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13The Place of Religious Arguments in Civic DiscussionRatio Juris 13 (2): 162-176. 2000.I shall consider whether morality requires citizens of democratic societies to advance secular reasons in public debates on political questions. Is it wrong to give purely religious reasons in political discussion? I shall argue that the moral acceptability of public religious arguments that are not supported with secular reasons depends on the political context we are discussing, and that often there is nothing wrong with using religious considerations. I shall also discuss the so‐called shared…Read more
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404Environmental Security and Just Causes for WarAlmanac: Discourses of Ethics 10 (1): 47-54. 2015.This article asks whether a country that suffers from serious environmental problems caused by another country could have a just cause for a defensive war? Danish philosopher Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen has argued that under certain conditions extreme poverty may give a just cause for a country to defensive war, if that poverty is caused by other countries. This raises the question whether the victims of environmental damages could also have a similar right to self-defense. Although the article con…Read more
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49The Repugnant Conclusion and the Welfare of Actual PeopleTheoria 68 (2): 162-169. 2002.According to Derek Parfit's well‐known argument, a version of utilitarian moral theory implies the so‐called Repugnant Conclusion. This version of utilitarianism states that other things being equal, it is better if there is a greater total sum of whatever makes life worth living. This view appears to implicate that a world where there is an immense total sum of whatever makes life worth living but where individual people have an exceedingly low quality of life is better than a world where there…Read more
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90On Disassociating Oneself from Collective ResponsiblitySocial Theory and Practice 23 (1): 93-108. 1997.
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52Burden of Proof Rules in Social CriticismArgumentation 11 (4): 463-477. 1997.The article discusses burden of proof rules in social criticism. By social criticism I mean an argumentative situation in which an opponent publicly argues against certain social practices; the examples I consider are discrimination on the basis of species and discrimination on the basis of one's nationality. I argue that burden of proof rules assumed by those who defend discrimination are somewhat dubious. In social criticism, there are no shared values which would uncontroversially determine w…Read more
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43James Stacey Taylor : The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death: Oxford University Press, New York, 2013, 271 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-975113-6 $74.00 hbk (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (3): 497-502. 2015.This is the first collection of essays of philosophical thanatology that explicitly connects the metaphysical and the ethical questions of death, including some bioethical questions. The volume has four sections, and the discussion moves from historical and theoretical problems to practical issues of bioethics. However, as the editor of the book, James Stacey Taylor, has surely intended, the practical questions discussed are closely related to traditional metaphysical problems, most notably to t…Read more
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31Are there Alternative Methods in Ethics?Grazer Philosophische Studien 52 (1): 173-189. 1996.Do all methods of moral justification resemble the method of reflective equilibrium in presupposing that moral judgment's being justified depends at least in part on its being appropriately related to our actual substantial moral views? Can a moral judgment be justified without such a presupposition? I shall distinguish three versions of the no-option argument According to any version of the no-option argument, there is certain fact which characterizes moral theories, and that fact implies that …Read more
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18In this book the practical dimension of social justice is explained using the analysis and discussion of a variety of well-known topics. These include: the relation between theory and practice in normative political philosophy; the issue of justice under uncertainty; the question of whether we can and should unmask social injustices by means of conspiracy theories; the issues of privacy and the right to privacy; the issue of how certain psychological states may affect our moral obligations, in p…Read more
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53The social concept of diseaseTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 17 (4). 1996.In the discussion of such social questions as how should alcoholics be treated by society? and what kind of people are responsible in the face of the law?, is disease a value-free or value-laden notion, a natural or a normative one? It seems, for example, that by the utterance alcoholism should be classified as a disease we mean something like the following: the condition called alcoholism is similar in morally relevant respects to conditions that we uncontroversially label diseases, and therefo…Read more
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29Redistributive Wars and Just War PrinciplesRatio.Ru 12 4-26. 2014.The topic of the paper is the justness of the so-called global redistributive wars — wars whose prime purpose would be the correction of global economic and power structures that are said to cause suffering in poor countries. My aim is to comment on Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen’s argument concerning the implications of Thomas Pogge’s theory of global poverty. Pogge has argued that affluent coun-tries uphold global institutional structures that have a significant causal role in leading to the poverty…Read more
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16On Disassociating Oneself from Collective ResponsiblitySocial Theory and Practice 23 (1): 93-108. 1997.
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29Genes and Morality: New EssaysRodopi. 1999.Most public discussion has focused on those effects of genetic research that are considered in some way unwanted or unpleasant. For example, there has been much debate concerning the risks and the ethical appropriateness of genetic screening, gene therapy, and agricultural applications based on genetic techniques. It often claimed that genetic research may cause new problems such as genetic discrimination, stigmatization, environmental risks, or mistreatment of animals. Genes and Morality: New E…Read more
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33Privacy and Self-PresentationRes Publica 23 (2): 213-226. 2017.It has often been argued that one of the reasons why we should value privacy is that it enables self-presentation and impression management. According to this approach, it is valuable to be able to govern the impression one gives, as the capacity to govern impressions is an instrument by which people take care of their various social relationships. In this paper I will take a closer look at that approach on privacy, with specific reference to the alleged threats to privacy created by brain imagi…Read more
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15Are there Alternative Methods in Ethics?Grazer Philosophische Studien 52 (1): 173-189. 1996.Do all methods of moral justification resemble the method of reflective equilibrium in presupposing that moral judgment's being justified depends at least in part on its being appropriately related to our actual substantial moral views? Can a moral judgment be justified without such a presupposition? I shall distinguish three versions of the no-option argument According to any version of the no-option argument, there is certain fact which characterizes moral theories, and that fact implies that …Read more
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108The Feasibility Condition in Political TheoryJournal of Political Philosophy 6 (1): 27-40. 1998.
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73When a Person Feels that She Is Guilty and Believes that She Is Not GuiltyThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9 149-152. 2006.Guilt feelings are an important part of our emotional life that is relevant to moral philosophy, and guilt feelings raise many theoretically interesting questions. One such question is the problem of how it is possible that sometimes people seem to feel guilty because of an act they have committed even if they believe that the act is not wrong and that it does not have any moral costs. A person raised in a religious family may have been taught that going to the theater is wrong, and even if she …Read more
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Social and Political Philosophy |