•  748
    The Philosophical Foundations of Risk
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 24 (2): 273-286. 1986.
    Characterizes the philosophical grammar of risk attributions and argues that epistemic features of a situation can be a source of risk.
  •  436
    Although the word 'sustainability' is used broadly, scientific approaches to sustainability fall into one of two competing paradigms. Following the influential Brundtland report of 1987. some theorists identify sustainability with some form of resource availability, and develop indicators for sustainability that stress capital depletion. This approach has spawned debates about the intersubstitutivity of capitals, with many environmental theorists arguing that at some point, depletion of natural …Read more
  •  322
    Nanotechnologies that have been linked to the possibility of enhancing cognitive capabilities of human beings might also be deployed to reduce or eliminate such capabilities in non-human vertebrate animals. A surprisingly large literature on the ethics of such disenhancement has been developed in response to the suggestion that it would be an ethically defensible response to animal suffering both in medical experimentation and in industrial livestock production. However, review of this literatur…Read more
  •  283
    The social goals of agriculture
    Agriculture and Human Values 3 (4): 32-42. 1986.
  •  243
    The Emergence of Food Ethics
    Food Ethics 1 (1): 61-74. 2016.
    Philosophical food ethics or deliberative inquiry into the moral norms for production, distribution and consumption of food is contrasted with food ethics as an international social movement aimed at reforming the global food system. The latter yields an activist orientation that can become embroiled in self-defeating impotency when the complexity and internal contradictions of the food system are more fully appreciated. However, recent work in intersectionality offers resources that are useful …Read more
  •  209
    Ihde's Pragmatism
    In Reimaging Philosophy and Technology, Reinventing Ihde. pp. 43-62. 2020.
    Don Ihde has characterized his philosophy as "phenomenology + pragmatism." This article argues that Ihde's pragmatism can be understood as consistency with two philosophical commitments from the first generation of American pragmatists (e.g. Peirce, James, Dewey and Addams). First, Ihde's notion of embodiment relations for tools and techniques is consistent with the organism-environment relational epistemology of these thinkers. Second, his desire to dissociate himself from romantic and neo-idea…Read more
  •  193
    Communicating Science-Based Information about Risk: How Ethics Can Help
    In Ethics and Practice in Science Communication. pp. 33-54. 2018.
    The chapter discusses two points of intersection between the communication of science-based information about risk and philosophical ethics. The first is a logically unnecessary bias toward consequentialist ethics, and a corresponding tendency to overlook the significance of deontological and virtue based ways to interpret the findings of a scientific risk analysis. The second is a grammatical bias that puts scientific communicators at odds with the expectations of a non-scientific audience.
  •  193
    F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk: Compassion by the Pound: The Economics of Farm Animal Welfare Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s10806-012-9377-z Authors Paul B. Thompson, WK Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, 503 South Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824-1032, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863
  •  155
    Food aid and the famine relief argument (brief return)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23 (3): 209-227. 2010.
    Recent publications by Pogge ( Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul: Paragon House 2008 ) and by Singer ( The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty. New York: Random House 2009 ) have resuscitated a debate over the justifiability of famine relief between Singer and ecologist Garrett Hardin in the 1970s. Yet that debate concluded with a general recognition that (a) general considerations of development ethics presented more compelling ethical problems than famine relief; and (b) s…Read more
  •  108
    Privacy, secrecy and security
    Ethics and Information Technology 3 (1): 13-19. 2001.
    I will argue that one class of issues in computer ethics oftenassociated with privacy and a putative right to privacy isbest-analyzed in terms that make no substantive reference toprivacy at all. These issues concern the way that networkedinformation technology creates new ways in which conventionalrights to personal security can be threatened. However onechooses to analyze rights, rights to secure person and propertywill be among the most basic, the least controversial, and themost universally …Read more
  •  105
    The agricultural ethics of biofuels: A first look (review)
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 21 (2): 183-198. 2008.
    A noticeable push toward using agricultural crops for ethanol production and for undertaking research to expand the range of possible biofuels began to dominate discussions of agricultural science and policy in the United States around 2005. This paper proposes two complementary philosophical approaches to examining the philosophical questions that should be posed in connection with this turn of events. One stresses a critique of underlying epistemological commitments in the scientific models be…Read more
  •  96
    Theorizing Technological and Institutional Change
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 11 (1): 19-31. 2007.
    Formal, informal and material institutions constitute the framework for human interaction and communicative practice. Three ideas from institutional theory are particularly relevant to technical change. Exclusion cost refers to the effort that must be expended to prevent others from usurping or interfering in one’s use or disposal of a given good or resource. Alienability refers to the ability to tangibly extricate a good or resource from one setting, making it available for exchange relations. …Read more
  •  90
    Ethics in agricultural research
    Journal of Agricultural Ethics 1 (1): 11-20. 1988.
    Utilitarian ethics provides a model for evaluating moral responsibility in agricultural research decisions according to the balance of costs and benefits accruing to the public at large. Given the traditions and special requirements of agricultural research planning, utilitarian theory is well adapted to serve as a starting point for evaluating these decisions, but utilitarianism has defects that are well documented in the philosophical literature. Criticisms of research decisions in agricultura…Read more
  •  87
    Agrarian philosophy and ecological ethics
    Science and Engineering Ethics 14 (4): 527-544. 2008.
    Mainstream environmental ethics grew out of an approach to value that was rooted in a particular conception of rationality and rational choice. As weaknesses in this approach have become more evident, environmental philosophers have experimented with both virtue ethics and with pragmatism as alternative starting points for developing a more truly ecological orientation to environmental philosophy. However, it is possible to see both virtue ethics and pragmatism as emerging from older philosophic…Read more
  •  84
    The Spirit of the Soil challenges environmentalists to think more deeply and creatively about agriculture. Paul B. Thompson identifies four `worldviews' which tackle agricultural ethics according to different philosophical priorities; productionism, stewardship, economics and holism. He examines current issues such as the use of pesticides and biotechnology from these ethical perspectives. This book achieves an open-ended account of sustainability designed to minimise hubris and help us to recap…Read more
  •  82
    Ethics and the genetic engineering of food animals
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 10 (1): 1-23. 1997.
    Biotechnology applied to traditional foodanimals raises ethical issues in three distinctcategories. First are a series of issues that arise inthe transformation of pigs, sheep, cattle and otherdomesticated farm animals for purposes that deviatesubstantially from food production, including forxenotransplantation or production of pharmaceuticals.Ethical analysis of these issues must draw upon theresources of medical ethics; categorizing them asagricultural biotechnologies is misleading. The second…Read more
  •  81
    What Happens to Environmental Philosophy in a Wicked World?
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 485-498. 2012.
    What is the significance of the wicked problems framework for environmental philosophy? In response to wicked problems, environmental scientists are starting to welcome the participation of social scientists, humanists, and the creative arts. We argue that the need for interdisciplinary approaches to wicked problems opens up a number of tasks that environmental philosophers have every right to undertake. The first task is for philosophers to explore new and promising ways of initiating philosoph…Read more
  •  77
    Abstract: This essay critically examines whether there are ethical dimensions to the way that expertise, knowledge claims, and expressions of skepticism intersect on technical matters that influence public policy, especially during times of crisis. It compares two different perspectives on the matter: a philosophical outlook rooted in discourse and virtue ethics and a sociological outlook rooted in the so-called third-wave approach to science studies. The comparison occurs through metaphilosophi…Read more
  •  77
    Collective responsibility and professional roles
    Journal of Business Ethics 5 (2). 1986.
    Flores and Johnson (Ethics 93 No. 3 (1983) pp. 537, 545.) offer a solution to the problem of individual and collective responsibility which obscures the fundamental requirement for responsibility ascriptions, namely, moral agency. Close attention to matters of individual and collective agency provides a simple yet defensible criterion for establishing when an individual is and isn't responsible for the untoward consequences of a collective act.
  •  75
    The ethics of truth-telling and the problem of risk
    Science and Engineering Ethics 5 (4): 489-510. 1999.
    Risk communication poses a challenge to ordinary norms of truth-telling because it can easily mislead. Analyzing this challenge in terms of a systematic divergence between expertise and public attitudes fails to recognize how two specific features of the concept of risk play a role in managing daily affairs. First, evaluating risk always incorporates an estimate of the reliability of information. Since risk communication is an effort at providing information, audiences will naturally and appropr…Read more
  •  73
    Ethical issues in livestock cloning
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 11 (3): 197-217. 1999.
    Although cloning may eventually become an important technology for livestock production, four ethical issues must be addressed before the practice becomes widespread. First, researchers must establish that the procedure is not detrimental to the health or well-being of affected animals. Second, animal research institutions should evaluate the net social benefits to livestock producers by weighing the benefits to producers against the opportunity cost of research capacity lost to biomedical proje…Read more
  •  73
    The philosophical foundations of risk
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 24 (2): 273-286. 1986.
    Rescher's 1983 study of risk analysis marks an important departure from game theory in that philosophical foundations for risk are neither formal nor implicit, But explicitly defined objective properties. Rescher's claim that these foundations are ontological fails, However. His ontology is internally inconsistent. Furthermore, Risk is always interest relative, Making it impossible to remove epistemological considerations entirely from any account of its foundations.
  •  71
    Mark Sagoff 's price, principle, and the environment: Two comments
    with Bryan Norton, David Schmidtz, Elizabeth Willott, and Mark Sagoff
    Ethics, Place and Environment 9 (3). 2006.
    I will discuss two themes that can be found in Mark Sagoff's most recent book, Price, Principle, and the Environment. Built from pieces fashioned in his entertaining and incisive critical es...
  •  70
    Ideas for How to Take Wicked Problems Seriously
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 441-445. 2012.
    Ideas for How to Take Wicked Problems Seriously Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9348-9 Authors Kyle Powys Whyte, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, 503 S. Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA Paul B. Thompson, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, 503 S. Kedzie Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863
  •  66
    The GMO Quandary and What It Means for Social Philosophy
    Social Philosophy Today 30 7-27. 2014.
    Agricultural crops developed using the tools of genetic engineering have become socially institutionalized in three ways that substantially compromise the inherent potential of plant transformation tools. The first is that when farming depends upon debt finance, farmers find themselves in a competitive situation such that efficiency-enhancing technology fuels a trend of bankruptcy and increasing scale of production. As efficiency increasing tools, GMOs are embedded in controversial processes of …Read more
  •  65
    Interests and values in national nutrition policy in the united states
    with H. O. Kunkel
    Journal of Agricultural Ethics 1 (4): 241-256. 1988.
    When scientists consider the interaction of science and value judgments, debates often occur. When public policy grows out of science, disagreements between scientists can become even more spirited. This paper examines the case of nutrition policy in the United States, which has been both at the interface between agriculture and medicine and the object of serious discord concerned with the strength and validity of the scientific evidence and the responsibility for action. The development of indi…Read more
  •  63
    Putting Pragmatism to Work?
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 7 (1): 41-44. 2003.
  •  62
    Beyond Environmentalism
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 14 (2): 163-166. 2010.
  •  61
    Re-Envisioning the Agrarian Ideal
    Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 25 (4): 553-562. 2012.
    Abstract   Critics of The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics (Lexington: 2010, University Press of Kentucky) have difficulties with its commitment to agrarian philosophy, and have also suggested that the program described there needs more elaboration of how sustainability might be pursued, especially in its social dimensions. The book draws upon agrarian philosophy to argue that habit and material practice are an appropriate and vital focus of ethics. Attention to habit and…Read more