•  2
    Recently, there have been debates in Portugal regarding the morality of assisted death. One of the leading opponents in Portuguese society against assisted death are Catholics. They argue that the right to life implies that assisted death is immoral and provide four key arguments they believe justify their position. In this article, we reply to these four articles and show that they all fail.
  •  4
    Artificial Intelligence and African Conceptions of Personhood
    In Aribiah David Attoe, Segun Samuel Temitope, Victor Nweke, John Umezurike & Jonathan Okeke Chimakonam (eds.), Conversations on African Philosophy of Mind, Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence, Springer Verlag. pp. 167-182. 2023.
    Under what circumstances if ever ought we to grant that artificial intelligence (AI) is a person? The question of whether AI could have the high degree of moral status that is attributed to human persons has received little attention. What little work there is employs Western conceptions of personhood, while non-Western approaches are neglected. In this chapter, I discuss African conceptions of personhood and their implications for the possibility of AI persons. I focus on an African account of …Read more
  •  24
    Cryonics is the preservation of legally dead human bodies at the temperature of liquid nitrogen in the hope that future technologies will be able to revive them. In philosophical debates surrounding this practice, arguments often focus on prudential implications of cryopreservation, or moral arguments on a societal level. In this paper, we claim that this debate is incomplete, since it does not take into account a significant relational concern about cryonics. Specifically, we argue that attenti…Read more
  •  19
    Toward an Africanized Bioethics Curriculum
    Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 30 (1): 103-113. 2021.
    Although many bioethicists have given attention to the special health issues of Africa and to the ethics of research on the continent, only a handful have considered these issues through the lens of African moral thought. The question has been for the most part neglected as to what a distinctively African moral perspective would be for the analysis and teaching of bioethics issues. To address the oversight, the authors of this paper describe embarking on a project aimed at incorporating African …Read more
  •  30
    I define and defend a non-democratic authority with the power to annul the decisions of democratic branches of government when such decisions infringe upon citizens’ basic rights and liberties. I refer to this non-democratic authority as Liberal Aristocracy. The argument for Liberal Aristocracy has two parts: the first part demonstrates that Liberal Aristocracy will arrive at decisions that further the moral end of sustaining citizens’ rights; the second part holds that Liberal Aristocracy is a …Read more
  •  38
    Between hoping to die and longing to live longer
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (2): 1-20. 2021.
    Drawing on Ezekiel Emanuel’s controversial piece ‘Why I hope to die at 75,’ I distinguish two types of concern in ethical debates about extending the human lifespan. The first focusses on the value of living longer from prudential and social perspectives. The second type of concern, which has received less attention, focusses on the value of aiming for longer life. This distinction, which is overlooked in the ethical literature on life extension, is significant because there are features of huma…Read more
  •  7
    On the moral status of hominins
    Monash Bioethics Review 38 (2): 205-218. 2019.
    This article evaluates the moral status of hominins, and obligations we may have towards them. In exploring these ethical considerations, I consider one of the most recent hominin finds: the ‘graveyard’ of Homo naledi in the Dinaledi caves at the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. I argue that findings about H. naledi establish a pro tanto duty not to excavate their remains.
  •  14
    Medical Cosmopolitanism: The global extension of justice in healthcare practice
    with Luvuyo Gantsho
    Developing World Bioethics 21 (3): 131-138. 2021.
    While there is a shortage of healthcare workers in virtually all countries, there currently exists a pronounced inequality in the distribution of healthcare workers, with a high concentration of healthcare workers in high income countries (HIC) and low concentrations in low‐ and middle‐ income countries (LMIC). This inequality in the distribution of healthcare workers persists, in spite of the fact that HICs enjoy a much lower disease burden than LMICs This inequality raises medical ethical issu…Read more
  •  120
    Artificial intelligence and African conceptions of personhood
    Ethics and Information Technology 23 (2): 127-136. 2021.
    Under what circumstances if ever ought we to grant that Artificial Intelligences (AI) are persons? The question of whether AI could have the high degree of moral status that is attributed to human persons has received little attention. What little work there is employs western conceptions of personhood, while non-western approaches are neglected. In this article, I discuss African conceptions of personhood and their implications for the possibility of AI persons. I focus on an African account of…Read more
  •  25
    Genome Editing for Longer Lives: The Problem of Loneliness
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 17 (2): 309-314. 2020.
    The development of gene-editing technologies, such as the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and associated Cas9 endonuclease system, coincides with a rapidly expanding knowledge of the role of genes in the human ageing process. This raises the prospect that, in addition to the treatment of genetic diseases and disorders, it may become possible to use gene-editing technologies to alter the ageing process and significantly extend the maximum human lifespan. Germline editing…Read more
  •  28
    Pig-to-human xenotransplantation: Overcoming ethical obstacles
    with N. Cengiz
    South African Journal of Bioethics and Law 12 (2): 66. 2019.
  •  21
    The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    We're all getting older from the moment we're born. Ageing is a fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life. Yet in ethics, not much work is done on the questions surrounding ageing: how do diachronic features of ageing and the lifespan contribute to the overall value of life? How do time, change, and mortality impact on questions of morality and the good life? And how ought societies to respond to issues of social justice and the good, balancing the interests of generations and age cohorts? In th…Read more
  •  49
    What is the ethics of ageing?
    Journal of Medical Ethics 44 (2): 128-132. 2018.
    Applied ethics is home to numerous productive subfields such as procreative ethics, intergenerational ethics and environmental ethics. By contrast, there is far less ethical work on ageing, and there is no boundary work that attempts to set the scope for ‘ageing ethics’ or the ‘ethics of ageing’. Yet ageing is a fundamental aspect of life; arguably even more fundamental and ubiquitous than procreation. To remedy this situation, I examine conceptions of what the ethics of ageing might mean and ar…Read more
  •  39
    A Duty to Explore African Ethics?
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (4): 857-872. 2017.
    It has become increasingly common to point out that African morality is under-represented in ethical theorizing. However, it is less common to find arguments that this under-representation is unjustified. This latter claim tends to be simply assumed. In this paper I draw together arguments for this claim. In doing so, I make the case that the relative lack of attention paid to African moral ideas conflicts with epistemic and ethical values. In order to correct these shortcomings, moral theorists…Read more
  •  26
    Partiality and distributive justice in African bioethics
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 38 (2): 127-144. 2017.
    African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz,…Read more
  •  44
    Substantial Life Extension and the Fair Distribution of Healthspans
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (5): 521-539. 2016.
    One of the strongest objections to the development and use of substantially life-extending interventions is that they would exacerbate existing unjust disparities of healthy lifespans between rich and poor members of society. In both popular opinion and ethical theory, this consequence is sometimes thought to justify a ban on life-prolonging technologies. However, the practical and ethical drawbacks of banning receive little attention, and the viability of alternative policies is seldom consider…Read more
  •  25
    Youngest first? Why it’s wrong to discriminate against the elderly in healthcare
    South African Journal of Bioethics and Law 8 (1): 35. 2015.
  •  122
    On the Moral Equality of Artificial Agents
    International Journal of Technoethics 2 (1): 35-42. 2011.
    Artificial agents such as robots are performing increasingly significant ethical roles in society. As a result, there is a growing literature regarding their moral status with many suggesting it is justified to regard manufactured entities as having intrinsic moral worth. However, the question of whether artificial agents could have the high degree of moral status that is attributed to human persons has largely been neglected. To address this question, the author developed a respect-based accoun…Read more
  •  809
    Deprivation and the See-saw of Death
    South African Journal of Philosophy 28 (2): 246-56. 2009.
    Epicurus argued that death can be neither good nor bad because it involves neither pleasure nor pain. This paper focuses on the deprivation account as a response to this Hedonist Argument. Proponents of the deprivation account hold that Epicurus’s argument fails even if death involves no painful or pleasurable experiences and even if the hedonist ethical system, which holds that pleasure and pain are all that matter ethically, is accepted. I discuss four objections that have been raised against …Read more
  •  35
    Policy on Synthetic Biology: Deliberation, Probability, and the Precautionary Paradox
    with Cecilia Nardini
    Bioethics 29 (2): 118-125. 2013.
    Synthetic biology is a cutting-edge area of research that holds the promise of unprecedented health benefits. However, in tandem with these large prospective benefits, synthetic biology projects entail a risk of catastrophic consequences whose severity may exceed that of most ordinary human undertakings. This is due to the peculiar nature of synthetic biology as a ‘threshold technology’ which opens doors to opportunities and applications that are essentially unpredictable. Fears about these pote…Read more
  • Deprivation and the See-saw of Death
    South African Journal of Philosophy 28 (1): 246-256. 2009.
    Epicurus argued that death can be neither good nor bad because it involves neither pleasure nor pain. This paper focuses on the deprivation account as a response to this Hedonist Argument. Proponents of the deprivation account hold that Epicurus’s argument fails even if death involves no painful or pleasurable experiences and even if the hedonist ethical system, which holds that pleasure and pain are all that matter ethically, is accepted. I discuss four objections that have been raised against …Read more
  •  55
    Slowed ageing, welfare, and population problems
    Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 36 (5): 321-340. 2015.
    Biological studies have demonstrated that it is possible to slow the ageing process and extend lifespan in a wide variety of organisms, perhaps including humans. Making use of the findings of these studies, this article examines two problems concerning the effect of life extension on population size and welfare. The first—the problem of overpopulation—is that as a result of life extension too many people will co-exist at the same time, resulting in decreases in average welfare. The second—the pr…Read more
  •  72
    Life Extension and Mental Ageing
    Philosophical Papers 41 (3): 455-477. 2012.
    Abstract Objections to life extension often focus on its effects for individual well-being. Prominent amongst these concerns is the possibility that life extending technologies will extend lifespan without preventing the ageing of the mind. Writers on the subject express the fear that life extending drugs will keep us physically youthful whilst our minds decay, succumbing to dementia, boredom, and loneliness. Generally these fears remain speculative, in part due to the absence of genuine life ex…Read more