James Stacey Taylor

_Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics_ offers a highly distinctive and original approach to the metaphysics of death and applies this approach to contemporary debates in bioethics that address end-of-life and post-mortem issues. Taylor defends the controversial Epicurean view that death is not a harm to the person who dies and the neo-Epicurean thesis that persons cannot be affected by events that occur after their deaths, and hence that posthumous harms (and benefits) are impossible. He then extends this argument by asserting that the dead cannot be wronged, finally presenting a defence of revisionary views concerning posthumous organ procurement.

In 2020 Guy McPherson published an academic satire, Academic Pursuits, that was strikingly similar to Richard Russo’s acclaimed 1997 novel Straight Man. It is widely believed by philosophers who study comedy that when two humorous works closely resemble each other there is prima facie reason to believe that the producer of the later work has done something wrong. But while this general view of the wrong of apparently derivative humour is widespread no argument has yet been offered for it. This paper will rectify this omission. After developing a novel account of why plagiarism is wrongful that explains the distinctive wrong of the plagiarism of humorous works it will draw on this account to explain why the production and publication of both derivative and apparently derivative works of humor is wrong.

_Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics_ offers a highly distinctive and original approach to the metaphysics of death and applies this approach to contemporary debates in bioethics that address end-of-life and post-mortem issues. Taylor defends the controversial Epicurean view that death is not a harm to the person who dies and the neo-Epicurean thesis that persons cannot be affected by events that occur after their deaths, and hence that posthumous harms (and benefits) are impossible. He then extends this argument by asserting that the dead cannot be wronged, finally presenting a defence of revisionary views concerning posthumous organ procurement.

It is widely believed that health policy should take care to ensure that persons are informed about the expected risks as well as the anticipated advantages of medical procedures. This is often justified by a concern for the moral value of personal autonomy, as it is widely believed that to the extent that a person makes decisions on the basis of false beliefs or ignorance her autonomy with respect to them is compromised. This essay argues against this widespread claim. A person’s autonomy with respect to her decisions will not be compromised by either ignorance or false beliefs. However, it does not follow that there is no reason to provide persons with the opportunity to have access to the available information relevant to their decisions concerning their medical treatment. The epistemic requirements for a person to give her consent to her treatment are more stringent than those that must be met for her to be autonomous with respect to her consent. Consent, not autonomy, can be undermined by ignorance or false belief. It is a concern for consent, not a concern for autonomy, that justifies providing people with information about their prospective medical procedures.

In Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics, I argue that we should endorse a trio of views that together constitute what I term full-blooded epicureanism: That death is not a harm to the person who dies, and that persons can neither be harmed nor wronged by events that occur after their deaths. After defending full-blooded epicureanism, I argue that it can be used to illuminate various contemporary bioethical debates, including those concerning posthumous organ procurement, assisted posthumous reproduction, medical research on the dead, and posthumous medical confidentiality.

It is widely held that to break a promise that one made to a person who is now dead would be to wrong her. This view undergirds many positions in bioethics, ranging from those that concern who may access a person’s medical records after she has died, to questions concerning organ procurement and posthumous procreation. Ashley Dressel has argued that there is no reason to believe that promissory obligations can be owed to people who are dead. Although her arguments are unsuccessful, others establish that neither of the promissory obligation accounts that she considers (the “Authority Account” and the “harm-based view”) can justify the standard view that directed posthumous promissory obligation is possible. However, this does not mean that the received view that we should keep our promises to the dead is mistaken. First, the theoretical commitments and argumentative strategies of those who endorse the possibility of posthumous promissory obligations preclude them from grounding such on either of these accounts of directed promissory obligation. They are thus already committed to justifying such obligations in other ways. Second, the obligation to keep promises to the dead could be justified on the grounds that not to do so would adversely affect the living.

In this article I respond to the constructive criticisms of my views in Markets with Limits that have been developed by Amy E. White, Roderick T. Long, and Julian Koplin. I also outline how Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski have surreptitiously altered their position in the second edition of their book Markets Without Limits—alterations that they appear to have made in response to my criticisms. First, they have changed the view that they attribute to those they identify as anti-commodification theorists in response to my claim that none of them hold the position that they attribute to them. Second, they have altered their definition of what constitutes a “semiotic” objection to markets. I argue that none of these changes successfully address my initial criticisms. By contrast, I believe that the revisions that I make to my views in response to the objections of White and Long address their concerns, and I concur with Koplin’s development of my views in the context of the use of AI.

It is generally agreed that the current methods of providing health care in the West need to be reformed. Such reforms must operate within the practical limitations to which any future system of health care will be subject. These limitations include an increase in the demand for costly end-of-life health care coupled with a reduction in the proportion of the population who are working taxpayers (and hence a reduction in the proportionate amount of health care funding that can be secured through taxation) and the fact that the imposition of bureaucratic regulations on health care systems is costly. Recognizing these limitations should naturally lead one to consider market-based reforms. Yet despite the practical impetus for such reforms, there is still widespread concern that market-based health care is unethical. The purpose of this paper is to address this concern and, in so doing, to pave the way for the market-based reform of health care to proceed

In recent years there has been a tremendous resurgence in philosophical interest in the metaphysical issues surrounding death. 1 This is, perhaps, not surprising. Not only are these issues of perennial theoretical appeal but they also have significant practical importance for many debates within applied ethics—especially bioethics. 2 And the bioethical debates that these issues are relevant to happen to be some of those that are currently the most pressing, having risen to prominence either as a result of contemporary public health concerns or as a result of recent advances in medical technology

One of the most common arguments against legalising markets in human kidneys is that this would result in the widespread misuse that is present in the black market becoming more prevalent. In particular, it is argued that if such markets were to be legalised, this would lead to an increase in the number of people being coerced into selling their kidneys. Moreover, such coercion would occur even if markets in kidneys were regulated, for those subject to such coercion would not be able to avail themselves of the legal protections that regulation would afford them. Despite the initial plausibility of this argument, there are three reasons to reject it. Firstly, the advantages of legalising markets in human kidneys would probably outweigh its possible disadvantages. Secondly, if it is believed that no such coercion can ever be tolerated, markets in only those human kidneys that fail to do away with coercion should be condemned. Finally, if coercion is genuinely opposed, then legalising kidney markets should be supported rather than opposed, for more people would be coerced were such markets to be prohibited

I argue that wrong of plagiarism does not primarily stem from the plagiarist’s illicit misappropriation of academic credit from the person she plagiarized. Instead, plagiarism is wrongful to the degree to which it runs counter to the purpose of academic work. Given that this is to increase knowledge and further understanding plagiarism will be wrongful to the extent that it impedes the achievement of these ends. This account of the wrong of plagiarism has two surprising (and related) implications. First, it follows from this account of the wrong of plagiarism that replication plagiarism might not be an academic wrong at all. (Replication plagiarism consists of the direct quotation or paraphrase of another’s work without attribution. The replication plagiarist thus plagiarizes primary sources, purloining for her own benefit the ideas of their authors). Second, even if replication plagiarism is still held to be an academic wrong, it will be a lesser wrong than bypass plagiarism. (Bypass plagiarism occurs when one quotes from, or provides a paraphrase of, a primary source, but although one cites the primary source one did not identify the quotation or provide the initial paraphrase oneself. Instead, one took the quotation, or drew upon an existing paraphrase, from a secondary source—and one did so without citing the secondary source to credit it as the source of one’s information about the primary source). Holding that bypass plagiarism is worse than replication plagiarizes reverses the usual assessment of the relative wrong of these two types of plagiarism.

This paper offers the first moral defense of markets in votes in a democratic electoral system based on majority rule where there are no moral restrictions on how votes can be cast. In Part 1 I outline the type of vote buying that I defend in this paper, and defend my methodological assumption. In Part 2 I criticize Freiman’s arguments for legalizing vote buying. In Part 3 I outline and reply to some responses that could be made to my criticisms of Freiman’s arguments. In Part 4 I draw from the flaws in Freiman’s arguments to argue that vote buying is morally permissible and defend these arguments against objections.

This is the first book to argue in favor of paying people for their blood plasma. It does not merely argue that offering compensation to plasma donors is morally permissible. It argues that prohibiting donor compensation is morally wrong--and that it is morally wrong for all of the reasons that are offered against allowing donor compensation. Opponents of donor compensation claim that it will reduce the amount and quality of plasma obtained, exploit and coerce donors, and undermine social cohesion. James Stacey Taylor argues that empirical evidence demonstrates that compensating plasma donors greatly increases the amount of plasma obtained with no adverse effects on the quality of the pharmaceutical products that are manufactured from it. Prohibiting compensation thus harms patients by reducing their access to the medicines they need. He also argues that it is the prohibition of compensation--not its offer--that exploits donors, fails to respect the moral need to secure a person's authoritative consent to her treatment, and prevents donors from giving their informed consent to donate. Prohibiting compensation thus not only harms patients--it wrongs donors. Bloody Bioethics will appeal to researchers, advanced students, and medical professionals interested in bioethics, moral philosophy, and the moral limits of markets.

In a recent article (“The current state of the platelet supply in the US and proposed options to decrease the risk of critical shortages”) published in _Transfusion,_ Stubbs et al. have argued that platelet donors should be paid. Dodd et al. have argued against this proposal, supporting their response with survey data that shows that blood donors (and by extension platelet donors) and potential platelet donors are uninterested in receiving incentives to encourage them to donate. Instead, argue Dodd et al., prospective platelet donors are motivated more by the ease of donation than the prospect of payment. This article defends Stubbs et al. from the criticisms of Dodd et al. It first argues that the preferences that persons state they have in response to survey questions might not reflect the preferences that their actions would reveal they have in actual rather than hypothetical situations. This hypothetical bias is especially likely when persons respond to surveys that ask them about the performance of morally commendable actions (such as platelet donation). This article then argues that the survey that Dodd et al. rely on exhibits serious selection bias with respect to the set of persons it considers to be potential platelet donors.

How much understanding should be required of a person with respect to her actions and their implications for her to be autonomous with respect to her decisions to perform them? I defend a thin approach to the question of how much understanding of her acts a person should possess for her possibly to be autonomous with respect to her decisions to perform them: That a person could be autonomous with respect to her decision to perform a certain action if she understood both the nature of the act and its expected implications under the intensional description under which she intentionally performed it. This paper is divided into three sections. First, I argue that a concern for the moral value of autonomy does not undergird the ethical requirement to secure a person’s informed consent to her medical treatment. Second, I respond to several objections that have been leveled against this argument that focus on its implicit premise that only a thin understanding of one’s actions is required for one to be autonomous with respect to one’s decisions to perform them. I conclude by indicating why this minimalist account of autonomy that I defend is preferable to its more robust competitors.

In a recent series or books and articles Jason Brennan and Peter M. Jaworski (writing both together and separately) have developed criticisms of what they term “semiotic” arguments. They hold that these arguments are widely used both to criticize markets in certain goods, to defend democracy, and criticize epistocracy. Their work on semiotics is now widely (and approvingly) cited. In this paper I argue that there is no reason to believe that any defenders of democracy or critics of epistocracy have offered semiotic arguments for their positions. I then explain how the operation of academic incentives has led to this being overlooked by both Brennan and Jaworski and their critics. I conclude with suggestions for how to revise peer review so that such errors are less likely to be made in the future.

Many people attempt to give meaning to their lives by pursuing projects that they believe will bear fruit after they have died. Knowing that their death will preclude them from protecting or promoting such projects people who draw meaning from them will often attempt to secure their continuance by securing promises from others to serve as their caretakers after they die. But those who rely on such are faced with a problem: None of the four major accounts that have been developed to explain directed promissory obligation (the Authority View, the Trust View, the Assurance View, and the Reliance View) support the view that we are obligated to keep our promises to persons who are now dead. But I will provide hope for those who wish to use such promises to protect the meaning with which they have endowed their lives. I will argue that while we cannot wrong a person who is now dead by breaking a promise made to her during her life, we could wrong the living by so doing. We thus (might) have reason to keep the promises that we made to those who are now dead.

Legal prohibitions on the financial compensation of donors are frequently justified by appealing either to concerns about patient safety or to concerns about the putatively unethical nature of such compensation. But jurisdictions that legally prohibit the financial compensation of donors routinely import plasma that has been collected from financially compensated donors—and they do so knowing its origins. I outline some possible ways in which this puzzle could be resolved and find them all wanting. Focusing on Canada I draw upon public documents to explain how many provinces came to have its apparently puzzling approach to plasma procurement. I then argue that the actions of those who support this approach to plasma procurement are immoral.

The title of this paper is deliberately ambiguous. It could refer either to the central val­ue that philosophical counseling has for philosophy in general, or else it could refer to something (such as personal autonomy, or personal well-being) that philosophical counselors believe to be of value, and that they are able to help their clients pursue. In fact, this paper will be addressing both of these topics in order to demonstrate the links that hold between them, and, in so doing, will attempt to further elucidate the nature of philosophical counseling itself.