Essays in Philosophy

Review of "A Philosophy for Europe – From the Outside"

Maren Behrensen — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:04:46 PDT

Review of "Genetic Ethics: An Introduction"

Samantha Elaine Noll — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:04:38 PDT

Review of "Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning"

Robin L. Zebrowski — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:04:29 PDT

Review of "Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal"

Steven Ross — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:04:21 PDT

Transportation Planning for Automated Vehicles—Or Automated Vehicles for Transportation Planning?

Shane Epting — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:04:13 PDT

In recent years, philosophical examinations of automated vehicles have progressed far beyond initial concerns over the ethical decisions that pertain to programming in the event of a crash. In turn, this paper moves in that direction, focusing on the motivations behind efforts to implement driverless vehicles into urban settings. The author argues that the many perceived benefits of these technologies yield a received view of automated vehicles. This position holds that driverless vehicles can solve most if not all urban mobility issues. However, the problem with such an outlook is that it lends itself to transportation planning for automated vehicles, rather than using them as part of planning efforts that could serve urban mobility. Due to this condition, present efforts aimed at improving transportation systems should resist dogmatic thinking. Instead, they should focus on goals that keep topics such a human flourishing, sustainability, and transportation justice firmly in view.

Mobility Justice, Phenomenology and Gender: A Case from Karachi

Sana Iqbal — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:04:05 PDT

Karachi is considered the economic hub of Pakistan, but it lacks a systematized public transport service. Although the demand-supply gap in the transport sector and the poor quality of this deregulated service affects everyone, it wreaks havoc for women, manifesting in the form of social exclusion. Men can benefit from alternative, (and sometimes cheaper) private modes of transport such as motorbikes, which are socially discouraged for women, making them dependent on their male counterparts. Despite the seriousness of this issue, there is little literature showing how women are differentially deprived of their agency due to gender disparity in society. To better understand this issue, the aim of this paper is to study the cultural foundations of transport poverty to assess their impact on women’s life opportunities. For this purpose, the experiences of women while using public transport have been analysed. The study has identified a variety of reasons why women curtail their mobility. It concludes that the social exclusion of women motivates a greater concern for their freedom of movement and that their needs be adequately reflected in transportation policies.

Emerging Urban Mobility Technologies through the Lens of Everyday Urban Aesthetics: Case of Self-Driving Vehicle

Miloš N. Mladenović et al. — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:03:55 PDT

The goal of this article is to deepen the concept of emerging urban mobility technology. Drawing on philosophical everyday and urban aesthetics, as well as the postphenomenological strand in the philosophy of technology, we explicate the relation between everyday aesthetic experience and urban mobility commoning. Thus, we shed light on the central role of aesthetics for providing depth to the important experiential and value-driven meaning of contemporary urban mobility. We use the example of self-driving vehicle (SDV), as potentially mundane, public, dynamic, and social urban robots, for expanding the range of perspectives relevant for our relations to urban mobility technology. We present the range of existing SDV conceptualizations and contrast them with experiential and aesthetic understanding of urban mobility. In conclusion, we reflect on the potential undesired consequences from the depolitization of technological development, and potential new pathways for speculative thinking concerning urban mobility futures in responsible innovation processes.

Health Justice in the City: Why an Intersectional Analysis of Transportation Matters for Bioethics

Samantha Elaine Noll et al. — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:03:46 PDT

Recently, there has been a concerted effort to shift bioethics’ traditional focus from clinical and research settings to more robustly engage with issues of justice and health equity. This broader bioethics agenda seeks to embed health related issues in wider institutional and cultural contexts and to help develop fair policies. In this paper, we argue that bioethicists who ascribe to the broader bioethics’ agenda could gain valuable insights from the interdisciplinary field of environmental justice and transportation justice, in particular. We then proceed to demonstrate the importance of adopting an intersectional approach to transportation and health. The paper concludes with the argument that intersectional gender inequality is of particular importance when studying both health equity and the unequal distribution of burdens associated with transportation systems in local contexts. This essay is meant to be the beginning of a robust conversation concerning health equity, transportation justice, and intersectional distributions of both benefits and burdens.

Introduction

Shane Epting — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 01:03:36 PDT

Review of Charles W. Mills' "Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism"

Steve Ross — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:26:35 PST

Review of Agnes Callard’s “Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming”

Krista Karbowski Thomason — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:26:28 PST

Review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's "The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity"

Jessica Logue — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:26:20 PST

Review of Elizabeth Anderson’s “Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It)”

Valerie Soon — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:26:13 PST

Antinatalism and Moral Particularism

Gerald K. Harrison — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:26:05 PST

The Duty to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Limits of Permissible Procreation

Trevor Hedberg — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:25:57 PST

Many environmental philosophers have argued that there is an obligation for individuals to reduce their individual carbon footprints. However, few of them have addressed whether this obligation would entail a corresponding duty to limit one’s family size. In this paper, I examine several reasons that one might view procreative acts as an exception to a more general duty to reduce one’s individual greenhouse gas emissions. I conclude that none of these reasons are convincing. Thus, if there is an obligation to reduce one’s unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, then people should also limit the size of their families when they have the means to do so.

Is There an Obligation to Abort? Act Utilitarianism and the Ethics of Procreation

Leonard Kahn — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:25:49 PST

Most Act-Utilitarians, including Singer are Permissivists who claim that their theory usually permits abortion. In contrast, a minority, including Hare and Tännsjö, are Restrictionists who assert that Act-Utilitarianism (AU) usually limits abortion. I argue that both Permissivists and Restrictionists have misunderstood AU’s radical implications for abortion: AU entails that abortion is, in most cases in the economically developed world, morally obligatory. According to AU, it is morally obligatory for A to do F in circumstances C if and only if A’s doing F in C produces at least as much total net value as any other action that A could do in C. As mentioned above, AU has generally been seen to be fairly permissive about abortion. A little more exactly, AU is usually thought to hold that abortion is morally permissible in most cases, even during the second and third trimester. But not all AUs are Permissivists. Restrictionists maintain that the value of the future good that the fetus will experience over an entire life is likely to often outweigh the value of the good that its female parent will lose if the fetus is not aborted. Neither Permissivists nor Restrictionists have understood AU’s implications for abortion, at least as it concerns those living in economically developed countries today. First, Restrictionists have failed to recognize the marginal costs that a person in the developed world incurs on future people. One life lived now in the developed world consumes more resources (and contributes more to global warming) than a life lived in the developing world, and in the process makes the prospects of future people considerably worse. Restrictionists ignore these costs when they claim that it is often morally impermissible to abort fetuses. Second, Permissivists have not gone far enough when they have claimed that abortion is morally permissible. Singer and others have argued that we in the developed world ought to redirect much of our wealth to the underdeveloped world because its marginal value is much higher there than here. But the average cost of raising a child in the United States is almost $13,000 per year. Hence, by forgoing a child (including aborting a fetus) one can save and maintain, on average, between 6 and 65 people per year. Thus, AU entails that almost everyone in the developed world who is financially capable of supporting a child should not do so, even if that means aborting a fetus.

More Co-parents, Fewer Children: Multiparenting and Sustainable Population

Anca Gheaus — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:25:43 PST

Some philosophers argue that we should limit procreation – for instance, to one child per person or one child per couple – in order to reduce our aggregate carbon footprint. I provide additional support to the claim that population size is a matter of justice, by explaining that we have a duty of justice towards the current generation of children to pass on to them a sustainable population. But instead of, or, more likely, alongside with, having fewer children in in each family, we could also create families with more than two parents. I explore this possibility by pointing out the ways in which multi-parenting can advance children’s interests: in higher levels of well-being, in non-monopolistic child-rearing, and in a future opportunity to become themselves parents.

Issue Introduction

Sarah Conly — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 17:25:35 PST

Review of Richard Swinburne’s "Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy and the Resurrection of God Incarnate"

Chris Jackson — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 11:41:16 PDT

Review of Monique Deveaux and Vida Panitch's "Exploitation: From Practice to Theory, edited by Monique Deveaux and Vida Panitch"

Lavender McKittrick-Sweitzer — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 11:41:09 PDT