96 research outputs found
Property Rights and the Duty to Extend Human Life
Peer reviewedPreprin
Valuing love and valuing the self in Iris Murdoch
Acknowledgements: thanks go to Margarita Mauri who arranged for an earlier version of this paper to be delivered at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Barcelona in 2011. I have incorporated several useful and improving comments made by Margarita and colleagues.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
The Duplication of Love's Reasons
If X loves Y does it follow that X has reasons to love a physiologically exact replacement for Y? Can love's reasons be duplicated? One response to the problem is to suggest that X lacks reasons for loving such a duplicate because the reason-conferring properties of Y cannot be fully duplicated. But a concern, played upon by Derek Parfit, is that this response may result from a failure to take account of the psychological pressures of an actual duplication scenario. In the face of the actual loss of a loved one and the subsequent appearance of a duplicate, how could we resist the inclination to love? Drawing upon duplication scenarios from Parfit and from Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, this paper will argue that there could be reasons for X to come to love a duplicate of Y but that these would not be identical with the reasons that X had (and may still have) to love Y. Nor (in the case of an agent with a normal causal history) could they be reasons for a love that violates the requirement that love is a response to a relationship and therefore takes time to emerge.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio
The Peaks of Eternal Light: a Near-term Property Issue on the Moon
The Outer Space Treaty makes it clear that the Moon is the province of all
mankind, with the latter ordinarily understood to exclude state or private
appropriation of any portion of its surface. However, there are indeterminacies
in the Treaty and in space law generally over the issue of appropriation. These
indeterminacies might permit a close approximation to a property claim or some
manner of quasi-property. The recently revealed highly inhomogeneous
distribution of lunar resources changes the context of these issues. We
illustrate this altered situation by considering the Peaks of Eternal Light.
They occupy about one square kilometer of the lunar surface. We consider a
thought experiment in which a Solar telescope is placed on one of the Peaks of
Eternal Light at the lunar South pole for scientific research. Its operation
would require nondisturbance, and hence that the Peak remain unvisited by
others, effectively establishing a claim of protective exclusion and de facto
appropriation. Such a telescope would be relatively easy to emplace with todays
technology and so poses a near-term property issue on the Moon. While effective
appropriation of a Peak might proceed without raising some of the familiar
problems associated with commercial development (especially lunar mining), the
possibility of such appropriation nonetheless raises some significant issues
concerning justice and the safeguarding of scientific practice on the lunar
surface. We consider this issue from scientific, technical, ethical and policy
viewpoints.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures (color). Space Policy in pres
Whimsical Desires
To desire is to want, but not necessarily to be disposed to do anything. That is to say, desiring does not necessarily involve having any disposition to act. To lend plausibility to this view I appeal to the example of whimsical desires that no action could help us to realise. What may lead us to view certain desires as whimsical is precisely the absence of any possibility of realizing them. While such desires might seem less than full-blooded, I argue that we can have full-blooded desires concerning such matters because of our (non-whimsical) concern for others. That is to say, whimsical desires can have a borrowed seriousness. The article goes on to strengthen the separability of dispositions and desires by narrowing down the concept of triggering conditions for a disposition. If we allow the triggering conditions to be too broad then it will always make sense to say that someone with a desire simply must have a disposition because, all other things being equal, they would bring about what they desire if they were able to do so.Peer reviewe
Basic Methodology for Space Ethics
The introduction sets out a standard concern that space ethics may be unduly constraining upon state and private sector activities in space. As a counter-picture, Section 2 sets up a distinction between âstandard space ethicsâ and âspecial space ethicsâ which will allow us to explore ways in which space ethics enables as well as constrains. A case is then made in Section 3 for pragmatic constraints upon space ethics itself. Space ethics should be either âpolicy aptâ (able to directly shape space policy within a liberal democratic social context) or âprecursor aptâ (able to contribute productively to broader, precursor discussions which may feed into policy apt deliberations). What makes any ethic satisfy either of these conditions will depend upon a range of factors. The ethic should have stability (dealt with in Section 3.1). It should not merely track transitory voting trends or the ebbs and flows of electoral politics. Secondly, it should have a high degree of political realizability (dealt with in Section 3.2). Finally, the ethic should be psychologically available. Section 4 then shows the usefulness of these basic constraints upon space ethics through a contrast between the emerging US and European agendas in astrobiology
Astrobiology and Society in Europe Today
This book describes the state of astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to the European society at large. With contributions from authors in more than 20 countries and over 30 scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to European society. The book has two main objectives:
1. It recommends the establishment of a European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) as an answer to a series of challenges relating to astrobiology but also European research, education, and society at large.
2. It also acknowledges the societal implications of astrobiology, and thus the role of the social sciences and humanities in optimizing the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to the lives of the people of Europe and the challenges they face
How much of the Solar System should we leave as Wilderness?
"How much of the Solar System should we reserve as wilderness, off-limits to
human development?" We argue that, as a matter of policy, development should be
limited to one eighth, with the remainder set aside. We argue that adopting a
"1/8 principle" is far less restrictive, overall, than it might seem. One
eighth of the iron in the asteroid belt is more than a million times greater
than all of the Earth's estimated iron reserves and may suffice for centuries.
A limit of some sort is needed because of the problems associated with
exponential growth. Humans are poor at estimating the pace of such growth, so
the limitations of a resource are hard to recognize before the final three
doubling times which take utilization successively from 1/8 to 1/4 to 1/2, and
then to the point of exhaustion. Population growth and climate change are
instances of unchecked exponential growth. Each places strains upon ouru
available resources. Each is a problem we would like to control but attempts to
do so at this comparatively late stage have not been encouraging. Our limited
ability to see ahead suggests that we should set ourselves a 'tripwire' that
gives us at least 3 doubling times as leeway, i.e. when 1/8 of Solar System
resources are close to being exploited. At a 3.5 percent growth rate for the
space economy, comparable to that of the iron use from the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution until now, the 1/8 point would be reached after 400
years. At that point the 20 year doubling time of a 3.5 percent growth rate
means that only 60 years would remain to transition the economic system to new
"steady state" conditions. The rationale for adopting the 1/8 principle now is
that it may be far easier to implement in principle restrictions at an early
stage, rather than later, when vested and competing interests have come into
existence.Comment: 18 pages, 0 figures, 1 table. Submitted version of paper published in
Acta Astronautic
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