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3435Enhancement, BiomedicalIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.Biomedical technologies can increasingly be used not only to combat disease, but also to augment the capacities or traits of normal, healthy people – a practice commonly referred to as biomedical enhancement. Perhaps the best‐established examples of biomedical enhancement are cosmetic surgery and doping in sports. But most recent scientific attention and ethical debate focuses on extending lifespan, lifting mood, and augmenting cognitive capacities.
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3318Biological Interventions for Crime PreventionIn David Birks & Thomas Douglas (eds.), Treatment for Crime: Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.This chapter sets the scene for the subsequent philosophical discussions by surveying a number of biological interventions that have been used, or might in the future be used, for the purposes of crime prevention. These interventions are pharmaceutical interventions intended to suppress libido, treat substance abuse or attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or modulate serotonin activity; nutritional interventions; and electrical and magnetic brain stimulation. Where applicable, we bri…Read more
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3129Consequentialism and the Death PenaltyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 8 (10): 56-58. 2008.Comment on "The ethical 'elephant' in the death penalty 'room'". Arguments in defense of the death penalty typically fall into one of two groups. Consequentialist arguments point out beneficial aspects of capital punishment, normally focusing on deterrence, while non-consequentialist arguments seek to justify execution independently of its effects, for example, by appealing to the concept of retribution. Michael Keane's target article "The ethical 'elephant' in the death penalty 'room'" should…Read more
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2174Stem Cell Research and Same Sex ReproductionIn Muireann Quigley, Sarah Chan & John Harris (eds.), Stem Cells: New Frontiers in Science and Ethics, World Scientific. 2012.Recent advances in stem cell research suggest that in the future it may be possible to create eggs and sperm from human stem cells through a process that we term in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). IVG would allow treatment of some currently untreatable forms of infertility. It may also allow same-sex couples to have genetically-related children. For example, cells taken from one man could potentially be used to create an egg, which could then be fertilised using naturally produced sperm from another …Read more
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1244Neuro-interventions as Criminal Rehabilitation: An Ethical ReviewIn Jonathan Jacobs & Jonathan Jackson (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Criminal Justice Ethics, Routledge. 2016.According to a number of influential views in penal theory, 1 one of the primary goals of the criminal justice system is to rehabilitate offenders. Rehabilitativemeasures are commonly included as a part of a criminal sentence. For example, in some jurisdictions judges may order violent offenders to attend anger management classes or to undergo cognitive behavioural therapy as a part of their sentences. In a limited number of cases, neurointerventions — interventions that exert a direct biologic…Read more
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1056Is Preventive Detention Morally Worse than Quarantine?In Jan W. De Keijser, Julian Roberts & Jesper Ryberg (eds.), Predictive Sentencing: Normative and Empirical Perspectives, Hart Publishing. 2019.In some jurisdictions, the institutions of criminal justice may subject individuals who have committed crimes to preventive detention. By this, I mean detention of criminal offenders (i) who have already been punished to (or beyond) the point that no further punishment can be justified on general deterrent, retributive, restitutory, communicative or other backwardlooking grounds, (ii) for preventive purposes—that is, for the purposes of preventing the detained individual from engaging in further…Read more
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828The Future of Neuroethics and the Relevance of the LawAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 10 (3): 120-121. 2019.Open Peer Commentary, referring to "Neuroethics at 15: The Current and Future Environment for Neuroethics".
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828The Morality of Moral NeuroenhancementIn Clausen Jens & Levy Neil (eds.), Handbook of Neuroethics, Springer. forthcoming.This chapter reviews recent philosophical and neuroethical literature on the morality of moral neuroenhancements. It first briefly outlines the main moral arguments that have been made concerning moral status neuroenhancements. These are neurointerventions that would augment the moral status of human persons. It then surveys recent debate regarding moral desirability neuroenhancements: neurointerventions that augment that the moral desirability of human character traits, motives or conduct. This…Read more
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774Parental Partiality and Future ChildrenJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 15 (1). 2019.Prospective parents are sometimes partial towards their future children, engaging in what I call ‘pre-parental partiality’. Common sense morality is as permissive of pre-parental partiality as it is of ordinary parental partiality—partiality towards one’s existing children. But I argue that existing justifications for partiality typically establish weaker reasons in support of pre-parental partiality than in support of parental partiality. Thus, either these existing justifications do not fully …Read more
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772Selecting Against Disability: The Liberal Eugenic Challenge and the Argument from Cognitive DiversityJournal of Applied Philosophy 35 (2): 319-340. 2018.Selection against embryos that are predisposed to develop disabilities is one of the less controversial uses of embryo selection technologies. Many bio-conservatives argue that while the use of ESTs to select for non-disease-related traits, such as height and eye-colour, should be banned, their use to avoid disease and disability should be permitted. Nevertheless, there remains significant opposition, particularly from the disability rights movement, to the use of ESTs to select against disabili…Read more
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737Resisting Sparrow's Sexy Reductio : Selection Principles and the Social GoodAmerican Journal of Bioethics 10 (7): 16-18. 2010.Principles of procreative beneficence (PPBs) hold that parents have good reasons to select the child with the best life prospects. Sparrow (2010) claims that PPBs imply that we should select only female children, unlesswe attach normative significance to “normal” human capacities. We argue that this claim fails on both empirical and logical grounds. Empirically, Sparrow’s argument for greater female wellbeing rests on a selective reading of the evidence and the incorrect assumption that an advan…Read more
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733Moral NeuroenhancementIn L. Syd M. Johnson & Karen S. Rommelfanger (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics, Routledge. 2017.In this chapter, we introduce the notion of “moral neuroenhancement,” offering a novel definition as well as spelling out three conditions under which we expect that such neuroenhancement would be most likely to be permissible (or even desirable). Furthermore, we draw a distinction between first-order moral capacities, which we suggest are less promising targets for neurointervention, and second-order moral capacities, which we suggest are more promising. We conclude by discussing concerns…Read more
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640Learning to Discriminate: The Perfect Proxy Problem in Artificially Intelligent Criminal SentencingIn Jesper Ryberg & Julian V. Roberts (eds.), Sentencing and Artificial Intelligence, Oxford University Press. 2022.It is often thought that traditional recidivism prediction tools used in criminal sentencing, though biased in many ways, can straightforwardly avoid one particularly pernicious type of bias: direct racial discrimination. They can avoid this by excluding race from the list of variables employed to predict recidivism. A similar approach could be taken to the design of newer, machine learning-based (ML) tools for predicting recidivism: information about race could be withheld from the ML tool…Read more
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599Enhancement & DesertPolitics, Philosophy and Economics. forthcoming.It is sometimes claimed that those who succeed with the aid of enhancement technologies deserve the rewards associated with their success less, other things being equal, than those who succeed without the aid of such technologies. This claim captures some widely held intuitions, has been implicitly endorsed by participants in social-psychological research, and helps to undergird some otherwise puzzling philosophical objections to the use of enhancement technologies. I consider whether it can be …Read more
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594Punishing Wrongs from the Distant PastLaw and Philosophy 38 (4): 335-358. 2019.On a Parfit-inspired account of culpability, as the psychological connections between a person’s younger self and older self weaken, the older self’s culpability for a wrong committed by the younger self diminishes. Suppose we accept this account and also accept a culpability-based upper limit on punishment severity. On this combination of views, we seem forced to conclude that perpetrators of distant past wrongs should either receive discounted punishments or be exempted from punishment entirel…Read more
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592Asbestos Neglect: Why Asbestos Exposure Deserves Greater Policy AttentionHealth Policy 123 (5): 516-519. 2019.While many public health threats are now widely appreciated by the public, the risks from asbestos exposure remain poorly understood, even in high-risk groups. This article makes the case that asbestos exposure is an important, ongoing global health threat, and argues for greater policy efforts to raise awareness of this threat. It also proposes the extension of asbestos bans to developing countries and increased public subsidies for asbestos testing and abatement.
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585Closed-Loop Brain Devices in Offender Rehabilitation: Autonomy, Human Rights, and AccountabilityCambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 30 (4): 669-680. 2021.The current debate on closed-loop brain devices (CBDs) focuses on their use in a medical context; possible criminal justice applications have not received scholarly attention. Unlike in medicine, in criminal justice, CBDs might be offered on behalf of the State and for the purpose of protecting security, rather than realising healthcare aims. It would be possible to deploy CBDs in the rehabilitation of convicted offenders, similarly to the much-debated possibility of employing other brain interv…Read more
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578A conception of genetic parenthoodBioethics 33 (1): 54-59. 2018.We seek to develop a plausible conception of genetic parenthood, taking a recent discussion by Heidi Mertes as our point of departure. Mertes considers two conceptions of genetic parenthood—one invoking genetic resemblance, and the other genetic inheritance—and presents counter-examples to both conceptions. We revise Mertes’ second conception so as to avoid these and related counter-examples.
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561What is Criminal Rehabilitation?Criminal Law and Philosophy 1. 2020.It is often said that the institutions of criminal justice ought or—perhaps more often—ought not to rehabilitate criminal offenders. But the term ‘criminal rehabilitation’ is often used without being explicitly defined, and in ways that are consistent with widely divergent conceptions. In this paper, we present a taxonomy that distinguishes, and explains the relationships between, different conceptions of criminal rehabilitation. Our taxonomy distinguishes conceptions of criminal rehabilitation …Read more
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533Autonomy and the Ethics of Biological Behaviour ModificationIn Akira Akabayashi (ed.), The Future of Bioethics: International Dialogues, Oxford University Press. 2014.Much disease and disability is the result of lifestyle behaviours. For example, the contribution of imprudence in the form of smoking, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, and drug and alcohol abuse to ill-health is now well established. More importantly, some of the greatest challenges facing humanity as a whole – climate change, terrorism, global poverty, depletion of resources, abuse of children, overpopulation – are the result of human behaviour. In this chapter, we will explore the possibility …Read more
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528Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic controlJournal of Medical Ethics 47 (12). 2020.Would compulsory treatment or vaccination for Covid-19 be justified? In England, there would be significant legal barriers to it. However, we offer a conditional ethical argument in favour of allowing compulsory treatment and vaccination, drawing on an ethical comparison with external constraints—such as quarantine, isolation and ‘lockdown’—that have already been authorised to control the pandemic. We argue that, if the permissive English approach to external constraints for Covid-19 has b…Read more
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522The Mere Substitution Defence of Nudging Works for Neurointerventions TooJournal of Applied Philosophy 39 (3): 407-420. 2022.Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.
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503Enhancement and Civic VirtueSocial Theory and Practice 40 (3): 499-527. 2014.Opponents of biomedical enhancement frequently adopt what Allen Buchanan has called the “Personal Goods Assumption.” On this assumption, the benefits of biomedical enhancement will accrue primarily to those individuals who undergo enhancements, not to wider society. Buchanan has argued that biomedical enhancements might in fact have substantial social benefits by increasing productivity. We outline another way in which enhancements might benefit wider society: by augmenting civic virtue and thus…Read more
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493Impartiality and infectious disease: Prioritizing individuals versus the collective in antibiotic prescriptionAJOB Empirical Bioethics 10 (1): 63-69. 2019.Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health disaster driven largely by antibiotic use in human health care. Doctors considering whether to prescribe antibiotics face an ethical conflict between upholding individual patient health and advancing public health aims. Existing literature mainly examines whether patients awaiting consultations desire or expect to receive antibiotic prescriptions, but does not report views of the wider public regarding conditions under which doctors should…Read more
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466Persuasive Technologies and the Right to Mental Liberty: The ‘Smart’ Rehabilitation of Criminal OffendersIn Marcello Ienca, O. Pollicino, L. Liguori, R. Andorno & E. Stefanini (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Information Technology, Life Sciences and Human Rights, Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.Every day, millions of people use mobile phones, play video games and surf the Internet. It is thus important to determine how technologies like these change what people think and how they behave. This is a central issue in the study of persuasive technologies. ‘Persuasive technologies’—henceforth ‘PTs’—are digital technologies, such as mobile apps, video games and virtual reality systems, that are deployed for the explicit purpose of changing attitudes and/or behaviours, without using coer…Read more
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454Are You Morally Modified?: The Moral Effects of Widely Used PharmaceuticalsPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 21 (2): 111-125. 2014.A number of concerns have been raised about the possible future use of pharmaceuticals designed to enhance cognitive, affective, and motivational processes, particularly where the aim is to produce morally better decisions or behavior. In this article, we draw attention to what is arguably a more worrying possibility: that pharmaceuticals currently in widespread therapeutic use are already having unintended effects on these processes, and thus on moral decision making and morally significant beh…Read more
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443Risk assessment tools in criminal justice and forensic psychiatry: The need for better dataEuropean Psychiatry 42 134-137. 2017.Violence risk assessment tools are increasingly used within criminal justice and forensic psychiatry, however there is little relevant, reliable and unbiased data regarding their predictive accuracy. We argue that such data are needed to (i) prevent excessive reliance on risk assessment scores, (ii) allow matching of different risk assessment tools to different contexts of application, (iii) protect against problematic forms of discrimination and stigmatisation, and (iv) ensure that contentious …Read more
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438The Negative Effects of Neurointerventions: Confusing Constitution and CausationAmerican Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 9 (3): 162-164. 2018.Birks and Buyx (2018) claim that, at least in the foreseeable future, nonconsensual neurointerventions will almost certainly suppress some valuable mental states and will thereby impose an objectionable harm to mental integrity—a harm that it is pro tanto wrong to impose. Of course, incarceration also interferes with valuable mental states, so might seem to be objectionable in the same way. However, Birks and Buyx block this result by maintaining that the negative mental effects of incarceration…Read more
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435Justifications for Non-Consensual Medical Intervention: From Infectious Disease Control to Criminal RehabilitationCriminal Justice Ethics 35 (3): 205-229. 2016.A central tenet of medical ethics holds that it is permissible to perform a medical intervention on a competent individual only if that individual has given informed consent to the intervention. However, in some circumstances it is tempting to say that the moral reason to obtain informed consent prior to administering a medical intervention is outweighed. For example, if an individual’s refusal to undergo a medical intervention would lead to the transmission of a dangerous infectious disease to …Read more
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412Compensation for Geoengineering Harms and No-Fault Climate Change CompensationThe Climate Geoengineering Governance Working Papers. 2014.While geoengineering may counteract negative effects of anthropogenic climate change, it is clear that most geoengineering options could also have some harmful effects. Moreover, it is predicted that the benefits and harms of geoengineering will be distributed unevenly in different parts of the world and to future generations, which raises serious questions of justice. It has been suggested that a compensation scheme to redress geoengineering harms is needed for geoengineering to be ethically a…Read more
Oxford, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland