The AI alignment problem comprises both technical and normative dimensions. While technical solutions focus on implementing normative constraints in AI systems, the normative problem concerns determining what these constraints should be. This paper examines justifications for democratic approaches to the normative problem—where affected stakeholders determine AI alignment—as opposed to epistocratic approaches that defer to normative experts. We analyze both instrumental justifications (democratic approaches produce better outcomes) and non-instrumental justifications (democratic approaches prevent illegitimate authority or coercion). We argue (...) that normative and metanormative uncertainty create a justificatory gap that democratic approaches aim to fill through political rather than theoretical justification. However, we identify significant challenges for democratic approaches, particularly regarding the prevention of illegitimate coercion through AI alignment. Our analysis suggests that neither purely epistocratic nor purely democratic approaches may be sufficient on their own, pointing toward hybrid frameworks that combine expert judgment with participatory input alongside institutional safeguards against AI monopolization. (shrink)

Many health care systems include programs that allow patients in exceptional circumstances to access medical interventions of as yet unproven benefit. In this article we consider the ethical justifications for—and demands on—these special access programs (SAPs). SAPs have a compassionate basis: They give patients with limited options the opportunity to try interventions that are not yet approved by standard regulatory processes. But while they signal that health care systems can and will respond to individual suffering, SAPs have several disadvantages, (...) including the potential to undermine regulatory and knowledge-generation structures that constitute significant public goods. The “balance” between these considerations depends in part on how broadly SAPs are used, but also on whether SAPs can be made to contribute to the generation of knowledge about the effects of health interventions. We argue that patients should usually be required to contribute outcome data while using SAPs. (shrink)

This paper draws from data collected from 500+ surveys, distributed twice from the same respondents (2020 and 2021), and forty-five face-to-face interviews (2022). The location studied is a metropolitan county in Colorado (USA). The research examined the discourses and practices having to do with organic and natural food consumption—note, too, the data were collected at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings upend conventional understandings of, and frameworks used to explain, consumer behavior. What are often presented as motivations in (...) prior studies are shown, instead, to be justifications; rationalizations after-the-fact. The paper troubles decision-making frameworks that cast motivations, attitudes, and intentions as “antecedents” to consumer behavior. Rather, the findings point to the significance of social networks, and in particular network diversity, for understanding and explaining the sayings (discourses) and doings (practices) of “individual” consumers. Discourses linked to health are also shown to be salient variables, though when situated within social networks those discourses are shown to have politics. Particular attention is devoted to explaining dietary shifts among those who reported the largest increases in the consumption of organic and natural foods between 2020 and 2021/22. The paper concludes discussing what the data mean from the standpoint of envisioning just and inclusive food system futures and agrifood policy that delivers on those ends. (shrink)

Sometimes one can prevent harm only by contravening rights. If the harm one can prevent is great enough, compared to the stringency of the opposing rights, then one has a lesser-evil justification to contravene the rights. Non-consequentialist orthodoxy holds that, most of the time, lesser-evil justifications add to agents’ permissible options without taking any away. Helen Frowe rejects this view. She claims that, almost always, agents must act on their lesser-evil justifications. Our primary task is to refute Frowe’s (...) flagship argument. Secondarily, it is to sketch a positive case for nonconsequentialist orthodoxy. (shrink)

South Africa implemented a comprehensive response to COVID-19 comprising of several coercive public health measures. As in many countries, COVID-19 measures were subject to a number of legal challenges on the grounds that these measures infringed on individual rights and liberties. Here, courts were required to assess the extent to which these limitations were justifiable against the state’s imperative to improve public health. Consequently, the acceptability of different justifications of coercive public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in South (...) Africa may be understood and assessed through the lens of its jurisprudence. This paper seeks to outline the approach to allowing, or disallowing, coercive public health measures as adopted by the judiciary as arbiters of allowable human rights infringements and thus permitting or prohibiting the state from exercising coercive powers. Specifically, this analysis aims to identify the principles underpinning the decisions with an expressly ethical lens with a view to providing content for the operationalisation of justifications for coercive state action such as the harm principle, reciprocity, least restrictive means in relation to the promotion of public health and the limitation of individual liberty. (shrink)

The literature on patient public involvement and engagement (PPIE) in health research has grown significantly in the last decade, with a diverse range of definitions and topologies promulgated. This has led to disputes over what the central functions and purpose of PPIE in health research is, and this in turn makes it difficult to assess and evaluate PPIE in practice. This paper argues that the most important function of PPIE is the attempt to make health research more democratic. Bringing this (...) function to the fore and locating PPIE in the wider context of changes in contemporary forms of democratic engagement provides greater conceptual clarity over what PPIE in research should be trying to achieve. Conceptualizing PPIE as a form of democratization has a number of benefits. First, theories of what are appropriate, normatively justifiable and workable criteria for PPIE practices can be developed, and this can provide tools to address the legitimacy and accountability questions that have troubled the PPIE community. Second, this work can be used to form the basis of a research agenda to investigate how PPIE in health research operates, and how it can facilitate and/or improve democratic processes in health research. (shrink)

A basic conviction in moral non-cognitivism is: only hypothetical norms may be justified. Hartmut Kliemt argues for a moderate variant: there are only hypothetical justifications of norms whether the norms are hypothetical or categorical in kind. In this paper the con- cept of ‘hypothetical justification’ is analyzed. It is argued that hypothetical justifications are not of the kind that we should look for in normative ethics.

In articles published ten years apart in 2011 and 2021, Gur-Arye argues that when considering an agent’s explanation for doing something that looks, prima facie, like a criminal offence, we should distinguish between a plea of justification, and an assertion that one acted within one’s power. The former explains an agent’s reasons for having committed a pro tanto offence (i.e., actus reus + mens rea). The latter is a denial that the agent committed any pro tanto offence at all. In (...) this piece, I build on Gur-Arye’s argument, suggesting that her claim about powers can be extended to all instances in which rights are displaced. I argue that in its expanded form, the practical significance of Gur-Arye’s claim goes well beyond what she identifies. It points to important and underappreciated points about the structure and classification of defensive claims in the criminal law, and helps identify errors in some arguments commonly made to support claims about disputed features of justifications. (shrink)

This article aims to develop a ground for freedom of speech that combines two justifications – democratic participation and autonomy. First, it is argued that consequentialist justifications, such as discovery of truth and personal development, are far from providing a strong justification for free speech due to their reliance on uncertain empirical validation. Second, it is claimed that a stronger and better ground for free speech can be constructed by articulating two non-consequentialist justifications for free speech – (...) democratic participation and autonomy. This articulation, which I call the double-grounded non-consequentialist justification for free speech, considers autonomy and democratic participation as complementary principles. In this sense, a double-grounded justification engages justification as autonomy and democratic participation in a dialogue in order to provide remedies for the specific weaknesses of these two positions. (shrink)

Ordinary citizens are rarely charged with making consequential decisions in representative democracies. Almost all consequential decisions are delegated to elected representatives or political appointees. On what basis should we judge whether decisions should be placed in the hands of ordinary citizens or delegated to political elites? I argue that decision-making authority should be allocated in whatever way an assembly of randomly selected citizens would choose, given reasonable beliefs about the consequences of their possible choices. The standard I defend is a (...) variation of the principal-agent model of political representation, in which the people are viewed as a principal and officeholders as their agents. As it is usually formulated, the objectives of the people are defined by the preferences of the majority. I draw on this formulation in chapter 4 to explain why the majority might rationally prefer to delegate authority to a citizens’ assembly instead of an elected legislature and why they might rationally view citizens’ assemblies with distrust, when they are organized and administered by elites. But the standard formulation of the principal-agent model does not provide a coherent standard when the will of the majority is not well-defined. Several chapters on social choice theory explain this problem and why political theorists’ previous responses to it have been unconvincing. In light of this problem, I argue for a revisionary understanding of the principal-agent model, according to which the people and its will are identified not with the preferences of the majority but rather with the decisions of a citizens’ assembly. To motivate this approach I offer a critique of the recent literature on “epistemic democracy,” which describes an alternative form of justification for empowering ordinary citizens. Appeals to expertise and knowledge have historically figured prominently in justifications of political exclusion and hierarchy, but epistemic democrats put them to use in defending participatory forms of democratic politics. Epistemic democrats claim that decision processes in which inexpert, ordinary citizens participate can exhibit greater “collective wisdom” than elite- or expert-dominated decision-making. Chapters 2 and 3 explain why these arguments sit uncomfortably with the nature of disagreements in politics. (shrink)

In two influential articles setting forth his arguments against restrictions on free expression in the 1970s, Harvard philosopher T. M. Scanlon suggested and later rejected the notion that autonomous agency ought to be a primary constraint on most justifications used to restrict speech. The concept of autonomy, he said, was “notoriously vague and slippery” as a basis for judging free-speech restrictions. Instead, Scanlon argued that free expression—and proposed restrictions on it—should be justified in terms of our various “interests” in (...) speech as participants and as audience members. Reliance on autonomy does not provide the justificatory force for a theory of free expression, he said. However, in his landmark 1998 book, What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon relies heavily on autonomous agency as the foundation of several of his key claims. Scanlon’s claims that our “interests” to protect free expression conflict with his reliance on autonomous agency in What We Owe to Each Other and have important implications for efforts both to cultivate a healthy public sphere and protect the open architecture of the Internet within an increasingly global media culture. (shrink)

Another important aspect about children’s tolerance judgements is whether they can support and justify their tolerant stance Kuhn argues that a person’s beliefs are the source from which decisions and judgements are made (1991, 2002). The question is, do young children hold underlying beliefs which they can call on to support their tolerant and intolerant judgements. As mentioned earlier there is a paucity of research about young children’s conceptualisation of tolerance and acceptance of others who are different. However, two studies (...) (Hogan, 2002; Witenberg, 2007) have investigated the kind of justifications and underlying beliefs young children express in support of tolerance. The studies found that appeal to the principle of fairness predominated their responses with occasional appeal to empathy. (shrink)

Much philosophical attention has been paid to the question of whether, and why, one may divert a runaway trolley away from where it will kill five people to where it will kill one. But little attention has been paid to whether the reasons that ground a permission to divert thereby ground a duty to divert. This paper defends the Requirement Thesis, which holds that one is, ordinarily, required to act on lesser-evil justifications for harming for the sake of others. (...) Cases in which we have lesser-evil justifications of harming for the sake of others are rescue cases. Ordinarily, an agent is under a duty to rescue unless doing so imposes too great a cost on her, or violates someone else's rights. When neither of these defeating conditions obtain, one is required to rescue even if this involves causing harm to innocent people. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 3, March 2025, Page 30-33.

A central tenet of medical ethics holds that it is permissible to perform a medical intervention on a competent individual only if that individual has given informed consent to the intervention. However, in some circumstances it is tempting to say that the moral reason to obtain informed consent prior to administering a medical intervention is outweighed. For example, if an individual’s refusal to undergo a medical intervention would lead to the transmission of a dangerous infectious disease to other members of (...) the community, one might claim that it would be morally permissible to administer the intervention even in the absence of consent. Indeed, as we shall discuss below, there are a number of examples of public health authorities implementing compulsory or coercive measures for the purposes of infectious disease control (IDC). The plausibility of the thought that non-consensual medical interventions might be justified when performed for the purpose of IDC raises the question of whether such interventions might permissibly be used to realize other public goods. In this article we focus on one possibility: whether it could be permissible to non-consensually impose certain interventions that alter brain states or processes through chemical or physical means on serious criminal offenders. We shall suggest that some such interventions might be permissible if they safely and effectively serve to facilitate the offender’s rehabilitation and thereby prevent criminal recidivism. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of extending Locke’s theory with respect to tangible property so that it might offer a feasible theoretical basis for intellectual property too. The main conclusion is that such an attempt must fail. Locke’s theory comes in three parts: a general justification of property which serves to explain why assets ought to be under the exclusive control of individuals; a positive method of private appropriation whereby an individual acquires a prima facie exclusive claim to previously commonly (...) held natural resources; and third, a negative requirement that other individuals’ crucial interests are not harmed by such an appropriation. For each of these, the difficulties involved in applying that part of the theory to the sphere of ideas are discussed, and a central aspect of intellectual property that raises the problems of application is highlighted. (shrink)

In his paper "Role Obligations," Michael Hardimon defends an account of the nature and justification of institutional obligations that he takes to be clearly superior to the "standard" voluntarist view. Hardimon argues that this standard view presents a "misleading and distorted" picture of role obligations (and of morality generally); and in its best form he claims this view still "leaves out" of its understanding of even contractual role obligations an "absolutely vital factor". I argue against Hardimon that a related version (...) of this "standard view" of institutional obligations is "standard" for a very good reason - namely, that it is true. (shrink)

In this article, I look at the role of appeals to the emotions in criminal law defences. A position commonly held is that appeals to the emotions.

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a mainstay of contemporary health care priority setting. However, priority setting in reference to cost-effectiveness may discriminate against people with disabilities. The ethical literature on priority setting suggests that the permissibility of such discrimination varies with the reason why people with disabilities receive lower priority. In a vignette-based survey experiment (N = 1100) in the UK, we tested whether five justifications for prioritizing people without disabilities affect the views of the broader public on priority setting (...) based on CEA. In our vignettes, a hospital denies a person with a disability treatment for a disease based on CEA, and respondents were asked to assess the moral permissibility of this. The vignettes varied in terms of the reason the hospital emphasized in the decision. We tested vignettes emphasizing lower expected lifespan, lower quality of life, higher costs of treatment due to disability, less efficient treatment due to disability, and lower productivity due to infrequent labor-market participation. Our study is an initial exploratory survey experiment, exploring participant’s responses to CEA with respect to disability. Discrimination against the patient with a disability was deemed impermissible across all experimental conditions, and there were no significant differences between the various reasons. This suggests a discrepancy between folk intuitions and those of many ethicists. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We shall defend three philosophical theses about the extent of intrinsic justification based on various technical results. We shall present a set of theorems which indicate intriguing structural similarities between a family of “weak” reflection principles roughly at the level of those considered by Tait and Koellner and a family of “strong” reflection principles roughly at the level of those of Welch and Roberts, which we claim to lend support to the view that the stronger reflection principles are intrinsically (...) justified as well as the weaker ones. We consider connections with earlier work of Marshall. (shrink)

Pragmatic justifications of epistemic norms tell us to observe these norms as the best means to attaining the things we value. I argue that such justifications do not work, because they harbour an irresolvable tension: their non-alethic character intrinsically conflicts with the truth-aiming character of the epistemic norms they are justifying. We should abandon, then, either epistemic norms or pragmatic justifications of these norms. I therefore argue that we should abandon pragmatic justifications.

It appears that we know surprisingly little about how judges frame linguistically the rationale behind their decisions and how such texts are structured. Using the concept of rhetorical moves, this paper adopts a genre-based approach to examine the rhetorical structure of legal justifications provided in the decisions of the Polish Constitutional Court. The goal of the study is to verify the claim that the way justifications are drafted is becoming more and more uniform and conventional. The results show (...) that there is a common core of rhetorical structure realized by means of recurrent functional segments of text. This paper proposes a prototypical move structure of a Constitutional Tribunal justification and it argues that that the way justifications are drafted are subject to very concrete, even if not explicitly stated constraints. (shrink)

Recently, shifting societal attitudes towards animals have resulted in an increasing challenge to the ‘social license’ to use animals in competitive sport. Against that background, this paper explores whether the use of animals in competitive sport is ever justifiable from the perspective of three commonly used ethical theories: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. In so doing, it recognises the importance of human understanding of animals as sentient beings. The author argues that when deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics are each used (...) to consider the question ‘Is the use of animals in sport ethically justifiable?’, only absolutist rights theory leads to a negative conclusion. Specified rights theory, utilitarianism and virtue ethics all allow for the human use of animals in sport. However, the author then goes onto argue that even if one does not accept an absolutist rights point of view and does believe that the use of animals in sport is generally ethically justifiable, that use should be limited by fulfilment of certain ‘qualifying constraints’: (a) minimisation of negative welfare effects and maximisation of positive welfare effects, to enable ‘good lives’ for animals (b) identification of and mitigation against avoidable, unnecessary risk and (c) compliance with governing body regulations and the law. (shrink)

This essay examines how Michael Walzer and Dietrich Bonhoeffer understand practical moral dilemmas—what Walzer calls the problem of dirty hands—and how both conceive of the solution to the problem in terms of the concept of judgment. Walzer's judgment is strictly political, and tragic; Bonhoeffer's retains this political account but grounds it theologically, so as to overcome its finally tragic element.

States are not only claiming the right to grant or deny entry to their territories but also enforcing this right against non-citizens in ways that cause significant harm to these individuals. In this article, I argue that endorsing the presumptive right to restrict immigration does not settle the question of when or how it may permissibly inflict harm on individuals to enforce this right. I examine three distinct justifications for causing harm to individuals. First, the justification of defensive harm (...) holds that harming individuals is morally permissible when they pose an unjustified threat to others. Second, the justification of protecting property states that harming individuals is morally permissible when they pose an unjustified threat to others’ property interests. Third, I consider the state punishment justification, which maintains that harming individuals is morally permissible when punishment is an appropriate response to their previous conduct. I conclude that any immigration enforcement measure that involves lethal force or the infliction of severe bodily harm is morally impermissible, whether it is used to defend the state or its property. Moreover, criminal sanctions for immigration violations are difficult to justify. (shrink)

This article reports the results of research aimed at developing and validating a multi-item scale to measure consumers' agreement with three main justifications for not engaging in socially responsible consumption behaviours, namely the 'economic rationalist argument' founded on the idea that the costs of SRC are greater than its benefits, the 'economic development reality argument' based on the idea that ethical and moral aspirations are less important than the economic development of countries, and the 'government dependency argument' grounded in (...) the premise that government inaction demonstrates the legal character and the banality of unethical consumption behaviours. The scale items were generated on the basis of a multi-country qualitative study of consumers. The content validity of the scale was assessed in the first study. The second study was a survey of 157 Canadian adult consumers in which the threedimensional scale and other scales measuring relevant concepts were administered. The survey results showed that the 28-item resulting scale is reliable and generally behaves as one would theoretically expect. Implications for consumption ethics researchers and policy makers are proposed. (shrink)

The present paper describes a number of ethical quandaries facing the implementors of motivational interventions in organizational settings. A critical analysis of the traditional solutions to these issues within the organizational literature finds them lacking for want of considering unwitting cognitive biases and self presentational doublespeak, both of which may result in the rights of research participants being underprotected. The establishment of an Institutional Review process, loosely analogized from the biomedical and behavioral science research traditions, is suggested as a means (...) of protecting the rights of research participants as well as humanizing future motivational interventions. (shrink)

The principle of the causal closure of the physical world (CCP) is a main rationale for physicalism. This article examines whether the justifications given for this principle are successful. I start by specifying the principle as claiming that every physical effect has a necessary and sufficient physical cause, thereby ruling out mental causes as well as causal overdetermination. I then proceed to the first justification, the argument from basic forces. It inductively extrapolates from our knowledge of known physical (conservative) (...) forces to the conclusion that all forces must be of that nature, hence ruling out mental forces. However, the argument overlooks the fact that mental forces could be in principle conservative, and that even non-conservative forces are perfectly acceptable according to the Noether theorem. The second justification is the argument from the in-principle completeness of physics, whose success depends on insisting that physical causes be necessary and sufficient for their effects, which is just a restatement of CCP. Thirdly, the empirical argument has it that we have enough empirical knowledge of bodies to safely conclude that no nonphysical forces are at work in them. The problem with this is that the relevant empirical data (neuroscience of volitional actions) are not taken into account. Finally, the argument from scientific realism founders on the lack of a relevant metaphysical necessity, a necessity whose introduction would render CCP true by fiat. All in all, CCP lacks justification and comes out as a mere metaphysical doctrine begging the question against nonphysical interaction. (shrink)

This is an expository paper in which the basic ideas of a family of Justification Logics are presented. Justification Logics evolved from a logic called LP, introduced by Sergei Artemov [1, 3], which formed the central part of a project to provide an arithmetic semantics for propositional intuitionistic logic. The project was successful, but there was a considerable bonus: LP came to be understood as a logic of knowledge with explicit justifications and, as such, was capable of addressing in (...) a natural way long-standing problems of logical omniscience. Since then, LP has become one member of a family of related logics, all logics of knowledge with explicit knowledge terms. In this paper the original problem of intuitionistic foundations is discussed only briefly. We concentrate entirely on issues of reasoning about knowledge. (shrink)

The resolution of ethical dilemmas often requires individuals to search for reasonable justifications to support their choices. Occasionally, such justifications must be made explicit to stakeholders inside or outside the organization. Other times, the justification for a decision will be known only by the decision-maker. In either case, the organizational code of conduct that governs the individual can play a vital role in providing guidelines about appropriate and inappropriate justifications. The present paper discusses the connections between organizational (...) codes and employee justifications. (shrink)

The case (Dawson et al. 2024) describes an Institutional Review Board (IRB) chair who seeks consultation about waiving the requirement that investigators obtain prospective, informed consent for collection of microbiome samples by swabbing the perianal region of severely burned patients shortly after their admission to an intensive care unit (ICU). We argue that it is ethically permissible to waive informed consent requirements for the perianal swab and that the IRB should approve a waiver as permitted by regulations.

In Artemovʼs Justification Logic, one can make statements interpreted as “t is evidence for the truth of formula F.” We propose a variant of this logic in which one can say “I have degree r of confidence that t is evidence for the truth of formula F.” After defining both an axiomatic approach and a semantics for this Logic of Uncertain Justifications, we will prove the usual soundness and completeness theorems.

Those of us who appreciate the force of both retributive and consequentialist rationales for the justification of punishment should be sympathetic to efforts to combine them, so as to develop a more compelling justificatory scheme. In this chapter, however, Zaibert argues that extant mixed justifications have failed in coherently combining these rationales. He attempts to explain this failure by identifying two widespread and interrelated mistakes made by punishment theorists. First, they have systematically underestimated the difficulty of their task. Second, (...) they have not availed themselves of certain tools that recent developments in other areas of moral philosophy provide, which Zaibert considers necessary for real progress in our efforts to justify punishment. (shrink)