L. W. Sumner

No one who cares about equal opportunity can derive much comfort from the present occupational distribution of working women. In the various industrial societies of the West, women comprise between one quarter and one-half of the national labor force. However, they tend to clustered in employment sectors – especially clerical, sales, and service J occupations – which rank relatively low in remuneration, status, autonomy, and other perquisites. Meanwhile, the more prestigious and rewarding managerial and professional positions, as well as the major categories of blue-collar labor, remain largely a male preserve. In the same societies the average income earned by full-time female workers is one-half to two- J thirds that of their male counterparts. Although this disparity owes much to i other factors, including lower pay for work similar or even identical to that r standardly done by men, much of it can be explained only by the concentration of working women in traditional female job ghettos.

In the situations canvassed I have argued that (a) the dominant aim of the utilitarian will be the establishment of a fair procedure, (b) under radical uncertainty cooperation will constitute his best bet, and (c) when he knowsthat all others will cooperate it is still an open question whether he will slack, and if under some conditions he does so he does not then act unfairly. It is wise to bear in mind, however, that an enormous number of possible situations, mostly mixtures of the pure cases, simply have not been considered. It is not inconceivable that in one of them the utilitarian will clearly act unfairly; I am inclined to think not, but the possibility is not entirely ruled out

Ever since medical assistance in dying (MAID) became legal in Canada in 2016, controversy has enveloped the refusal by many faith‐based institutions to allow this service on their premises. In a recent article in this journal, Philip and Joshua Shadd have proposed ‘changing the conversation’ on this issue, reframing it as an exercise not of conscience but of an institutional right of self‐governance. This reframing, they claim, will serve to show how health‐care institutions may be justified in refusing to provide MAID on moral or religious grounds. I argue that it will not make it easier to justify institutional refusal, and is likely to make it harder.

At a 1990 conference on freedom of expression Roger Shiner presented a paper arguing that commercial expression does not merit constitutional protection under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Thirteen years on he has defended the same thesis at much greater length in this meticulously researched, beautifully written, and exhaustively argued book. When I heard Shiner’s original paper I had no settled view on the issue he was addressing, though I was impressed by his treatment of it. Since that time I have come to believe that successive Canadian courts have been correct in extending constitutional protection to commercial expression. However, I remain impressed by Shiner’s arguments to the contrary and will devote most of this critical notice to engaging them.

Since philosophers began thinking seriously about the moral status of non-human animals, many of the practices we once took for granted have come to be condemned as unjustifiable, among them our reliance on animals as a food source. While the arguments which have been adduced in support of moral vegetarianism invoke quite different moral frameworks, they begin with a common concern for the welfare of animals. In the real world of practising vegetarians, this concern tends to be subordinated to considerations of health or food scarcity. Philosophical vegetarians need not deny, and have not denied, the importance of these further considerations. But among philosophers the case for moral vegetarianism has rested primarily on arguments from animal welfare.

"What do we mean by 'identity'?" Since this term itself can be a rather elusive, amorphous, and even vaporous one, we need to have heuristic markings for it. The second is "What is the moral content of one's identities?"-because we all have multiple positions in terms of constructing our identities; there's no such thing as having one identity or of there being one essential identity that fundamentally defines who we actually are. And third, "What are the political consequences of our various identities?"

In the longrunning war between the friends of knowledge and their sceptical enemies the moral front has always been one of the busiest. Here the sceptic assails us in the guise of the cunning and resourceful amoralist who disavows all ethical constraints. Some philosophers, seeing no prospect of defeating the amoralist by rational methods, have fallen back on a policy of containment by means of social and political sanctions. But others of a more truculent frame of mind have continued to seek a decisive argumentative victory.

Remember the fifties? That was, among other things, when it was outré for moral philosophers acutally to use moral discourse and de rigueur to theorize about its use. It was when we all read Stevenson and Hare and learned to believe that moral judgments had no truth values and were used to express emotion or to issue imperatives. It was when we came to realize that all previous moral philosophy rested on the mistake of supposing that moral judgments were propositions. How remote it all seems now. Today we write about social justice, sex, death, politics as though there were no question this might be improper. We no longer have the time and patience for the idler and more distant questions of the metalevel. It is correct certainly to call this progress but at a certain price. We tired of the old questions but we never learned how to answer them. The very grip of the noncognitivist fad made illuminating answers unlikely. Perhaps now that the fad is buried and forgotten we can go back to the issues and deal with them in a more fruitful manner.

This is a book built round an argument. Several variants of the argument are offered, and I shall consider but one of them. It is directed against the following act utilitarian principle:AU: An act is right if and only if it would have best consequences The argument may be freely rendered as follows. Suppose that we have an agent, Smith, in a society, S, such that the following conditions are satisfied:C1: Smith accepts AU and attempts always to act in accordance with itC2: Smith is rational: he understands the implications of accepting AU and applies AU correctlyC3: No other person in S accepts AUC4: All others in S know that C1 and C2 obtainC5: All others in S are rational: they understand the implications of Smith's accepting AUC: All others in S are tolerant of Smith's accepting AU: they do not criticize him for acting in accordance with itC7: Smith knows that C3 – C6 obtainC1 – C7 collectively define the position of an act utilitarian in a non-act utilitarian society, with certain assumptions as to rationality and tolerance. Then the thesis is that under C1 – C7 Smith will sometimes fail to do the act with best consequences. His very acceptance and correct application of AU conspire to prevent the production of certain good consequences which would otherwise be possible.

I am deeply indebted to Tom Hurka and David Copp for the careful attention they have given to some of the central motifs in The Moral Foundation of Rights. By doing their job so well they have simplified mine considerably. Their exposition of my views is a model of fairness and accuracy; I need therefore waste no time disclaiming attributions or complaining about misrepresentation. Furthermore, they have shown admirable resolve in choosing to ignore the book's relatively peripheral concerns, even when these would have made easy targets. By adopting this policy of restraint they have helped to illuminate issues which, it seems to me, run to the very heart of moral/political theory.

As a distinct academic subdiscipline medical ethics is only about fifteen years old, but during that brief lifespan it has managed to generate a literature so vast that only specialists and speedreaders can now hope to keep up with more than a small fraction of it. When a literature has achieved this density new contributions must bear the burden of showing that they advance the existing state of the art. Eike-Henner W. Kluge's book joins a well-established continuing debate on the morality of euthanasia. Unfortunately, however, it fails to add much of importance to that debate.