Self-Defense and Culpability: Fault Forfeits First

Under what conditions is it morally permissible to kill someone in order to save your own life—or the life of another who is threatened? There seem to be clear cases. Threatened by an assailant who is trying to kill you for no good reason, you may use lethal force if necessary to save yourself from death or serious injury from the assailant’s attack. Threatened with death in the form of an onrushing runaway truck, you may not save yourself by using a bystander or imposing on a bystander in a way that inflicts severe harm on her. In a justly celebrated essay, Judith Thomson notes that it is permissible to kill a “Villainous Aggressor” when necessary to save oneself from grievous harm, but adds that the evil intent —and thus culpability—of the Villainous Aggressor is not a necessary condition for justified self-defense. She suggests that if we remove the elements of evil intent and culpability, and imagine an “Innocent Aggressor” whose actions pose a threat of causing one grave physical harm, one gets a similar moral permission to kill in self-defense. Moreover, if we remove the element of agency altogether, and imagine an “Innocent Threat,” whose bodily movements pose a threat of inflicting grave physical harm on one, but who is not at fault in any way for posing this threat, and is not doing anything at all, one gets a similar moral permission to kill in self-defense. Still, Thomson asserts, the differences between Villainous Aggressor, Innocent Aggressor, and Innocent Threat make “no moral difference”—to the permissibility of self-defense. Hence, according to Thomson, “it is permissible for you to proceed in Innocent Threat just as in Villainous Aggressor and Innocent Aggressor.” Pondering these suggestions, she proposes, “I fancy we overrate the role of fault in many areas of moral theory.

What Is Wrongful Discrimination?

Legal prohibition of some types of discriminatory conduct may be morally acceptable even though the conduct being prohibited would not be immoral in the absence of legal prohibition. Consider Thomas Schelling\u27s analysis of patterns of racial segregation in residential housing. If one sees a sharply segregated housing segregation pattern (for example, African-Americans living next to African-Americans, whites living next to whites, and African-Americans living next to whites only at the neighborhoods - edges) even though there is no legal requirement that forces this result, one might suppose that what explains the segregation is a strong desire of almost all members of one or both groups not to live in proximity to any members of the other group. Schelling presented a simple model of the dynamics of residential housing choice that showed that mild racial preferences could lead to strongly segregated outcomes. For example, if nobody wants to live in a neighborhood in which members of his racial group are a minority, and individuals occasionally move in and out of neighborhoods, eventually a strongly segregated pattern emerges. In other words, segregation can emerge even if no one is averse to living in proximity to members of another race

Which Inequalities Matter?

Why does equality across persons matter morally? An equal split can be instrumentally useful, for example, when a parent is dividing treats among hawk-eyed children, who will squawk at unequal distribution. Does equality of some sort matter morally and noninstrumentally, for its own sake? If so, which sort? If so, on what grounds? The claim this essay shall explore is that the equality that matters morally in itself or for its own sake is equality in the lifetime well-being enjoyed by persons. Every term in this seemingly bland formulation contains a land mine that can explode into controversy. Stepping carefully around controversy, I for the most part limit myself to highlighting some issues that would need to be settled in order to arrive at a reasoned verdict on this claim. I defend the claim mainly by trying to show that some objections that might appear to be decisive against it are targeting particular stances on one or another of these issues that need clarification, and that some clarifications do not require commitment to the stance that prompts the apparently decisive objection. In other words, I pursue an evasive strategy of ducking and weaving. Readers will have to judge whether ducking some objections in this way leaves the doctrine under review still vulnerable to fatally damaging blows. The strategy pursued here of defending an initially controversial assertion by making concessions to critics with a view to showing what is left as a residue to be a promising and plausible view worth further inquiry risks another kind of failure, that of suffering death by a thousand qualifications. The worry is that after the concessions there does not remain a sufficiently substantive and interesting claim to be worth further discussion. I try to guard against this disappointing upshot by indicating that the egalitarianism I defend is one that many thoughtful people deplore, especially if it is advanced, as I do, as a morally legitimate basis for state action

Against Freedom of Conscience

Is there a moral right to freedom of conscience? Should a legal right to freedom of conscience be established in each country on Earth? This essay argues for negative answers to both questions

Is Moral Theory Perplexed by New Genetic Technology?

From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice intelligently addresses difficult issues at the intersection of medical ethics and the theory of justice. The authors Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, and Daniel Wikler repeatedly emphasized their opinion that advances in genetic technology force upon us entirely new ethical questions that previous moral theories lack the resources to resolve. The claim that new scientific discoveries render previous moral theories obsolete should be regarded with suspicion. Suspicion should be further aroused when readers note another feature of the authors’ theorizing that neatly fits the claim that we stand at the dawn of a new world of ethical theorizing. The authors’ discussion from start to finish stayed at a middle level. That is, the authors began each chapter with a few moral principles taken to be plausible or possibly plausible and examined their implications for issues raised by new genetic technology. This is not an exercise in applied ethics, because the principles initially invoked are subjected to criticism and scrutiny. But in almost every significant case, the results are inconclusive. The moral puzzles that are raised are left unsolved, with moral reasons pointing towards opposed conclusions and the principles that generated these opposed reasons left in an unordered state, with no guidance as to how much relative weight to assign to one or another of these principles. The authors endorsed Rawlsian reflective equilibrium methodology in ethics, but tentative reflective equilibrium5tends to remain beyond reach in the chapters of this book

IDOL regulates systemic energy balance through control of neuronal VLDLR expression.

Liver X receptors limit cellular lipid uptake by stimulating the transcription of Inducible Degrader of the LDL Receptor (IDOL), an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets lipoprotein receptors for degradation. The function of IDOL in systemic metabolism is incompletely understood. Here we show that loss of IDOL in mice protects against the development of diet-induced obesity and metabolic dysfunction by altering food intake and thermogenesis. Unexpectedly, analysis of tissue-specific knockout mice revealed that IDOL affects energy balance, not through its actions in peripheral metabolic tissues (liver, adipose, endothelium, intestine, skeletal muscle), but by controlling lipoprotein receptor abundance in neurons. Single-cell RNA sequencing of the hypothalamus demonstrated that IDOL deletion altered gene expression linked to control of metabolism. Finally, we identify VLDLR rather than LDLR as the primary mediator of IDOL effects on energy balance. These studies identify a role for the neuronal IDOL-VLDLR pathway in metabolic homeostasis and diet-induced obesity

Three (Potential) Pillars of Transnational Economic Justice: The Bretton Woods Institutions as Guarantors of Global Equal Treatment and Market Completion

This essay aims to bring two important lines of inquiry and criticism together. It first lays out an institutionally enriched account of what a just world economic order will look like. That account prescribes, via the requisites to that mechanism which most directly instantiate the account, three realms of equal treatment and market completion - the global products, services, and labor markets; the global investment/financial markets; and the global preparticipation opportunity allocation. The essay then suggests how, with minimal if any departure from familiar canons of traditional international legal mandate interpretation, each of the Bretton Woods institutions - particularly the GATT/WTO and the IMF - can be viewed at least in part as charged with the task of fostering equal treatment and ultimate market completion within one of those three realms. The piece then argues that one of the institutions in particular - the World Bank - has, for reasons of at best negligent and at worst willful injustice on the part of influential state actors in the world community, fallen farthest short in pursuit of what should be viewed as its proper mandate. The article accordingly concludes that a fuller empowerment of the Bank to effect its ideal mission will press the Bretton Woods system more nearly into ethical balance, and with it the world into justice; and that full empowerment of the GATT/WTO and IMF should be partly conditioned upon the fuller empowerment of the Bank