Timothy Kirschenheiter

I argue against responsibility arguments that offer a defence of abortion even on the assumption that the fetus is a person. I focus on argumentation originally offered by Judith Jarvis Thomson and then later defended by David Boonin. I offer thought experiments meant to show that, under certain conditions, one bears moral responsibility for creating a fetus. I then offer a positive argument for when one is morally responsible for the creation of a fetus. This argument relies on the presence of other forms of sex that reasonably approximate the goods of penile-vaginal intercourse. Given the presence of these options, sexual partners who engage in penile-vaginal intercourse bear moral responsibility for the creation of the fetus. While I do not think this argument settles the abortion debate – there still may be other ways to successfully defend abortion – it does explain why responsibility arguments like those offered by Thomson fail.

At first glance, it seems difficult to object to any program that merits the label “harm reduction.” If harm is bad, as everyone recognizes, then surely reducing it is good. What’s the problem? The problem, we submit, is twofold. First, there’s more to “harm reduction,” as that term is typically used, than simply the reduction of harm. Some of the wariness about harm-reduction programs may result from the nebulous “more.” Thus, part of our task is to provide a clear definition of harm reduction. Next, we turn to a second problem: a worry about complicity. Those who object to harm reduction programs fear that participation in such programs would make them complicit in activities they deem immoral. In this paper we argue that this fear is largely unwarranted. We use supervised injection sites —safe spaces for the use of risky drugs—as our paradigmatic case of harm reduction. These SISs are generally offered in the hope of reducing harm to both the drug user and the public. For this reason, our analysis focuses on complicity in harm. We draw upon the work of Gregory Mellema as our framework. Mellema offers three ways one can be complicit in harm caused by another: by enabling, facilitating or condoning it. We argue that one who operates an SIS is not complicit in any of these ways, while also laying out the conditions that must be met if one is to argue that harm reduction entails complicity in non-consequentialist wrongdoing.

In this paper, I explain Neil Feit and Andrew Cullison‘s two proposed theories of knowledge, their initial No Essential Falsehood-Justifying Grounds account and their ultimate 'Doesn‘t Justify the Denial of a Defeater‘ account. I then offer original counterexamples against both of these theories. In the process of doing so, I both explain Feit and Cullison‘s motivation for jointly offering their theories and recount counterexamples that others have offered against various theories that assert that knowledge is justified, true belief plus some condition concerning essential reliance.

I argue that harm reduction programs should be extended to include psychedelic drugs. I reach this conclusion by first defining harm reduction and discussing arguments in favor of harm reduction for drug use in general. I offer defenses of harm reduction for drug use on the basis of consequentialism, Kantianism/deontology, and virtue ethics. I then apply this reasoning to harm reduction for psychedelic drugs, while also arguing that these programs are easier to defend than harm reduction for other, harder drugs and that these programs could be easily implemented.

In this paper, I consider Brandon Carey’s account of misinformation and raise two counterexamples against it. I argue that while Carey’s account is an improvement on prior accounts of misinformation, it still fails. While I am unsure how exactly to rectify this failure, I argue that a correct account of misinformation needs both a tighter connection between misinformation and its negative epistemic impacts and some limiting condition concerning the venue/context in which misinformation is presented.

I offer a positive argument in defense of the moral permissibility of abortion that relies on the moral concept of self-defense. I argue that given the lack of proportional self-defense options in pregnancy, a pregnant woman is morally permitted to procure a self-defensive abortion so long as the risks/burdens of her pregnancy and childbirth reach a sufficiently high threshold of seriousness. I then argue that even standard pregnancies reach this threshold, because of the expected physical and nonphysical risks/burdens imposed. Finally, I consider three objections—an objection based on the risks/burdens of abortion, an objection based on the fetus’s status as an innocent aggressor, and an objection based on the pregnant woman’s moral responsibility for the creation of the fetus.