Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics

Revise & Resubmit: Working Papers in Ethics

The Center distributes work in progress by its fellows, faculty, senior scholars, and invited speakers. You may view abstracts of papers and download the full text in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience
Selim Berker

It has been claimed that the recent wave of neuroscientific research into the physiological underpinnings of our moral intuitions has normative implications. In particular, it has been claimed that this research discredits our deontological intuitions about cases, without discrediting our consequentialist intuitions about cases. In this paper I demur. I argue that such attempts to extract normative conclusions from neuroscientific research face a fundamental dilemma: either they focus on the emotional or evolved nature of the psychological processes underlying deontological intuitions, in which case the arguments rely on a blatantly fallacious inference, or they appeal to the (alleged) moral irrelevance of the factors to which deontological intuitions respond, in which case the neuroscientific results end up playing no role in the overall argument. Read more...

The Obligation to Conserve Natural Resources for Future People
Joseph Mazor

What obligations do we have to conserve natural resources for those who have not yet been born? Since these future people do not yet exist, on many accounts, they lack the prerequisites for having rights and also do not stand in circumstances of justice with those currently alive. In this paper, I argue that we have obligations to each other to conserve natural resources for future people. I also argue that since we are connected to distant future people through a chain of overlapping generations, we have obligations to conserve natural resources even for those who will not be born during our lifetimes. Read more...

The Case for Mass Electoral Deliberation
Joseph Mazor

Deliberative democratic theory faces two serious problems. First, though citizens make crucial collectively-binding decisions during elections, these decisions are currently made without sufficient deliberation. Second, deliberative democrats have not shown how elected officials can be given the incentives to live up to lofty deliberative democratic ideals. In this paper, I argue that mass electoral deliberation can go a long way towards addressing both of these problems. I also argue that it is premature to dismiss mass electoral deliberation as unworkable or overly expensive. Read more...

How should property rights in natural resources be allocated? I begin this work by arguing that individuals have equal claims to natural resources. I provide both a libertarian and liberal egalitarian argument for this proposition. After considering a variety of alternatives, I argue that the best way to respect these equal claims is through equal division. Next, I consider how equal division can be implemented given the existence of natural resource heterogeneity, change over time, future generations, and multiple nation-states. I ultimately advocate utilizing a system of natural resource leases whose proceeds are distributed equally. I then consider how we can justly transition to the system I propose given the current natural resource property rights regime. Read more...

"Is there a Human Right to Essential Pharmaceuticals? The Global Common, the Intellectual Common, and the Possibility of Private Intellectual Property"

Mathias Risse

I argue that there is a human right to vital pharmaceuticals, not in the sense that anybody has a claim right to the provision of pharmaceuticals that are not yet available, but in the sense that access to pharmaceuticals must not be limited by means of overblown private intellectual property right. Contrary to what is customary, my argument in support of such a human right draws on foundational considerations about intellectual property. My analysis is to some extent driven by exploring parallels between a Global Common and an Intellectual Common, to both of which all of humanity would have symmetrical ownership rights. Read more...

"Who Should Shoulder the Burden? Global Climate Change and Common Ownership of the Earth"

Mathias Risse

A common and intuitively plausible approach to thinking about the distributional questions that arise about global climate change is that the atmosphere is a "global sink" whose use is subject to regulation in terms of an equal-per-capita principle: Each person should have the same entitlement to pollute. This view, however, is plausible only if one thinks the earth as a whole belongs in some sense to humanity as such. This essay develops that standpoint of collective ownership of the earth and applies it to the aforementioned distributional questions. In light of that standpoint, some of the ethical dimensions of global climate change take on a particular shape. It turns out, however, that the philosophically most plausible understanding of collective ownership of the earth does not support an equal-per-capita principle, not does it support certain versions of a principle of accountability for past emissions. Instead, we end up with a combination of "polluter pays" and "ability to pay" principles to the regulation of access to the absorptive capacity of the atmosphere into whose precise formulation certain aspects of historical accountability will, however, also enter. Read more...

"Original Ownership of the Earth: A Contemporary Approach"

Mathias Risse

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"Disability, Adaptation, and Inclusion"

Given the intra- and inter-group variability in utility assessment ratings by people with impairments, it seems less likely that that disability should primarily be seen solely or even primarily as the consequence of social exclusion, as some strong versions of a social model (SM) of disability claim. More attention must be paid to the impairments that impact functioning than is allowed in the SM, and we need to focus on treatment and prevention of the causes of disability, in addition to enhancing social inclusion. To support these arguments, we appeal to case examples and empirical studies, particularly related to traumatic brain injury and depression. Read more...

"Capabilities, Opportunity, and Health"

Norman Daniels

Should we focus on human capabilities, as Sen and Nussbaum propose, albeit with differences in their views, or on Rawls's account of primary social goods, when we think about health and health policy? I argue that there is more convergence than difference between an account of justice and health that focuses on opportunity, properly construed, and one that sees the target of justice as protecting human capabilities. Both approaches, must be supplemented with an account of fair deliberative process in order to achieve legitimacy in priority setting. Read more...

"Individual and Social Responsibility for Health"

Norman Daniels

A range of policies in the U.S. and abroad attempt to assign individual responsibility for health, sometimes sanctioning failure to take individual responsibility, sometimes assigning accountability for responsibility in other ways. The argument is developed here that the primary responsibility for health and health care is social, but that health promotion requires we find room for a reasonable notion of individual responsibility and provide incentives for it. This means rejecting the view that "You broke it, you own it," but allowing for shared responsibility for health. Oddly, a luck egalitarian view that emphasizes individual responsibility seems to offer little support for incentives to promote healthy behaviors. Read more...

"Extending Justice as Fairness to Health and Health Care"

Norman Daniels

In developing justice as fairness, Rawls abstracted from the human condition in which we vary in health states and some of us die before reaching a normal lifespan. Can this simplification be eliminated, so that Rawls's theory can apply to institutions that protect and promote health. An initial extension involves broadening Rawls's concept of fair equality of opportunity so that it protects individual fair shares of a socially relative normal opportunity range. A second extension shows that Rawls principles of justice as fairness do a remarkable job of distributing the broader social determinants of population health, with the effect that socio-economic status gradients of health will be substantially flattened. A third extension supplements the theory with a form of procedural justice that allows us to meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all. Read more...

The views expressed in the Working Paper Series are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics or of Harvard University. Working Papers have not undergone formal review and approval. Such papers are included in this series to elicit feedback and to encourage debate. Copyright belongs to the author(s). Papers may be downloaded for personal use only.