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30The decision to initiate invasive, first-in-human trials involving Parkinson’s disease presents a vexing ethical challenge. Such studies present significant surgical risks, and high degrees of uncertainty about intervention risks and biological effects. We argue that maintaining a favorable riskbenefit balance in such circumstances requires a higher than usual degree of confidence that protocols will lead to significant direct and/or social benefits. One critical way of promoting such confidence…Read more
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International neurosurgeryIn Stephen Honeybul (ed.), Ethics in neurosurgical practice, Cambridge University Press. 2020.
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Rollbacks, Endorsements, and IndeterminismIn Mike Almeida & Mark H. Bernstein (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd Edition. pp. 484-498. 2010.
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44Informed consent for clinical trials of deep brain stimulation in psychiatric disease: challenges and implications for trial design: Table 1Journal of Medical Ethics 38 (2): 107-111. 2012.Advances in neuromodulation and an improved understanding of the anatomy and circuitry of psychopathology have led to a resurgence of interest in surgery for psychiatric disease. Clinical trials exploring deep brain stimulation (DBS), a focally targeted, adjustable and reversible form of neurosurgery, are being developed to address the use of this technology in highly selected patient populations. Psychiatric patients deemed eligible for surgical intervention, such as DBS, typically meet stringe…Read more
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162Opportunistic carnivorismJournal of Applied Philosophy 17 (2). 2000.Some carnivores defend the position that the opportunistic consumption of meat is morally permissible even under the assumption that it is morally wrong to act in ways that ause unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. Ordering and consuming chicken once a week, they argue, will not increase the numbers of chickens suffering or slaughtered, since the system of purchasing and farming chickens is not sufficiently fine‐tuned to register differences at margin. We argue that, insensitivity of the ma…Read more
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10The moral equality of humans and animalsPalgrave-Macmillan. 2015.Received opinion has it that humans are morally superior to non-human animals; human interests matter more than the like interests of animals and the value of human lives is alleged to be greater than the value of nonhuman animal lives. Since this belief causes mayhem and murder, its de-mythologizing requires urgent attention.
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14Duty and the Beast: Should We Eat Meat in the Name of Animal Rights?Journal of Animal Ethics 10 (1): 86-89. 2020.
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18Evaluating the Value of Animals and HumansJournal of Animal Ethics 9 (1): 66-75. 2019.Received opinion attributes greater value to the lives of humans than to the lives of animals. Arguably, this conviction allows the continuation of the institutions of factory farming, hunting, and animal experimentation. After all, if we believe that the value of animal lives is at least equal to the value of human lives, we would presumably be quick to renounce and abolish these activities. My aim is to show that we have no good reason to sustain our common belief in the hierarchy of value con…Read more
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29A Response to MacClellanJournal of Animal Ethics 3 (1): 69-71. 2013.In "Size Matters" in this issue, Joel MacClellan argues for three claims: according to utilitarianism, faced with a choice of eating large or small animals, we should eat the large; utilitarianism may ground obligations to eat meat; and we justifiably attract greater moral responsibility for the "direct" killing of our food animals than we do for "indirect" killing. MacClellan tends to underestimate the resources available even to hedonistic utilitarianism and oversimplifies the conditions in th…Read more
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23Comparing the Wrongness of Killing Humans and Killing AnimalsIn Andrew Linzey & Clair Linzey (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics, Palgrave Macmillan Uk. pp. 349-361. 2018.Virtually all persons—philosophers and laypersons alike—agree that, special circumstances aside, killing humans is more morally objectionable than killing animals. I argue for a radical inversion of this dogma: all else being equal, killing nonhuman animals is more morally objectionable than killing humans. We will discover that the dominant reason for the pervasive belief that killing humans is worse than killing animals—that the human kind of animal uniquely has the capacities for self-conscio…Read more
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7Introduction: The Ethics of KillingIn Andrew Linzey & Clair Linzey (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics, Palgrave Macmillan Uk. pp. 249-254. 2018.In this Introduction, I have two goals. First, I try to contextualize the reasons most people believe both that, all else being equal, killing animals is wrong, and that some justification is needed, at least implicitly, to perform these killings. In the course of this discussion, I briefly discuss the comparative badness of killing human and nonhuman animals. Second, I provide short summaries of all of the papers in this section of the Handbook.
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28I Involutional DeterminismThe Monist 71 (3): 358-364. 1988.One tolerably clear statement of Determinism has it that all events are caused. Expanded upon, this thesis has been taken as the claim that the existence of any event E1, has a set of events, E2 … En which antedate E1, and which are causally sufficient for the occurrence of E1. That is, given the occurrence of E2 … En, E1 is causally necessary. I would hardly wish to claim that this is the only plausible statement of the doctrine of Determinism; nonetheless it is a common one, and the one that I…Read more
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21Research Consent for Deep Brain Stimulation in Treatment-Resistant Depression: Balancing Risk With Patient ExpectationsAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 2 (1): 39-41. 2011.
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21Book ReviewsL. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness and Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 239. $24.95Ethics 111 (2): 441-443. 2001.
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66The Moral Complexities of Eating MeatJournal of Animal Ethics 7 (2): 198-203. 2017.The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the moral issues revolving around our eating habits. While much of the volume concerns the so-called causal impotence argument— the idea that since, as individuals, we do little to add to the harm imposed on animals, some opportunistic carnivorism on our parts is not blameworthy—there are thought-provoking essays running the gamut from defending the practice of meat eating more generally to insisting that st…Read more
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5On pandemics and the duty to care: whose duty? who cares?BMC Medical Ethics 7 (1): 5. 2006.Background As a number of commentators have noted, SARS exposed the vulnerabilities of our health care systems and governance structures. Health care professionals and hospital systems that bore the brunt of the SARS outbreak continue to struggle with the aftermath of the crisis. Indeed, HCPs – both in clinical care and in public health – were severely tested by SARS. Unprecedented demands were placed on their skills and expertise, and their personal commitment to their profession was severely t…Read more
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Freedom of Will and Autonomy of MindDissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. 1982.This thesis discusses the traditional problem of Free Will. I refer to this problem as, equivalently, the Deterministic challenge or the Deterministic dilemma. It can be phrased, roughly, as follows: Determinism is either true or false. If Determinism is true, then all of our actions are determined by events which ultimately, are beyond our control. If Determinism is false, then all of our actions are mere random happenings. Thus, our actions can never be legitimately said to be our own. ;Attemp…Read more
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33Robert Kane, the Significance of Free Will (review)Southwest Philosophy Review 13 (2): 171-172. 1997.
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Applied Ethics |