Intricate Ethics Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm

by Kamm, F. M.

• ISBN13: 9780195189698
• ISBN10: 0195189698
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Intricate Ethics, Kamm questions the moral importance of some non-consequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of other distinctions. The first section discusses nonconsequentialist ethical theory and the trolley problem; the second deals with thenotions of moral status and rights; the third takes up the issues of responsibility and complicity and the possible moral significance of distance; and the fourth section analyzes the views of others in the non-consequentialist and consequentialist camps.

Author Biography

F. M. Kamm is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, and Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is the author of Creation and Abortion (1992); Morality, Mortality, Vol. 1: Death and Whom to Save From It (1993); and Morality, Mortality Vol.2: Rights, Duties, and Status (1996), all from Oxford University Press. Kamm has also published many articles on normative ethical theory and practical ethics. She has held ACLS, AAUW, NEH, and Guggenheim fellowships and has been a Fellow of the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School, the Center for Human Values at Princeton, the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford, and the National Institutes of Health. She is a member of the editorial boards of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, Bioethics, and Utilitas and was a consultant on ethics to the World Health Organization.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(8)
SECTION I: NONCONSEQUENTIALISM AND THE TROLLEY PROBLEM
Nonconsequentialism	11	(37)
Aggregation and Two Moral Methods	48	(30)
Intention, Harm, and the Possibility of a Unified Theory	78	(13)
The Doctrines of Double and Triple Effect and Why a Rational Agent Need Not Intend the Means to His End	91	(39)
Toward the Essence of Nonconsequentialist Constraints on Harming: Modality, Productive Purity, and the Greater Good Working Itself Out	130	(60)
Harming People in Peter Unger's Living High and Letting Die	190	(37)
SECTION II: RIGHTS
Moral Status	227	(10)
Rights beyond Interests	237	(48)
Conflicts of Rights: A Typology	285	(20)
SECTION III: RESPONSIBILITIES
Responsibility and Collaboration	305	(40)
Does Distance Matter Morally to the Duty to Rescue?	345	(23)
The New Problem of Distance in Morality	368	(33)
SECTION IV: OTHERS' ETHICS
Peter Singer's Ethical Theory	401	(21)
Moral Intuitions, Cognitive Psychology, and the Harming/Not-Aiding Distinction	422	(28)
Harms, Losses, and Evils in Gert's Moral Theory	450	(5)
Owing, Justifying, and Rejecting	455	(36)
Bibliography	491	(8)
Index	499