Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen

There are many objections to statistical discrimination in general and racial profiling in particular. One objection appeals to the idea that people have a right to be treated as individuals. Statistical discrimination violates this right because, presumably, it involves treating people simply on the basis of statistical facts about groups to which they belong while ignoring non-statistical evidence about them. While there is something to this objection—there are objectionable ways of treating others that seem aptly described as failing to treat them as individuals—it needs to be articulated carefully. First, most people accept that many forms of statistical discrimination are morally unproblematic, let alone morally justified all things considered. Second, even treating people on the basis of putative non-statistical evidence relies on generalizations. Once we construe treating someone as an individual in a way that respects this fact, it becomes apparent: (1) that statistical discrimination is compatible with treating people as individuals, and (2) that one may fail to treat people as individuals even without engaging in statistical discrimination. Finally, there are situations involving the expression of messages of inclusion where we think it is good, morally speaking, that we are not treated as individuals.

The most blatant forms of discrimination are morally outrageous and very obviously so; but the nature and boundaries of discrimination are more controversial, and it is not clear whether all forms of discrimination are morally bad; nor is it clear why objectionable cases of discrimination are bad. In this paper I address these issues. First, I offer a taxonomy of discrimination. I then argue that discrimination is bad, when it is, because it harms people. Finally, I criticize a rival, disrespect-based account according to which discrimination is bad regardless of whether it causes harm.

Adherents of particularism draw rather strong implications of this view. However, particularism has never been stated in a canonical way. We locate the core of particularism as a claim about how different reasons combine to generate the Tightness or wrongness of an action. Using the notion of an ordering of alternatives containing separable factors, we show that particularism can be stated more generally as the denial that there exist separable factors.With this definition in place, we show that, once subjected to a number of clarifications, particularism largely does have the implications often associated with it. However, we find the various arguments that have been given in support of particularism to be very poor. We conclude that particularists do have a point when they claim that some form of generalism cannot simply be taken for granted. But no particular reasons in favour of being a particularist have been offered.

According to US law, insurance companies can lawfully differentiate individual health insurance premiums on the basis of non-genetic medical information, but not on the basis of genetic information. The article reviews the case for such genetic exceptionalism. First, I critically assess some standard justifications. Next, I scrutinize an argument appealing to the view that genetically based premium differentiation expresses that persons do not all merit equal concern and respect. In the final section, I argue that even if genetic exceptionalism is unjustified, there is a forceful luck egalitarian argument against basing premiums on genetic risks, to wit, that this tends to make some individuals worse off than others as a result of the bad brute luck involved in having a genetically determined, above-average risk of developing health problems

A standard formulation of luck-egalitarianism says that ‘it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for some to be worse off than others [through no fault or choice of their own]’, where ‘fault or choice’ means substantive responsibility-generating fault or choice. This formulation is ambiguous: one ambiguity concerns the possible existence of a gap between what is true of each worse-off individual and what is true of the group of worse-off individuals, fault or choice-wise, the other concerns the notion of fault. I show that certain ways of resolving these ambiguities lead to counterintuitive results; and that the most plausible way of resolving them leads to a theory of distributive justice in which responsibility plays a role significantly different from that in standard luck-egalitarian thinking. My main conclusion here is that luck-egalitarianism is best formulated as the view that it is [in itself] bad – unjust and unfair – for an individual to be worse off than others if, and only if, her being worse off does not fit the degree to which she is at fault in a not purely prudential sense.

While it has many connections to other topics in normative and applied ethics, discrimination is a central subject in philosophy in its own right. It plays a significant role in relation to many real-life complaints about unjust treatment or unjust inequalities, and it raises a number of questions in political and moral philosophy, and in legal theory. Some of these questions include: what distinguishes the concept of discrimination from the concept of differential treatment? What distinguishes direct from indirect discrimination? Is discrimination always morally wrong? What makes discrimination wrong? How should we eliminate the effects of discrimination? By covering a wide range of topics, and by doing so in a way that does not assume prior acquaintance, this handbook enables the reader to get to grips with the omnipresent issue. The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Discrimination is an outstanding reference source to this exciting subject and the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into six main parts: • conceptual issues • the wrongness of discrimination • groups of ‘discriminatees’ • sites of discrimination • causes and means • history of discrimination Essential reading for students and researchers in applied ethics and political philosophy the handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as law, sociology and politics.

PhD, Institute of Public Health, Unit of Medical Philosophy and Clinical Theory, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, P.O. Box 2099 1014 Copenhagen. Tel: +45 30 32 33 63; Email: s.lauridsen{at}pubhealth.ku.dk ' + u + '@ ' + d + ' '/ /- ->Citizens’ consent to political decisions is often regarded as a necessary condition of political legitimacy. Consequently, legitimate allocation of healthcare has seemed almost unattainable in contemporary pluralistic societies. The problem is that citizens do not agree on any single principle governing priorities among groups of patients. The Accountability for Reasonableness framework suggests an ingenious solution to this problem of moral disagreement. Rather than advocating any substantive distributive principle, its advocates propose a feasible set of conditions, which, if met by decision makers at the institutional level, provide, so it is promised, legitimate decisions. While we agree that A4R represents an important contribution to the priority-setting debate, we challenge the framework in two respects. First, we argue that A4R, and more specifically the relevance condition of A4R, does not enable healthcare institutions to generally distinguish between relevant and irrelevant reasons for priority-setting. Second, we criticize Daniels’ and Sabin's argument that A4R and deliberative democracy constitute necessary and sufficient conditions of a feasible procedure for setting legitimate limits within healthcare. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Fundamentally, intentions do not matter to the permissibility of actions, according to Thomas Scanlon (among others). Yet, discriminatory intentions seem essential to certain kinds of direct discrimination in hiring and firing, and appear to be something by virtue of which, in part at least, these kinds of discrimination are morally impermissible. Scanlon's account of the wrongness of discrimination attempts to accommodate this appearance through the notion of the expressive meaning of discriminatory acts and a certain view about how permissibility relates to the meaning of actions. This paper explores the scope, strengths and weaknesses of this account. Specifically, it challenges the view that discrimination reflecting hierarchical value judgments necessarily involves a wrong that renders such discrimination more objectionable than other forms

In this critical review, I address two themes from Shelly Kagan’s path-breaking The Geometry of Desert. First I explain the so-called “bell motion” of desert mountains—a notion reflecting that, ceteris paribus, as people get more virtuous it becomes more important not to give them too little of whatever they deserve than not to give them too much. Having argued that Kagan’s defense of it is unsatisfactory, I offer two objections to the existence of the bell motion. Second, I take up an unrelated issue—the relation between comparative and non-comparative desert. I argue that, given a certain disaggregationist view of comparative desert, it is possible that comparative desert is not satisfied, even if non-comparative desert is perfectly so. Unlike my objections to the bell motion, this possibility adds further complexity to an already complex Kaganian account of desert.

Kymlicka has offered an influential luck egalitarian justification for a catalogue of polyethnic rights addressing cultural disadvantages of immigrant minorities. In response, Quong argues that while the items on the list are justified, in the light of the fact that the relevant disadvantages of immigrants result from their choice to immigrate, (i) these rights cannot be derived from luck egalitarianism and (ii) that this casts doubt on luck egalitarianism as a theory of cultural justice. As an alternative to Kymlicka’s argument, Quong offers his own justification of polyethnic rights based on a Rawlsian ideal of fair equality of opportunity. I defend luck egalitarianism against Quong’s objection arguing that if choice ever matters, it matters in relation to cultural disadvantages too. Also, the Rawlsian ideal of fair equality of opportunity cannot justify the sort of polyethnic rights that Quong wants it to justify, once we set aside an unwarranted statist focus in Quong’s conception of fair equality of opportunity. Whatever the weaknesses of luck egalitarianism are, the inadequacy of the position in relation to accommodating cultural disadvantages of immigrants is not among them.

Gene therapy research and its clinical application raise a large number of ethical, legal, and social questions. Many of these are discussed in Nordgren's anthology. The contributions come from a number of different disciplines, including bioethics, genetics, social science, and theology. The book is divided into five main sections (following a short introduction): scientific aspects of gene therapy; the history of, and prospects for, gene therapy; conceptual issues; gene therapy in a German and Japanese context, and a section on the uses of gene therapy in relation to, for example, testing and screening. The contributions are quite diverse and mostly well worth reading. From the perspective of medical ethics the contributions by LeRoy Walters, Eric Juengst, Karen Lebacqz, Nikolaus Knoepffler, and Christian Munthe are of particular interest. Walters's contribution focuses in part on the issue of …