Despite being a relatively popular subject of enquiry among the social sciences and humanities in recent decades, ‘affect’ remains an elusive phenomenon. This paper, rather than trace the development of affect theory in order to pick apart the work of previous scholars, instead explores research that has – implicitly or explicitly – tied affect(s) to relations and relationality. Engaging with anthropological theories of affect and relationships as a form of ‘empirical philosophy,’ as well as with ethnographic data from my own (...) fieldwork, this work seeks to provide that which has eluded previous theorists of affect: a definition of the phenomenon that is broad enough to cover its many aspects, while remaining concise enough for practical application. In doing so, I come to define affect as no more or less than, the experiential aspect of relationality. (shrink)

Since the affective turn in the social sciences, the mind-body dualism which affect theory was designed to overcome lingers in writings about affect and the body. To overcome this dualism, I rely on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s philosophy and map out their becomings in a third region of emerging and circulating affects. At the same time, I criticize Deleuze and Guattari for portraying becoming as intensely physical and yet not considering it through actual physical practice. I argue that dance (...) practice is an experiment in becoming and affect, and I develop a concrete and affective illustration of becoming through empirical research on pole dance practice, especially focusing on the phenomenon of bruising. (shrink)

Donald Davidson proposed an event ontology and considered events as entities to which people can refer and over which people can quantify. Davidson also proposed to interpret actions as events that are intentional under some descriptions. Recent years, some philosophers further developed his theory of action and extended their analysis to collective actions. It is an aim of this paper to contribute to this research program. In this paper, based on a four-dimensional event ontology, I propose an axiomatic theory for (...) actions and agents and analyze collective actions and extended agents. This paper mainly investigates individual and collective actions that involve tools. This investigation also aims to give a metaphysical characterization of the ontological status of tools. In this investigation, it turns out that the four-dimensional ontology is a powerful framework to semantically describe temporally extended actions and collective actions. In two appendixes, I give a precise description of the proposed theories. (shrink)

Human brain organoids are three-dimensional structures that reproduce the structure and function of the human brain in vitro. In this paper, I focus on the question of the moral status future human brain organoids will occupy. It is generally believed that the moral status a being occupies depend on sentience it possesses. However, in this paper, I argue that the presence or absence of a “consciousness” other than sentience may also have moral importance in the light of the features that (...) seem to be unique to human brain organoids, and assert that a new perspective on whether human brain organoids belong to “we” or not may be necessary for thinking abstractly about how they should be treated morally. I argue that even if future human brain organoids lack sentience, they can occupy a moral status when they have so-called phenomenal or access consciousness. On the other hand, I argue that as long as future human brain organoids are as much a part of the “we” in terms of family membership as patients in a persistent vegetative state are. This would imply that even if human brain organoids do not have any kinds of consciousnesses, they may occupy some moral status. (shrink)

As technology continues to grow (and sex-robots gain a more prominent position in our society), so too does concern about the way they will impact our lives and our sexuality. While many ethicists have started to assess what this impact could be (and if it would be positive or negative), the challenges and opportunities presented by sex-robots span over a wide range of topics and cannot be assessed easily. Hence, in this paper, I will attempt to categorize the main questions (...) concerning the ethics of sexual robotics in order to help ethicists gather their thoughts on this new technology. While doing so, I will principally identify four overarching issues: (1) how robots’ representation of human sexuality affects human gender issues; (2) how robots could potentially be utilized for medical purposes; (3) if robots could possibly deceive their users; (4) if sex-robots could end up as a new form of sex-slaves. (shrink)

Over forty years have passed since the death of Jean-Paul Sartre, still, his oeuvre stands out as a paramount achievement in existential-phenomenological thought. Among the numerous ideas and challenges he offered to contemporary continental philosophy, the problem of authenticity deserves a special place, for it connects many of existentialism’s key concerns. The ever reforming conceptualization of authenticity had spread from the mid-1930s (La transcendance de l’égo) till Sartre’s posthumously published Cahiers pour une morale that appeared in the early 1980s, and (...) it had a profound impact not only on ethical and literary theories, but also on psychiatry and psychotherapy. The present essay’s undertaking is to closely follow the trajectory of this celebrated concept, to contextualize its development in accordance with Sartre’s shifting philosophical as well as ethical projects over the years, and to point out some of the affinities this concept might have with East Asian thought, and with Buddhism in particular. (shrink)

Mirror neuron activation (MNA) has been applied to number of business ethics contexts including marketing, charitable giving, organizational connectedness, and leadership. Unfortunately, the business literature has often ignored research in philosophy and psychology which can provide insight into the application of mirror neurons to business contexts and other disciplines. I will argue that the use of mirror neurons to support business decisions cannot be established solely on the existence of neural activation as it requires higher level cognitive functions that go (...) beyond biological reductionism. But research into MNA does support their use in basic motor action understanding which is below the level of mental and psychological attributions. The corollary supports a dual-process model. On the one hand, mirror neurons are an automatic and unconscious process by which we understand human movement and, on the other hand, there is a cognitive system by which we understand action in terms of situational specifics and mental states. (shrink)

In this paper I, firstly (section 1), distinguish between human rights, natural rights and institutional rights and argue that some so-called human rights, such as the right to life, are natural rights and others, such as the right to vote, are institutional rights. Secondly (section 2), I sketch my account of joint rights (developed in more detail elsewhere1) and apply it to two kinds of entities that are importantly different from one another and from individual human beings, namely, business corporations (...) (section 3) and non-human animals (section 4). I do so to test the scope of joint rights in the context of the ascription of joint rights to human beings being uncontroversial (although the analysis of joint rights is far from being a settled matter). I argue that neither corporations nor animals have joint moral rights, since in neither case do they have moral rights, but that they do have, or at least they ought to have, legal rights, and some of these legal rights arguably ought to be joint legal rights. In doing so, I introduce a significant theoretical innovation to the literature on joint rights, namely, that of a layered structure of joint rights. (shrink)

In my paper, I propose to investigate the philosophical underpinnings of representative indigenous Japanese psychotherapeutic approaches, particularly that of Morita and Naikan therapies, that have, at their foundations, distinctly Buddhist psychological tenets, and that offer to deal with mental health issues in a manifestly different way compared with their western counterparts. I offer a comprehensive account of how the characterizations of madness and mental illness have been shifting over the last two hundred years in Japanese society and culture, and how (...) this has affected mental health care in Japan. Finally, the ways in which modern day thinkers, such as Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki and Keiji Nishitani have been re-shaping the concepts of the self in Japanese religion and philosophy while, at the same time, taking care to remain faithful to the original East Asian sensibilities will also be expounded and connected to the themes of mental health and mental illness. (shrink)

The only real guarantee in life is that it will end, that each of us will die. We are of course aware of this, but we tend to be so in a superficial way, a knowledge of the type that is recognized but not felt. If we do think of death it is usually in regards to someone else’s, and how their passing affects us, not how one’s own passing might relate to others. In the below we seek to rectify (...) these shortcomings and reflect on death with a bit more clarity, situating ourselves initially by a consideration of Heidegger’s being-toward-death and examining his 'possibility' with a view directed at authenticity and expectation. Dying and death are differentiated, and what death as annihilation implies is stressed – and this throughout. The framework we have thereby found then becomes an important element in our next effort to discover some approaches to death, to human finitude, that might prove more apposite than the default one. We finally apply our ideas and attempts to ethical concerns about the other, and to how dying – while strictly personal – is never singular. (shrink)

It is sometimes asserted that Hans Jonas would have formulated the precautionary principle because of his awareness of the involuntary consequences of human activity as well as his profound respect for nature. Returning to the origins of the arguments regarding his contribution to 20th century ecological thought, I identify two principal themes in the philosophical enterprise of the German-born American Jewish philosopher. One is a critique of technology and a practical philosophy, i.e. an ethics, regarding mankind and nature. The other (...) is linked to the phenomenology of life and the fundamental ontology of its evolution according to a specific view. In line with this genealogy, I discuss the initial assertion that Jonas’ thinking actually articulates the precautionary principle. Qualifying the two kinds of precaution we are dealing with, I finally offer an analysis of their differences in a strong sustainability framework from the point of view of epistemology. (shrink)

Since the demise of the Cartesian dualist view of the self a number of possible definitions of what the self could be, if indeed it can be said to be anything, have been put forward but no consensus has yet been reached. In fact, such seems a long way off. In what follows four accounts of the self that are representative of the broad trends in the literature are analyzed for theoretical vigor and empirical accuracy in light of recent advances (...) in cognitive studies and the findings of psychological research into behavior and decision-making. The self-concepts examined are of both the anti-realist and realist varieties, with one particular realist account found to be most apposite. The account is not without its flaws, however, and as such an alternative self view is offered that builds on and adds to its strengths. Finally, some ethical implications of adopting the proffered self-concept are considered. (shrink)

This article discusses the phenomena of Cyberevenge, sexbullying, and sextortion, especially among young people. The discussion, based on extensive review of books, research reports, newspapers, journal articles and pertinent websites, analyzes these challenges. The article suggests some remedies to counter these online social ills which pertain to promoting responsibility of netcitizens, schools, governments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and social networking sites.

The subject of this article is the “ethical justification” of a code of conduct. How does a code of conduct become an ethical code? The article focuses on the principlist approach in a broad sense, assessing its comparative advantages. Many scholarly critics are unhappy with the chaotic methods of grounding and writing ethical codes. They therefore stress the necessity of reducing this harmful abundant diversity. This paper does not support the monistic (single principle only) justification of an ethical code; instead, (...) it proposes a pluralist justification based on “principlism”. The core of the article is a sketch of the conceptual and managerial complexity generated by the principlist justification of an ethical code. It is mainly a conceptual and future-oriented approach, suggesting ways of building codes of ethics that are not yet practically enacted on a large scale and which, for this reason, may seem impractical. Lest they remain so, we have to keep an open mind with regard to their real, and not only their potential, practicality. (shrink)

Fundamentally, any system consists of objects and relationships between these objects. A major goal in ‘systems theory’ concerns the systematic discovery of general patterns or principles that are broadly applicable across a wide range of domains. From this perspective, we investigate the patterns and other relationships that may emerge between computer networks and organizations of human society. Our investigation emphasizes not only that computer networks reflect human society in various ways, but also that new ways of organizing human society inspired (...) by technological structures may be emerging. (shrink)

How applied should applied ethics be? I take up that question not because it belongs to the past of applied ethics (though it does), but because, given the present, it seems likely to be a part of the future of applied ethics as well. Consider, for example, a recent debate in the journal Bioethics: One of the four papers was titled, “Why Moral Philosophers Are Not and Should Not Be Moral Experts”; another, “Moral Philosophers Are Moral Experts!” In that debate, (...) a “moral expert” was a philosopher who used his knowledge of philosophy to speak with authority on practical questions. In the course of answering my question, I make a number of distinctions: between ethics-as-practice and ethics-as-theory; between ethics-as-morality, ethics-as-afield-of-philosophy, and ethics-as-special standards; and so on. Having thereby narrowed my question to:what can ethics-as-a-field-of-philosophy properly contribute to moral practice? I answer that ethics-as-a-field-of-philosophy can contribute much to moral practice, but only by maintaining a certain distance from it. For example, experts in ethics-as-a-field-of-philosophy—or even experts in all of philosophy—should not on that basis alone undertake to advise on questions of ethics-as-morality or ethics-as-special-standards. Practical experience has something to teach that is not philosophy—sensitivity to context, know-how, judgment, or the like. (shrink)

My thesis is that any course in professional ethics —even in a philosophy department —is, all else equal, better without moral theory than with it. In defending this thesis, I shall return to a debate I had with Bernie Gert and Ed Harris a few years ago, itself the culmination of almost four decades of teaching professional ethics and more than two decades of teaching others to do the same. I am, I should make clear, not against moral theory (the (...) attempt to understand morality as a reasonable undertaking). Indeed, not only do I enjoy teaching a course in moral theory every few years and publish on the subject now and then, I would agree that, in principle, moral theory can not only enlighten students but also be useful to them, helping them to identify moral issues they might otherwise overlook, seek information they might otherwise not think relevant, and formulate courses of action that might otherwise not occur to them. My thesis is entirely practical: Given the time normally allotted to a course in professional ethics (45 or so classroom hours), moral theory will never be useful enough. There is always a less-timeconsuming way to do what moral theory can also do, leaving more room for other topics that a course in professional ethics should include. Moral theory is, therefore, always a waste of time in a professional-ethics course. (shrink)

The paper develops a conception of “professional loyalties” and then reviews several challenges that professional loyalties encounter. The conception of professional loyalty is developed against George Fletcher’s attempt to marginalize such loyalties. Instead of being viewed primarily as loyalty to clients, it is characterized as loyalty to the ends of the profession. That conception gives rise to several challenges, which are then discussed in turn: (1) whether professions have enough unity to enable a coherent account of professional loyalty to be (...) given; (2) whether the loyalty that professions warrant is only contingent or should be seen as integral to their nature; (3) whether professional loyalties have characteristics that undermine the moral accountability of their subjects; and (4) how normative tensions arising out of institutionally embedded professional loyalties may be resolved. (shrink)

The following article concerns the ethics of the treatment of cadavers and the duty that some agents may have with respect to the furtherance of knowledge via medical research. According to the argument which follows, a patient who benefits from medical treatment has an imperfect (or general) duty to contribute to the furtherance of medical knowledge and, in the specific case of treatment, a perfect (or defined) duty to allow one’s body to be the object of research which will contribute (...) to that technique or intervention. The intention is to open a discussion which may lead to various applications of consent and recognitions of related duties being applied to the acceptance of joint replacements and, eventually, other interventions. The decision to begin with arthroplasty is due to the felt need to improve joint replacement prostheses which currently stands at more or less 150,000 interventions a year and 30 to 40,000 revisions per year. With an ageing population, the frequency of such interventions will only increase. Research on cadavers is required in both successful and failed replacements in order to improve the technology of artificial joints to achieve the non-controversial medical goals of alleviating suffering and restoring function to a patient. At present the objects of research are mostly the failed joints which are then revised and not the successful joints leading to a skewed data set for the improvement of such joints. The argument, though, may have wider appeal. (shrink)

The Ford Pinto’s fuel tank was prone to rupture in collisions above 20 mph, sometimes resulting in burn deaths. An infamous Ford memo estimated the cost of a shield correcting the problem at $11. Should Ford have installed the shield, holding public safety paramount, or, respecting consumer autonomy, have made the shield an option? Answering this question requires distinguishing between three kinds of autonomy: merechoice autonomy (deciding something for oneself, regardless of the content of the choice), proclamative autonomy (making a (...) choice that holds up a value or standard, commitment to which is partly definitive of who one is), and high-impact autonomy (making a choice that profoundly affects one’s ability to make proclamative choices). (This is not a formal distinction, that is, a distinction meant be to be clear, rigorous, and neutral). Autonomy is thus asymmetric: choosing to do x may be highly proclamative while choosing not to do x is not. In the Pinto case, not giving consumers the option of declining the shield undercuts only mere-choice autonomy. Several arguments are provided (including an argument based on the nature of moral agency) that proclamative autonomy (and, derivatively, high-impact autonomy), rather than mere-choice autonomy, has significant positive value. More precisely, it is argued that, as a rule, the more proclamative a choice is, other things being equal, the more weight autonomy claims about that choice possess. The paper concludes that common sense is correct about the Pinto case. In some instances, consumer choice may legitimately count more than the engineer’s commitment to public safety (particularly when proclamative choice is involved). However, losing the opportunity to save $11 is not too large a price to pay in order to counter market pressures against safety by inducing in engineers a professional commitment to put safety first. (shrink)

Cyber warfare is challenging traditional paradigms about what constitutes a just war. It is an emerging phenomenon that needs to be addressed separately in order to create reasonable regulations on its use and proper responses to the same. Some of these challenges refer to first what might constitute an act of war as opposed to a case of criminal sabotage. Other difficulties concern issues of sovereignty, the right to remain neutral, and proportionate responses to attack. Several recent examples of cyber-attack (...) are brought forth and analyzed within this framework. The paper proposes that the traditional just war paradigm needs to be expanded to account for the anomalies created by this new mechanism of warfare. This essay will raise some critical questions about this changing paradigm with intent to suggest alterations to the way we think about war that can include cyber warfare as part of the traditional just war paradigm. (shrink)

Among the various issues in Global Justice that I address in Morality and Global Justice: Justifications and Applications (2011-a), international immigration is one of the most important. Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez and Julie Kirsch have written sensitive queries about my position that I will address in order.

The freedom to create and disseminate pornography has often been defended based on a liberal claim that the free speech of pornographers would be violated if pornography were censored. The classic defense of free speech, given by John Stuart Mill, is often invoked to defend this position. In opposition, many feminist theorists have advocated arguments for regulatory measures against pornography. Some of these authors have also utilized the writings of Mill. They have argued that, contrary to the liberal defense of (...) free speech, Mill’s arguments are compatible with, or even require, the forced regulation of pornography. Logically, unless Mill’s writings are contradictory, they should not be invoked to support diametrically opposed positions. This paper investigates this apparent dilemma and argues that, contrary to the antipornography feminist position, Mill’s writings do not support pornography regulation. In fact, in a surprising twist, the arguments of anti-pornography feminists can, using the writings of Mill, be seen as strongly supporting the liberal anti-censorship position. (shrink)

In Morality and Global Justice, Michael Boylan presents us with a set of solutions to some of the world’s most pressing moral issues. Boylan claims that his solutions are not utopian; instead, they are practical, workable policy recommendations that governments and other organizations should adopt. For the most part, Boylan is correct; there are no obviously insurmountable obstacles to implementing many of his recommendations. But, as he himself admits, his position on immigrants and refugees borders on the utopian (Boylan 2011, (...) 204). In what follows, I will discuss two concerns that I have about his position. The first concern (1) is consequentialist: I fear that implementing a policy of open borders may lead to economic, environmental, and political consequences that are on balance undesirable. The second (2) is practical: even if American citizens have moral reasons for supporting a policy of open borders, they may have reasons of self-interest for rejecting it. If this is correct, then Boylan may have a difficult time garnering the support necessary to make the policy a reality. (shrink)

My remarks on Boylan’s ideas on Immigration divide into four brief sections. First, I describe an exchange of ideas with Michael Boylan on his earlier book, A Just Society; second, I turn to his most recent work, Morality and Global Justice, and focus on his chapter on immigration; third, while I share the basic thesis of that chapter, I try to expand the analysis on immigration; finally, I briefly note harms of immigration caused by the globalization of production.

In the past three decades, philosophers have delved into applied ethics, pursuing a surprisingly wide range of practically oriented normative questions, and a number of fields of applied ethical research and teaching are flourishing. There have, however, been few comparative studies of different fields in applied ethics, but such studies can, I believe, teach us something. Accordingly, this essay compares and contrasts business ethics and military ethics as distinct disciplinary or sub-disciplinary areas. The two subjects might appear to be worlds (...) apart. Yet there are not only differences, but also intriguing similarities between them. Specifically, I discuss the skepticism that often greets the idea of both business ethics and military ethics, compare the emergence of the two as academic fields, and examine some pedagogical issues they face. I then try to put some central questions in both fields in fresh light by comparing and contrasting the goals and responsibilities of corporations and their managers, on one hand, and of the military and its officers, on the other. (shrink)

The nuclear disaster that Japan suffered at Fukushima in the months following March 11, 2011 has been compared with other major nuclear disasters, especially, Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). It is more like Chernobyl in severity, the only other 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale; more like Three Mile Island in long-term effects. Yet Fukushima is not just another nuclear disaster. In ways important to engineering ethics, it is much more like Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans than (...) like any nuclear disaster. It is (primarily) a consequence of a natural disaster, the enormous earthquake and tsunami that wrecked much of northeast Japan. One lesson of Fukushima, one shared with Katrina, concerns the different roles engineers have at different stages in an engineering project (planning, designing, management, and operations). In the planning stage, engineers seem to have relatively little power to affect certain early large-scale trade-offs between public safety and public welfare. Another lesson may be the importance of not leaving complex technical systems untended. The events that made the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl inevitable lasted only a few minutes or hours; the events that made the disasters in New Orleans and Fukushima inevitable were spread over several days. Fukushima avoided a more serious disaster because the plants were not abandoned in the way New Orleans was. A third lesson concerns our ideas of heroism, especially our sense that heroism is sometimes one’s duty. An engineer’s duty sometimes includes protecting others from harm even at the risk of the engineer’s life. (shrink)