toward using agricultural crops for ethanol production and for undertaking research to expand the range of possible biofuels began to dominate discussions of agricultural science and policy in the United States around 2005. This paper proposes two complementary philosophical approaches to examining the philosophical questions that should be posed in connection with this turn of events. One stresses a critique of underlying epistemological commitments in the scientific models be…Read more
  •  22
    Review of Acceptable Risk (review)
    Environmental Ethics 8 (3): 277-285. 1986.
  •  14
    Privacy and the Urinalysis Testing of Athletes
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 9 (1): 60-65. 1982.
    No abstract
  •  7
    Uncertainty Arguments in Environmental Issues
    Environmental Ethics 8 (1): 59-75. 1986.
    A large part of environmental policy is based upon scientific studies ofthe likely health, safety, and ecological consequences of human actions and practices. These studies, however, are frequently vulnerable to epistemological and methodological criticisms which challenge their validity. Epistemological criticisms can be used in ethical and political philosophy arguments to challenge the applicability of scientific knowledge to environmental policy, and, in turn, to challenge the democratic bas…Read more
  •  59
    Book Symposium on The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics by Paul B. Thompson: The University Press of Kentucky 2010 (review)
    with Per Sandin, Erland Mårald, Aidan Davison, and David E. Nye
    Philosophy and Technology 26 (3): 301-320. 2013.
  •  322
    Nanotechnologies that have been linked to the possibility of enhancing cognitive capabilities of human beings might also be deployed to reduce or eliminate such capabilities in non-human vertebrate animals. A surprisingly large literature on the ethics of such disenhancement has been developed in response to the suggestion that it would be an ethically defensible response to animal suffering both in medical experimentation and in industrial livestock production. However, review of this literatur…Read more
  •  18
    Consumer response to genetically altered foods has been mixed in the United States. While transgenic crops have entered the food supply with little comment, other foods, such as the bioengineered tomato, have caused considerable controversy. Objections to genetically engineered food are varied, ranging from the religious to the aesthetic. One need not endorse these concerns to conclude that food biotechnology violates procedural protections of consumer sovereignty and religious liberty. Consumer…Read more
  •  75
    The ethics of truth-telling and the problem of risk
    Science and Engineering Ethics 5 (4): 489-510. 1999.
    Risk communication poses a challenge to ordinary norms of truth-telling because it can easily mislead. Analyzing this challenge in terms of a systematic divergence between expertise and public attitudes fails to recognize how two specific features of the concept of risk play a role in managing daily affairs. First, evaluating risk always incorporates an estimate of the reliability of information. Since risk communication is an effort at providing information, audiences will naturally and appropr…Read more
  •  7
    Book Review: Albert Howard Soil and Health + Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams (review)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21 (3): 297-301. 2008.
  •  21
    Sustainability as a Norm
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 2 (2): 99-110. 1997.
  •  81
    What Happens to Environmental Philosophy in a Wicked World?
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 485-498. 2012.
    What is the significance of the wicked problems framework for environmental philosophy? In response to wicked problems, environmental scientists are starting to welcome the participation of social scientists, humanists, and the creative arts. We argue that the need for interdisciplinary approaches to wicked problems opens up a number of tasks that environmental philosophers have every right to undertake. The first task is for philosophers to explore new and promising ways of initiating philosoph…Read more
  •  20
    Presents a collection of essays written over a period of 15 years by agricultural ethicist Paul B. Thompson. The essays address the practical application of ethics to agriculture in a world faced with issues of increased yield, threatened environment, and the disappearance of the family farm.
  •  34
    Norton’s Sustainability: Some Comments on Risk and Sustainability
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 20 (4): 375-386. 2007.
    Bryan Norton’s 2005 book Sustainability describes a pragmatic approach to environmental philosophy that stresses philosophy’s role as one of mediating between scientific and ordinary language. But on two topics, Norton’s approach is not pragmatic enough. In the case of his discussion of risk, he accedes to a scientific notion that fails to acknowledge the way that ordinary usage of the word risk involves pragmatic links to human action and moral responsibility. With respect to the word sustainab…Read more
  •  14
    The Social Goals of Agriculture from Thomas Jefferson to the 21st Century
    Agriculture and Human Values 3 (4): 32-42. 1986.
    An analysis of social goals for agriculture presupposes an account of systematic interactions among economic, political, and ecological forces that influence the performance of agriculture in a given society. This account must identify functional performance criteria that lend themselves to interpretation as normative or ethical goals. Individuals who act within the system pursue personal goals. Although individual acts and decisions help satisfy functional performance criteria, individuals may …Read more