CAPPE

Title:  Explaining Intuitions about Cognitive Enhancement

Abstract:

Many people have the intuition that cognitive enhancement – the use of mechanistic means to boost aspects of cognition – is objectionable. Yet the arguments often put forward in support of this intuition are typically rather weak. In line with Jonathan Haidt’s social intuitionist model of moral judgment, I suggest that when people are satisfied with weak arguments for their views, the argument does not reflect the real causes of the intuitions they support, and is instead a post facto rationalization of it. I suggest that opposition to cognitive enhancement is caused by the perception that it violates our intuitive (substance) dualism. Since mind is felt (though not necessarily believed) to be a different substance to brain, mechanistic means of boosting cognition arouse unease in us, which causes or is mistaken for a moral judgment that such means are wrong. I suggest methods whereby this suggestion could be tested.

Friday 20th of June at 4pm: Professor Carol Gould (Center for Global Ethics and Politics, Temple University).

Title:  Envisioning Transnational Democracy: Cross-Border Communities and Regional Human Rights Frameworks

Abstract:

Two sources converge on an image of transnational democracy—one arising from the practice of contemporary activists and solidarity movements, and the second from a theoretical reflection on the requirements of global justice and human rights, along with the acknowledged need for more responsiveness of the institutions of global governance to those affected by their decisions. In this paper, I focus primarily on this second, primarily theoretical, source of thinking about transnational democracy and sketch some of its implications for institutional design. In this account, transnational democracy will be seen to have four elements, which I argue are each normatively required and cohere reasonably well with the other elements in practice. They are: a multiplicity of democratized overlapping cross-border social and economic associations and political communities; regional if not fully global human rights frameworks, which guarantee the economic and social rights required for justice; democratic accountability of the institutions of global governance to distant people importantly affected by their policies (with a specific criterion proposed for “importantly affected”), and new forms of overlapping transnational solidarities.

I go on to briefly address four questions posed by this model: 1) Does the proposal for democratizing cross-border communities and associations necessarily come into conflict with the equality that has traditionally characterized citizenship as membership in a polity? 2) Does this sort of multiplicity of contexts for democracy and the concomitant delimitation of the power of nation-states render it impossible to achieve the sorts of economic redistribution required by justice? 3) Would new regional human rights frameworks necessitate regional government or constitutions, which might in turn entail a consolidation or centralization of power? And 4) how can democratic deliberation and participation be understood to occur across groups that are not only culturally diverse but also have very unequal access to power and control over resources?

Wednesday 11th of June at 2pm: a JOINT CAPPE/Faculty/RSSS Seminar: Dr Laura Schroeter and Dr Francois Schroeter (University of Melbourne), Haydon Allen Building, Rm. 2177

Title: A Third Way in Metaethics

Abstract:

What conditions must one meet in order to count as competent with the meaning of a thin evaluative predicate like ‘is the right thing to do’? According to minimalists like Allan Gibbard and Ralph Wedgwood, all that's required for competence is that one use the predicate to express one’s own motivational states. According to analytic descriptivists like Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Christopher Peacocke, competence requires speakers to grasp some determinate reference-fixing criterion for an action’s being right. Both approaches face serious difficulties. We suggest that these difficulties derive from a shared background assumption that competence conditions must be explained in terms of a determinate conceptual role. We propose a new way of characterizing competence conditions for evaluative terms: what’s required for competence is participation in a shared epistemic tradition with a term. Our approach, we argue, better explains the nature of evaluative inquiry and the extent of disagreement about evaluative questions.

Wednesday 4th of June at 4pm: Assistant Professor Iwao Hirose (McGill University and CAPPE, University of Melbourne).

Title:  Disability Discrimination in Health Care Allocation

Abstract:

I will examine the logical structure of the argument against unequal treatment on the basis of disability in health care allocation. I will first examine, and reject, the "two-level common-sense" objection, which best captures our intuition against disability discrimination in health care. Then, I will propose an argument against disability discrimination in health care. Finally, I will address some problems with my proposal.
 

Wednesday 28th of May at 4pm: Dr Clive Hamilton (Visiting Fellow, Regulatory Institutions Network, ANU).

Title:  Do We Prefer What We Choose?

Abstract:

In this paper I will argue, following David George, that we possess first and second-order preferences, with the latter representing a deeper order of preference. Modern economics recognises only first-order preferences, and advertising tends to persuade us to act on them alone, which is often contrary to our interests.

On this basis I will argue that, in addition to political liberty and individual liberty, there is a third form of liberty, “inner freedom”, defined by Hayek as the freedom to act according to one’s own considered will, by one’s reason or lasting conviction. I will suggest that self-deception and akrasia (weakness of will) erode inner freedom, and that in consumer society we are becoming less free.

Monday 19th of May at 2pm: Associate Professor Ian Hunt (Flinders University).

Title:  Why Social Justice Matters

Abstract:

This paper assesses Brian Barry ‘s attempt in Why Social Justice Matters to argue the importance of social justice, and to show what public policies for a modern capitalist society, such as the US or UK, flow from its requirements. Barry deplores the ideological assumptions that have obscured the importance of social justice but he does not address their intellectual roots. I claim that, if philosophers are to argue the importance of social justice for public policy, we must first address the philosophical ideas that have persuaded leaders of public opinion and policy makers in OECD countries to put their emphasis on efficiency, and to dismiss issues of equality or equity on the basis of its supposed efficiency cost. Leaving aside claims about the presumed benefits of perfectly competitive markets, I address Hayek’s nihilistic theory and Nozick’s defence of ‘natural liberty’, and show that both fail to dismiss any question of the fairness of free market capitalist societies other than arising from past wrongdoing.

Though Rawls’s Theory of Justice is forbiddingly complex, it provides a simple criterion of the fairness of the rules by which our societies operate to produce the inequalities Barry deplores. I claim that once we apply this criterion to our institutions, it becomes apparent that the task of achieving justice in accord with Rawls’s criterion requires such substantial change as to be beyond the capacity of changes to public policy. Other contemporary theories of social justice that question the justice of present societies do not clearly identify closer ideally just societies than Rawls’s ideal. I conclude that we have better prospects of achieving an ‘overlapping consensus’ for public policy purposes around a ‘non-ideal’ theory and principles for making unjust societies fairer.

Wednesday 14th of May at 4pm: Assistant Professor Fritz Allhoff (Western Michigan University, and CAPPE, ANU).

Title:  Rethinking Torture and Ticking Time-Bombs

Abstract:

It is often assumed that torture is permissible in ticking time-bomb (TTB) cases, though the intuitions undergirding this assumption have not been well-studied. Furthermore, even if the intuitions are widely held, it is not clear why. To wit, TTB cases collapses various morally relevant criterion, both consequential and deontological. Obviously the consequences matter, and there are important consequentialist features of the case, such as the multitude of lives that will be saved, the certainty of the outcomes, etc. However, there are also deontological features, such as the terrorist’s guilt and complicity. Intuitions regarding the permissibility of torture in this case, then, do not sufficiently elucidate what moral considerations are driving the intuitions.

This project offers to clarify which morally relevant considerations are psychologically efficacious. This is accomplished by devising four cases in which various of the features are teased apart. One of the cases is the traditional one, so results will be generated as to whether consent to torture is as ubiquitous as is assumed. A second case, though, trades the torture of the guilty terrorist for the torture of his innocent daughter: the hypothesis is that support for torture in this case will fall, which then shows that the (identical) consequences are not all that matter. Finally, an intervention is proposed which trades the certainty (of saving lives) in the traditional case with uncertainty (while keeping expected outcomes identical). If the lowered likelihood is psychologically efficacious, then that further undermines the claim that the intuitions are fully consequentialist in nature.

These surveys have recently been distributed to approximately 1000 students (in the US and Australia), and the analysis will be completely shortly. In addition to studying guilt/innocence and (un)certainty, we also hope to gain analysis vis-à-vis gender and nationality. Implications for the torture debate will be thereafter considered.

Wednesday 7th of May at 4pm: Dr Michael Selgelid (CAPPE, ANU).

Title:  Ethics, Tuberculosis, and Globalisation

Abstract:

This paper reviews ethically relevant history of tuberculosis and recent developments regarding extensively drug resistant tuberculosis.  It argues that tuberculosis is one of the most important neglected topics in bioethics.  With an emphasis on “extensively” drug resistant tuberculosis, it examines a range of the more challenging ethical issues associated with tuberculosis:  individual obligations to avoid infecting others, coercive social distancing measures, third-party notification, health workers duty to treat contagious patients, and international justice.  In each of these cases, key philosophical questions are highlighted and the need for empirical research/information is demonstrated.

Wednesday 30th of April at 4pm: Dr Jessica Wolfendale (CAPPE, University of Melbourne).

Title: Torture and Torture Lite

Abstract:

Since the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001, the phrase ‘torture lite’ has appeared in public discourse about torture, used by journalists, military intelligence personnel, and academics to distinguish between two kinds of torture: torture, which is violent, physically mutilating, cruel, and brutal, and torture lite, which refers to interrogation methods (such as extended sleep deprivation, noise bombardment, and forced standing) that are, it is claimed, more restrained and less severe than real torture. In this paper I argue that the distinction between torture and torture lite is attractive to liberal democracies because it bolsters what David Luban has called the “liberal ideology of torture” – the myth that torture can be compatible with the basic commitments of liberal states. However, as I shall demonstrate, torture lite techniques just as cruel and severe as more traditional forms of torture. Furthermore, the language of torture lite and the nature of torture lite techniques encourage a moral psychology in which the violence and cruelty of torture is denied; the victim’s suffering is hidden, minimised, and doubted; and the torturer’s responsibility is diminished. Far from referring to a milder form of torture, torture lite refers to techniques that are likely to encourage the normalisation of torture and the perpetuation of the myth of the liberal ideology of torture.

Wednesday 23rd of April at 4pm: Dr Luke Russell (University of Sydney).

Title:  Evil, Monsters and Dualism

Abstract:

In his book "The Myth of Evil", Phillip Cole claims that the concept of evil forms part of a dualistic worldview that divides normal people from inhuman, demonic and monstrous wrongdoers. Such monsters are found in fiction, Cole maintains, but not in reality, so evil is of no explanatory use. Cole is right to claim that there are no actual evil monsters or supernatural demons, but he overlooks the fact that several viable conceptions of evil action, motive and character do not commit us to the existence of monsters, literally speaking. But does the concept of evil implies an unrealistically dualistic worldview, with purely evil people on one side and ordinary people on the other? Cole is wrong to think that the use of extreme moral concepts is incompatible with fine-grained moral evaluations across a broad spectrum between the extremes. Moreover, we need to be more careful than Cole is in unpacking the various ways in which evil personhood could be pure or extreme. I will argue that some actual people are extremely bad, that no actual people are thoroughly bad, that it is very likely that some actual people are fixedly bad, but that this does not imply that anyone is innately bad. Even if we accept Cole's arguments that no one is thoroughly or innately bad, it still seems that some actual people are evil, and hence that evil is an explanatorily useful concept.

Wednesday 16th of April at 4pm: Professor Michael Smith (Princeton).

Title:  Secular vs Religious Approaches to Values and Reasons

Abstract:

Pope Benedict XVI has recently attacked the secular ideas of morality that are popular in Europe on the grounds that they are implausibly relativistic. Only if we provide morality with a religious foundation can we avoid this relativism, or so he insists. Pope Benedict is, however, also a firm believer in the idea that morality has a foundation in reason. But putting the idea that morality has a religious foundation together with a view of morality as grounded in reason we are inevitably led to a secular view of morality, or so I argue. I conclude by listing some of the ways in which religious and secular views of morality may differ, even if they agree that morality as such has a secular foundation.

Wednesday 2nd of April at 4pm: Dr Daniel Cohen (CAPPE, CSU and ANU).

Title:  Actualism, Possibilism and Newcomb's Problem

Abstract:

Morality often requires agents to perform complex sets of actions. Sometimes, however, performing only part of the set will be morally worse than doing nothing at all. For instance, even when an agent ought to do (x & y), it might be worse for her to do x but not y than for her to perform neither action. This possibility raises a puzzle. Imagine that such an agent knows that she won't actually do y. Given this, should she do x? Possibilists argue that, given that the agent is able to y, she ought nevertheless to do x. Actualists, on the other hand, argue that the agent ought not to x, given that she won't actually y. In this paper I argue that this debate can be modelled as a familiar debate about newcomb's problem. Thus it may be seen that possibilists are committed to evidential decision theory, while actualists are committed to causal decision theory. I close by offering a case where the possibilist solution is far more attractive than the actualist one. Given my analysis, this provides some indirect support for evidential decision theory.

Wednesday 26th of March at 4pm: Professor Larry S. Temkin (Rutgers University).

Title:  Is Living Longer, Living Better?

Abstract:

Some day, perhaps soon, we may have genetic enhancements enabling us to conquer aging.  Should we do so, if we can?  I believe the topic is both interesting and important, and that it behooves us to think about it.  Doing so may yield important insights about what we do care about, what we should care about, and how we should seek to live our lives, both individually and collectively.

My central question is this:  Is living longer, living better?  My paper does not offer a sustained argument for a single, considered, thesis.  Rather, it offers a number of snippets of often unconnected thoughts relevant to the issues my question raises.  The paper contains eight sections.  Part one is introductory.  Part two briefly comments on some current longevity research.  Part three indicates the attitudes towards death, and science, with which I approach these questions.  Part four discusses some of Leon Kass’s worries about the perils of immortality.  Part five, addresses Bernard Williams’s speculations about the tedium of immortality.  Part six, points to a number of practical and social concerns that might arise in a society whose members lived super long lives.  Part seven, discusses the shape of human life, and suggests that there may be impersonal reasons to prefer an outcome where countless different generations live finite lives, to an outcome where vastly fewer people live forever.  I argue that this may be so even if everyone in the latter outcome would be better off than everyone in the former outcome.  I end by expressing some doubts as to whether American society is living well, and whether, at least for the time being, longevity research should be pursued.

Wednesday 19th of March at 4pm: Professor Thomas Pogge (Yale and CAPPE, ANU).

Title: Growth and Inequality: Understanding Recent Trends and Political Choices

Wednesday 12th of March at 4pm: Professor Seumas Miller (CAPPE, ANU and CSU).

Title: Terrorism, War and States of Emergency (Chapter 5 of Terrorism and Counter-terrorism: Ethics and Liberal Democracy, Blackwell, 2008)

Abstract:

This paper addresses a variety of moral issues that arise for a liberal democratic state operating under a state of emergency or engaged in an armed conflict with a non-state actor in a theatre of war. A liberal democracy might justifiably be operating under a state of emergency in because it is confronting a one-off disaster, e.g. the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, and/or because of a serious, ongoing, internal armed struggle, e.g. the IRA’s campaign of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s.

If a state of emergency is to be morally justifiable it must be comprehensively legally circumscribed, both in relation to the precise powers granted to the government and its security agencies, and in relation to the termination of those powers and their judicial oversight while in use.

A liberal democracy might be engaged in an armed conflict with a non-state actor in a theatre of war because of serious, ongoing, terrorist attacks on the part of an external, non-state actor, e.g. Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israeli towns. In theatres of war, terrorists are de facto military combatants (terrorist-combatants). Moreover, since terrorist organisations are, or ought to be unlawful, terrorist-combatants are unlawful combatants. Since the terrorism-as-war framework (as opposed to a terrorism-as-crime framework) applies to theatres of war, it is justifiable to implement (say) a shoot-on-sight policy in relation to known terrorists; moreover, it might be morally justifiable to deploy the practice of targeted killings (assassinations) of individual terrorists.

The terrorism-as-war framework should be applied only under the following general conditions: (1) The terrorism-as-crime framework cannot adequately contain serious and ongoing terrorist attacks; (2) The application of the terrorism-as-war framework is likely to be able adequately to contain the terrorist attacks; (3) The application of the terrorism-as-war framework is proportionate to the terrorist threat; (4) The terrorism-as-war framework is applied only to an extent, e.g. with respect to a specific theatre of war but not necessarily to all areas that have suffered, or might suffer, a terrorist attack, and over a period of time, that is necessary; (5) All things considered, the application of the terrorism-as-war framework will have good consequences security-wise and better overall consequences, e.g. in terms of loss of life, restrictions on freedoms, economic impact, institutional damage, than the competing options.

Wednesday 5th of March at 4pm: Associate Professor Bengt Brülde (University of Gothenburg).

Title:  The ultimate goals of public health activities

Abstract:

What is population health, and how can it be measured? This question can be divided into two, namely (a) on what individual variables (e.g. health, life expectancy, or QALY) should such a measure be based, and (b) how we should develop an index of population health based on these individual measures. However, the answers to these questions are, to a large extent, dependent on values, and (a) and (b) can hardly be separated from the normative questions how one should try to benefit the relevant individuals, and what kind of distribution of e.g. health that is most desirable. That is, we end up in the question of the ultimate goals of public health (a question that is not quite identical with the question of what population health is, or how it should be measured).
In what dimension or dimensions should public health try to benefit the relevant individuals? Here, I argue that weighted HALE's is the most relevant individual variable. It is worth noting that some distributive considerations are incorporated into this variable, e.g. ideas of how different life years should be weighted.
The question of the distributive goal of public health: What distribution of the relevant individual variable is most desirable in a public health context? On this question, I argue that the priority view and egalitarianism are the two most interesting views.

Wednesday 20th of February at 4pm: Professor John Kleinig(CAPPE, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and CUNY Graduate Centre).

Title:  What Does Wrongdoing Deserve?

Abstract:

The question may seem dated or its answer obvious. In any case, it has a well-worn response, namely, that wrongdoing deserves punishment. For reasons that I will endeavor to make clear, I want to stay with the question. I hope, however, to finesse the answer in some non standard ways .

There are diverse reasons for thinking that the initial question is dated, though the paper will attempt to address only a few of them. Many of them come together, however by urging us to dispense with the idea that wrongdoing deserves punishment. I will not use the present opportunity to discuss some of the more radical responses to the initial question – such as those that would seek to replace our traditional notion of wrongdoing with supposedly more scientific conceptualizations of human behavior and its control. I will assume that it makes good sense hold onto a notion of moral wrongdoing and that when confronted by it we are justified in asking what kind of response to it is appropriate. What I will explore is whether the language of desert can be given a credible place in our thinking about the appropriateness of a response to wrongdoing and, if so, what that deserved response might be. Does it follow seamlessly from the question of what wrongdoing deserves that punishment is the best or only appropriate answer?I suggest that it does not.

Wednesday 13th of February at 4pm: Dr Edward Spence (University of Twente and CAPPE, Charles Sturt University).

Title: Meca-Ethics: The Moral Life of Androids

Abstract:

In this paper I shall argue hypothetically and conditionally that insofar as fully autonomous artificial life agents or androids for short are a practical possibility if not now then at least sometime in the future, then they will have a moral status equivalent to that of human beings. I shall argue that if the necessary and sufficient condition for having a moral status is the property or capacity for autonomous purposive agency, then insofar as androids have that property or capacity they should be accorded the same moral status as human beings.

Another issue the paper will explore is trust. Can we trust androids? Specifically, can we trust androids to behave ethically towards us and likewise can we trust ourselves to do the same? Trust is a major problem for Robot-Human Interactions (RHI). For insofar as it is practically possible to create and develop artificial life agents with enhanced intelligence and powers that might exceed that of humans, whom we cannot trust to always behave ethically towards us, we run the serious risk of creating androids that are potentially a threat and a risk to the freedom and wellbeing of human beings even a risk to the survival of the human species.

Can androids trust us and can we trust ourselves not to misuse or abuse androids for our merely self-centered ends, for example, using them as sex-slaves, or armed-combatants in fighting our wars, with or without their willing participation? How can we ensure our own ethical treatment of androids, which if I am right requires us to respect their prima-facie rights to freedom and wellbeing as autonomous purposeful agents and their absolute right to dignity?  The answer, I will argue, is trust. That is, we need to develop and establish a robust trust between humans and androids sufficient for securing our mutual minimal respect for each other thus avoiding or at least minimizing, the risk of ethical misuse, abuse or degradation of each other.

Wednesday 6th of February at 4pm: Professor Tom Campbell (CAPPE, Charles Sturt University).

Title:  Rights and Recognition

Abstract:

It is common within grass roots political movements to demand ‘rights and recognition’ for neglected or marginal social groups. The intimation is that there is something that connects these two concepts, the one reinforcing and supporting the other in a mutual and symbiotic relationship that provides a rhetorically powerful combination of terms which appeals to aspirations of both empowerment and social status.  This coming together of the language of rights and the language of recognition prompts interesting questions about the empirical, theoretical and normative relationships between these two salient terms.

Friday 1st of February at 4pm:Professor Samantha Brennan (University of Western Ontario).

Title:  Feminist Ethics and Everyday Inequalities

Abstract:

How should feminist philosophers regard the many and various inequalities that structure the everyday lives of women? Some of these inequalities are trivial and others are not, but regardless of whether they are individually trivial, together they form a framework of unequal treatment that shapes women’s lives.  Of course, gender is not the only variable that affects equality of treatment and outcome. Race, physical ability, class, and sexual orientation are other factors that play a role and when these factors combine, the situation is even more complicated. Also, inequality is not the only morally relevant aspect of women’s oppression and feminist theorists and activists may need to make difficult decisions about which aspects of women’s oppression to focus our efforts. This paper focuses on the inequalities that affect women as women and asks what priority we should give them. Specifically, it examines Claudia Card's view that we ought to give evils  priority  over inequalities.

2007

Friday 14th of December at 4pm: Dr Paula Casal (University of Reading).

Title:  Rawls, Cohen, Mill and the Egalitarian Trilemma

Abstract:

Like J. S. Mill, G. A. Cohen has criticised the justice of incentive payments. Cohen’s critique, which focuses on the work of John Rawls, has encountered two core Rawlsian objections. The Liberty Objection holds that if we allow occupational freedom – which we must do – unequal incentive payments are the best, perhaps the only, way of attracting individuals to deploy their scarce talents in a socially efficient manner. Thus, freedom, efficiency and equality cannot be jointly preserved. Faced with this trilemma, Rawlsians sacrifice equality. Their Basic Structure Objection restricts the possibility of rescuing equality further still. It claims that whilst it is mandatory to employ a wide range of public institutions to eliminate various social and economic inequalities detrimental to the least advantaged, it is impermissible to regulate all aspects of our personal lives to eliminate such inequalities.
Cohen, by contrast, not only thinks that equality can and should be rescued. He believes the trilemma can be solved, and has offered a very plausible reply to each Rawlsian objection. Unfortunately, each reply denies what the other one affirms. This leads Cohen to a strategic contradiction. Rawlsians, however, do not fare any better. Their two pronged self-defence also leads them –or so I argue– into a strategic contradiction of their own. Thus, Cohen’s efforts to solve the trilemma, and the Rawlsian attempts to stop him, leave both parties trapped into their respective dilemmas. Fortunately, there is one possible way out of this impasse, and it is one they can both take. It involves following Mill towards a new position, which can be supported both on Cohenian and on Rawlsians grounds.

Wednesday 12th of December at 3pm: Assoc Prof Aidan Hollis (University of Calgary).

Title:  Pharmaceutical Innovation without Monopoly

Abstract:

The pharmaceutical industry needs some help. Drug firms invest where they can make a return instead of where the needs are greatest, so the diseases which mainly afflict the poor are of little interest. The business model which is most profitable involves huge expenditures on competitive marketing, well above that which is spent on research. When a useful new drug is developed, firms can only recoup their investment by charging very high prices, which means that many potential consumers are excluded from purchasing the drug. I discuss some alternative mechanisms that have been proposed, focusing particularly on an optional reward mechanism which would involve direct payments based on the actual therapeutic impact of a drug.

Friday 7th of December at 2pm: Dr Karen Jones (University of Melbourne).

A Joint CAPPE/RSSS/Faculty of Philosophy Seminar

Title: From Trust to Trustworthiness

Abstract:

Despite much recent work, there is no sign yet of convergence in philosophical accounts of trust. In this paper I argue that philosophers’ comparative silence on trustworthiness is part of the explanation for our failure of convergence on trust. If we think of trust and trustworthiness as paired concepts that are to be investigated in tandem, with each setting constraints on the correct understanding of the other, then we can find the additional constraints we need to help resolve some outstanding disagreements in the philosophy of trust, including most especially disagreement over the motivational structure trust imputes to the one-trusted. We find the extra constraints by first examining the point of having these paired concepts. Once we approach the problem of understanding the pair from the trustworthiness end, their normative role comes more clearly into view. Trustworthiness and trust are not reducible to reliability and reliance because they identify, in order to promote, a distinctive way that our cognitive sophistication make it possible for us to respond to the fact of interpersonal dependency. I argue that this role is best served by an account of trustworthiness as competence together with direct responsiveness to the fact that the other is counting on you. So understood, “trustworthiness” names something less than a virtue, but it nonetheless identifies a source of motivation that it is of vital interest to finite social beings, such as ourselves, who have everything to gain – or to lose – from engaging in relationships of dependency.

Wednesday 5th of December at 11am: Professor Latif Samian (Director of the Center for General Studies at the University Kebangsaan, Malaysia).

Title: Negotiating ethnic relations and professional ethics - the Malaysian experience

Friday30th of November at 4pm: Professor Paul Griffiths (University of Sydney).

Title: Is there a Problem with Public Understanding of Genetics? (Paul Griffiths, Joan Leach and Polly Ambermoon)

Abstract:

Recent literature on science communication and the public understanding of science has rejected a 'deficit model' in which the aim of science communication is to bring the views of the public into line with those of scientific experts. Instead, it is argued, the aim should be to empower a disparate range of publics to construct representations of science that effectively serve their own needs. In the history and philosophy of biology, however, the shortcomings of prevalent ideas about genetics and genomics remain the focus of considerable concern. We argue that these concerns should not be tarred with the same brush as the 'deficit model'. They do not result from 'privileging' the representations of scientific experts, but rather from questioning the adequacy of current representations of genes, genomes and gene action by all groups, expert and non-expert alike. It is argued that these two literatures complement one another, that the rejection of the 'deficit model' should not lead to complacency about the adequacy of the understanding of genetics, and that the aims of science communication can legitimately include amelioration as well as empowerment.

Friday 23rd of November at 4pm: Professor Larry May (Washington University, St Louis and CAPPE).

Title: ‘Instigation, Incitement, and Complicity in the Rwandan Genocide’
Abstract:

If genocide is seen on the model of the Holocaust, responsibility should be primarily assigned to those who directly instigated by planning the genocide. But it appears that in Rwanda there was no central plan to destroy Tutsis. I will argue that those who incited the genocide were more plausibly punished severely than those who indirectly instigated the crime or those who were merely complicit.
It may appear that in genocides like that in Rwanda, the small fish who carry out the violence are aptly named the principals, since there are no true principals who plan the genocide. But while it does indeed make sense to prosecute small fish, those who incited them are more like the principals than are those who carry out the violence, since incitement like planning sets the stage for the violence.
Throughout, I will provide conceptual analyses of instigation, incitement, and complicity, as well as normative arguments for thinking that in some cases, like the Rwandan genocide, those who incited should be considered principally culpable. This paper is drawn from several draft chapters of my book, tentatively titled “Genocide, Social Groups, and Criminal Trials” which is itself the fourth volume of my long-term project on the normative foundations of international criminal law.
 

Friday 16th of November at 4pm: Dr Gerhard Øverland (CAPPE, University of Melbourne).

Title: ‘Contribution and Culpability Divided’
Abstract:

In this talk I try to shed light on the moral difference between doing and allowing harm by looking at a variant that is frequently invoked in the discussion of defensive force, namely the one between innocent contributors and bystanders. I put forward an asymmetrical fair share procedure for solving conflicts between innocent contributors and their victims, according to which a contributor has a duty to shoulder a fair share of the harm in question. I then propose that contribution and moral culpability should be divided, and that the implications of these factors operate independently of each other. Together these two proposals add up to a particular view on the moral difference between doing and allowing. Implications of allowing are restricted to implications of culpability, as there is no contribution, while implications of doing may consist of the combined implications of contribution and culpability.
This first proposal only claims that there is a difference regarding the duty to shoulder cost. I go on to discuss whether moral culpability for doing and allowing is similar when consequences, probabilities, and cost to the agent in having to forbear to act are similar. I indicate one reason for thinking that it is not by invoking the notion of “distance failure”. That is, the distance between the actual cost contributors and bystanders fail to take on and the maximum cost they would have duty to shoulder in the first place.
Much of what I say in the talk will be tentative, as I try to investigate how much of a difference between doing and allowing that can be established by the simple observation that there is a difference between the duty to shoulder cost by innocent contributors and bystanders.

Friday 9th of November at 4pm: Dr David Rodin (University of Oxford).

Title: ‘Explaining the Absolute Prohibition of Torture’
 

Friday 2nd of November at 4pm: Laura Valentini (University College London).

Title: ‘Global Justice and Kant’s Doctrine of Right’
Abstract:

Since the publication of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant has enjoyed increasing popularity in liberal political theory, and debates on international justice are no exception. While cosmopolitans often defend principles of global justice by appeal to the universal scope of Kant’s moral law, social liberals draw on Kant’s Perpetual Peace to support their minimalist take on international distributive obligations. These theorists rightly consider Kant’s philosophy as a promising source of ideas for addressing issues of global justice. However, unlike (many of) them, I believe that the most interesting insights Kant has to offer to international political theory do not belong to his accounts of personal and of international morality, but to his views on domestic justice. Following this suggestion, in this paper I (1) outline a general approach to justice based on Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and (2) consider its implications for questions of global justice. I argue that the picture of global justice we obtain following this Kantian approach falls somewhere in between cosmopolitan and social liberalism: while the approach supports the idea that the concept of justice is global in scope, it does not warrant the stronger claim that liberals’ domestic conceptions of justice should apply globally.

Friday the 26th of October at 4pm: Professor Marilyn Friedman (Washington University, St Louis and CAPPE, ANU).

Title: Female Terrorists: What Difference Does Gender Make?
Abstract:

This paper begins with some preliminary comments on the definition and possible justification of terrorism. Then it moves on to consider terrorist acts committed by women, including suicide terrorist bombings. The question explored here is whether terrorist acts committed by women take on any special meanings or morally relevant aspects that are lacking in terrorist acts committed by men.

Friday the 19th of October at 4pm: Professor John Broome (University of Oxford).

Title: Measuring the burden of disease
Abstract:

For many important practical purposes we need to measure how much harm is done by particular diseases, and by disease in general. For one thing, this will help us decide where to concentrate our efforts to control disease. But measuring the 'burden of disease' raises a number of difficult philosophical questions. I shall talk about some of them. My main message will be that we cannot and should not concentrate on measuring just the ill-health that is caused by disease (as the World Health Organization tries to do). We have to include all the other sorts of harm that disease does to people.

Friday the 12th of October at 4pm: Dr Simon Keller (CAPPE, University of Melbourne).

Title: ‘Welfare as Success’
Abstract:

The philosophical debate about the nature of welfare is not in good shape. All the standard theories– mental state theories, desire theories and objective list theories – are subject to devastating objections, and philosophers have had little success in finding attractive alternatives. In the first half of this paper, I identify reasons why the debate has reached this stalemate. I suggest that some of the trouble is due to the presence of two goals, that turn out to conflict deeply: first, the goal of analyzing the ordinary concept of welfare (to the extent that there is such a thing), and second, the goal of finding something that can play a certain demanding theoretical role. And, I suggest that trouble arises from the existence of two strong but conflicting intuitions: the intuition that individuals must somehow be the source of the standards for their own welfare, and the intuition that individuals can be thoroughly mistaken about what is good for them.
In the second half of the paper, I try to sketch a way forward. The apparently conflicting subjectivist and objectivist intuitions are also seen, I argue, in the case of norms of belief, and the way to pay justice to both sides on that issue is to recognize that beliefs are constitutively such as to aim at the truth. We could get around the dilemma for theories of welfare, I suggest, if we could ground welfare in similar attitudes: subjective attitudes that generate objective standards for their own success and failure. I look at various ways in which this strategy might be explored, and suggest that it yields about as good a theory of welfare as we could – in light of the material in the first part of the paper – expect.