September 21, 2007

Carbon Ethics
By Toby Ord

I have recently noticed a strange asymmetry between our attitudes to avoiding climate change and to eliminating poverty. Both are important moral concerns and both can be advanced through private donations. In the case of eliminating poverty, we can do so via donations to any of a wide number of aid organizations. In the case of climate change, we can do so via payments to carbon offsetting companies.

It is true that some such schemes are of dubious value, but we are beginning to get reliable authorities that check up on the companies (see the Gold Standard) and there are many ways in which they really can reduce carbon emissions. For example, many people in developing countries use highly polluting stoves and water pumps because they are a bit cheaper. Offset companies can pay the difference, thus achieving substantial carbon savings at a relatively small cost.

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Posted on September 21, 2007 at 4:35 pm in Applied Ethics, Toby Ord's Posts | 6 Comments

July 11, 2007

Hempel’s Dilemma and Human Nature
By Rebecca Roache

The concept of human nature is an interesting one. This is partly because, although it’s a familiar concept, and one of which most people have at least a prima facie grasp; there are problems with arriving at a satisfactory, robust definition of it that will support normative philosophical claims. (For an account of some problems associated with defining human nature, see David Hull (1986) ‘On Human Nature‘, PSA 2: 3-13). In trying to understand it and work out how to tackle such problems, it’s interesting to look at similar concepts. One that I keep coming back to is the concept ‘physical’.

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Posted on July 11, 2007 at 8:58 am in Applied Ethics, Bioethics, Philosophy of Language, Rebecca Roache's Posts | 20 Comments

June 5, 2007

Unbearable Pain, Death, and the Rational Self
By Guy Kahane

1. I don’t especially mind death, but I’m scared of pain. As Epicurus reminds us, death doesn’t hurt. Epicurus may have been mistaken to think that this was enough to show that death isn’t bad, but it is good to know that death is at least not bad in this one important respect.

There are paradoxical sounding remarks by David Velleman that seem to imply that even pain itself, when it is as its worst, may not be bad in this one respect. In his paper ‘A Right to Self-Termination’, Velleman writes

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Posted on June 5, 2007 at 11:24 am in Normative Ethics, Applied Ethics, Guy Kahane's Posts, Value Theory | 7 Comments