Jonathan Spelman

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine did an admirable job responding to COVID-10, at least during the early days of the pandemic. In this chapter, however, I focus on his decision in April of 2020 to exempt customers from his mask mandate. To begin, I argue that this decision was not only a public health mistake, but also a moral mistake. Then, I use this case to show, contrary to what DeWine has said, that having the “right facts” is not sufficient for making the right decision. Making the right decision also requires the ability to sort through the moral dimensions of an issue. If that's right, then people who have training in moral philosophy have a kind of expertise from which leaders throughout our society could benefit.

This chapter provides readers with an introduction to the field of environmental ethics. To begin, I consider whether it's morally wrong to crush grasshoppers. In the process, I identify a moral principle that can be applied to the problem of climate change. With the help of that principle, I argue that most people are morally obligated to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, offset their remaining emissions, and advocate for climate-friendly policies and politicians. Why? Because failing to do these things is irresponsible.

Collected and edited by Noah Levin Table of Contents: UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY ETHICS: TECHNOLOGY, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, AND IMMIGRATION 1 The “Trolley Problem” and Self-Driving Cars: Your Car’s Moral Settings (Noah Levin) 2 What is Ethics and What Makes Something a Problem for Morality? (David Svolba) 3 Letter from the Birmingham City Jail (Martin Luther King, Jr) 4 A Defense of Affirmative Action (Noah Levin) 5 The Moral Issues of Immigration (B.M. Wooldridge) 6 The Ethics of our Digital Selves (Noah Levin) UNIT TWO: TORTURE, DEATH, AND THE “GREATER GOOD” 7 The Ethics of Torture (Martine Berenpas) 8 What Moral Obligations do we have (or not have) to Impoverished Peoples? (B.M. Wooldridge) 9 Euthanasia, or Mercy Killing (Nathan Nobis) 10 An Argument Against Capital Punishment (Noah Levin) 11 Common Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) 12 Better (Philosophical) Arguments about Abortion (Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob) UNIT THREE: PERSONS, AUTONOMY, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND RIGHTS 13 Animal Rights (Eduardo Salazar) 14 John Rawls and the “Veil of Ignorance” (Ben Davies) 15 Environmental Ethics: Climate Change (Jonathan Spelman) 16 Rape, Date Rape, and the “Affirmative Consent” Law in California (Noah Levin) 17 The Ethics of Pornography: Deliberating on a Modern Harm (Eduardo Salazar) 18 The Social Contract (Thomas Hobbes) UNIT FOUR: HAPPINESS 19 Is Pleasure all that Matters? Thoughts on the “Experience Machine” (Prabhpal Singh) 20 Utilitarianism (J.S. Mill) 21 Utilitarianism: Pros and Cons (B.M. Wooldridge) 22 Existentialism, Genetic Engineering, and the Meaning of Life: The Fifths (Noah Levin) 23 The Solitude of the Self (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) 24 Game Theory, the Nash Equilibrium, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Douglas E. Hill) UNIT FIVE: RELIGION, LAW, AND ABSOLUTE MORALITY 25 The Myth of Gyges and The Crito (Plato) 26 God, Morality, and Religion (Kristin Seemuth Whaley) 27 The Categorical Imperative (Immanuel Kant) 28 The Virtues (Aristotle) 29 Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche) 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. (Jan F. Jacko)

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many states in the United States issued stay-at-home orders that prohibited people from leaving their homes except to access essential services. Upon reopening, a number of those states passed mask mandates requiring people to wear face coverings while in public, but as I write this, in October of 2020, there remain a substantial number of states that have not outlawed what I'll call ‘mask-less shopping’. This is a mistake. After describing the standard, public health argument for outlawing mask-less shopping and explaining why it fails, I give a better argument for outlawing mask-less shopping that depends on the claim that mask-less shopping is analogous to drunk driving. It follows that every state should outlaw it.

In 2006, Michael Zimmerman published an underappreciated paper on the nature of moral obligation in which he argued that our moral obligations depend, not on the facts or our beliefs, but on the evidence available to us. Two years later, he published a lengthy book in which he argued more thoroughly for the same conclusion. In this book, Zimmerman returns to the central question of those works to respond to objections that have been brought against the views he presented therein. This new book is the most thorough defense of what has come to be known as the Prospective View of moral obligation and as such is a must-read for those working in normative ethics narrowly construed.

In “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases,” Alastair Norcross (2004) uses a thought experiment he calls “Fred's Basement” to argue that consuming factory-farmed meat is morally equivalent to torturing and killing puppies in order to enjoy the taste of chocolate. Thus, he concludes that consuming factory-farmed meat is morally wrong. Although Norcross leaves open the possibility that consuming humanely raised meat is morally permissible, I contend that his basic argumentative approach rules it out. In this article, therefore, I extend Norcross's thought experiment in hopes of convincing readers that consuming humanely raised meat is morally wrong.