Ryota Ishihara

The counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit has faced several objections, such as the preemption problem. To address these, Aaron Thieme has recently proposed a novel account of harm and benefit, which he calls the erotetic account (EA). EA analyzes harm and benefit by distinguishing between worlds that are worth wanting for us and worlds that are not. In this paper, I argue that, despite its many virtues, EA ultimately fails to capture harm and benefit because it undergenerates both harm and benefit.

According to the deprivation account of the badness of death, death is bad for the one who dies because it deprives her of goods she would otherwise have enjoyed. This view faces the so-called symmetry problem when one considers prenatal nonexistence. Scholars have proposed various solutions to this problem, but all of them encounter their own difficulties. In this paper, I propose a new solution to the symmetry problem. The symmetry problem focuses on the rationality of regretting death and prenatal nonexistence. However, the meaning of rationality in the symmetry problem is ambiguous as it stands and can be further clarified. I argue that, once the meaning of rationality has been clarified, then it becomes apparent that the symmetry problem fails. Consequently, the apparent force of the symmetry problem stems from an obscurity in the meaning of rationality. I also argue that my solution avoids difficulties with the most prominent solutions to the symmetry problem.

Beka Jalagania has recently argued that benefiting from wild animals generates special duties to assist them. To show this, Jalagania offers an argument that focuses on their contribution to the production of the benefits we receive, which he calls the contribution argument. In this paper I aim to show that this argument fails. One of the premises on which the contribution argument rests is that we ought to share the benefits we receive with whoever contributed to their production. However, the idea of contribution in this premise is somewhat ambiguous as it stands and can be further clarified in at least two ways: a counterfactual way and a causal way. I examine these two interpretations of contribution in turn, focusing mainly on their counterintuitive implications, and argue that under both interpretations, the contribution argument faces some difficulties. Therefore, unless a plausible interpretation of contribution is offered, we should conclude that this argument fails.

David DeGrazia and Tristram McPherson present different arguments for moral vegetarianism. Roughly speaking, DeGrazia argues that the consumption of animal products is morally impermissible because it involves financial support for factory farming, while McPherson argues that it is morally impermissible because it involves benefiting from wrongdoing. These arguments share a common structural feature, in identifying a very thin connection between the consumption and production of animal products, which is then taken to be morally impermissible. At first sight, these arguments seem appealing. However, they face similar problems. In other words, they condemn too many actions mostly because of their common structural feature. In this paper, I aim to present a new argument that doesn’t (at least so clearly) face these problems, which I call the “argument from responsibility.” Rather than attempting to argue from a very thin connection between the consumption and production, this argument focuses on what would happen if sufficiently many people refrained from consuming animal products. Partly due to this difference, this argument doesn’t (at least so clearly) have some of the problems in DeGrazia’s and McPherson’s accounts.