Reconsidering Nondemocratic Political Regimes

Asking what the best feasible political governance system for a country at a time is admits of different interpretations, depending on the gloss we are placing on “feasible.” We might be thinking of the best feasible system as the best system that could be installed, in present circumstances, if a set of people sufficient to bring about the shift could be convinced to team up to effect it. A more restricted feasibility question would be posed if we asked instead, taking for granted the actual beliefs and attitudes and their entrenchment in the present members of society now, what is the best move from the status quo that, if proposed to them, would elicit sufficient allegiance from some of them, to effect the shift? The first way of posing the question has us set aside actual beliefs and attitudes of people now that bear on the question, what are the available options for regime change. A more practical question to pose would be incremental. Given the present political system in a country of interest, would it be better in instrumental terms to push it in a more or a less democratic and to what extent? For simplicity, I stick in this Article to posing the issue at the more abstract level

The Meaning of Marriage: State Efforts to Facilitate Friendship, Love, and Childrearing

The Prioritarian Consequentialist approaches state regulation of marriage from a standpoint opposed to the Lockean Libertarian natural rights tradition. The prioritarian approach favors state regulation of marriage that induces people to make positive cost-benefit arrangements, whereas the lockean avers any coercive restriction of people\u27s liberty. Taking a prioritarian consequentialist perspective, this article discusses the appropriate state policy regarding private relationships involving love, sex, and childrearing, and assesses the meaning of marriage and possible alterations to marriage that would lead to consequences on the quality of human life. The prioritarian consequentialist supports state policies that produce the best outcome for people\u27s welfare by considering the promotion of good childrearing and committed sexual friendships. Although it is not clear what form of marital practice will best suit society, the author concludes that any marriage regulatory system must balance the conflicting interests that affect the quality of human life

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

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.

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