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Added by: Björn Freter, Contributed by: Johanna ThomaAbstract:
Richard Rudner famously argues that the communication of scientific advice to policy makers involves ethical value judgments. His argument has, however, been rightly criticized. This article revives Rudner’s conclusion, by strengthening both his lines of argument: we generalize his initial assumption regarding the form in which scientists must communicate their results and complete his ‘backup’ argument by appealing to the difference between private and public decisions. Our conclusion that science advisors must, for deep-seated pragmatic reasons, make value judgments is further bolstered by reflections on how the scientific contribution to policy is far less straightforward than the Rudner-style model suggests.
Steinbock, Bonnie. The Logical Case for “Wrongful Life”1986, The Hastings Center Report 16 (2): 15-20.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Summary: In this article, Steinbock solves the logical problem with torts based on wrongful life. She argues that a wrongful life suit need not show that it would have been better for the infant to have never been born, but merely that the infant is impaired to such a degree that the infant has no capacity for fulfilling even very basic human interests. She claims that this criteria is capable of serving as the basis for a tort claim concerning the recovery of extraordinary medical care and specialized training.Comment: This journal article would be a good addition to a course on medical ethics that covered some legal questions or questions about serverely impaired infants. Steinbock presents overviews of a number of wrongful life suits brought in the United States and provides a philosophical analysis of the possibility of the harm of being born.
Steinbock, Bonnie. Speciesism and the Idea of Equality1978, Philosophy 53 (204): 247-256.-
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Added by: Rochelle DuFord
Abstract: Most of us believe that we are entitled to treat members of other species in ways which would be considered wrong if inflicted on members of our own species. We kill them for food, keep them confined, use them in painful experiments. The moral philosopher has to ask what relevant difference justifies this difference in treatment. A look at this question will lead us to re-examine the distinctions which we have assumed make a moral difference.Comment: This journal article is a response to Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, though you need not have read Animal Liberation in order to understand this article, as Steinbock provides a clear overview of Singer's main claims. The text would be useful for rebutting Singer's arguments in a course on animal ethics or environmental ethics. It would also be of use in a course on moral theory that involved questions of moral consideration or moral equality.
Steinbock, Bonnie. Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses1994, Ethics 104 (2):408-410.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: This book provides a coherent framework for addressing bioethical issues in which the moral status of embryos and fetuses is relevant. It is based on the 'interest view,' which ascribes moral standing to beings with interests, and connects the possession of interests with the capacity for conscious awareness or sentience. The theoretical framework is applied to up-to-date ethical and legal topics, including abortion, prenatal torts, wrongful life, the crime of feticide, substance abuse by pregnant women, compulsory cesareans, assisted reproduction, and stem cell research. Along the way, difficult philosophical problems, such as identity and the nonidentity problem are thoroughly explored.Comment:
Steinbock, Bonnie. The Intentional Termination of Life1979, In Steinbock, Bonnie and Alastair Norcross (eds.), Killing and Letting Die. Fordham University Press.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Content: Steinbock argues that cessation of treatment can be for reasons other than the ending of life, specifically respecting a patient's right to refuse treatment and when treatment would not be a net benefit. She concludes that the AMA can consistently reject intentional killing and hold that it is sometimes permissible to withdraw treatment without relying on the controversial passive/active euthanasia distinction.Comment: Very useful chapter for discussion in a module about ethical issues at the end of life.
Steinbock, Bonnie. The case for physician assisted suicide: not (yet) proven2005, Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (4):235-241.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: The legalisation of physician assisted suicide in Oregon and physician assisted death in the Netherlands has revitalised the debate over whether and under what conditions individuals should be able to determine the time and manner of their deaths, and whether they should be able to enlist the help of physicians in doing so. Although the change in the law is both dramatic and recent, the basic arguments for and against have not really changed since the issue was debated by Glanville Williams and Yale Kamisar nearly 50 years ago. In this paper, the author argues in favour of Kamisar's consequentialist framework. Any change in law and social policy should not be based solely on individual cases, heart wrenching though these may be. Instead, we need to assess the need for PAS, and weigh this against the risks of mistake and abuseComment:
Steinbock, Eliza. Generative Negatives: Del LaGrace Volcano’s Herm Body Photographs2014, Transgender Studies Quarterly 1(4): 539-551.-
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Added by: Hans Maes
Summary: In conventional film photography, negatives are used in the darkroom to produce positive images, but in the outmoded medium Polaroid 665 the positive image is used to make a unique negative that can then be employed to make positive prints in the future. This generativity of the Polaroid 665 negative is used by the artist to mirror the complexity of feelings regarding intersex bodies. The series shows how negative affect can be productive and political, even when it appears to suspend agency.Comment: Useful in discussing portraiture and depiction, as well as empowerment and art's role in power relations in general.
Artworks to use with this text:
Del LaGrace Volcano, Herm Body (2011- )
Self-portraits which clearly reference the work of John Coplans and reflect on Volcano’s midlife embodiment changed by hormones, age, and weight. The title draws attention to the materiality of its subject, insisting that we receive the body as ‘herm’ – a word Volcano uses to name intersex history and claim trans embodiment. Useful in discussing portraiture and depiction, as well as empowerment and art's role in power relations in general.
Artworks to use with this text:
Del LaGrace Volcano, Herm Body (2011- )
Self-portraits which clearly reference the work of John Coplans and reflect on Volcano’s midlife embodiment changed by hormones, age, and weight. The title draws attention to the materiality of its subject, insisting that we receive the body as ‘herm’ – a word Volcano uses to name intersex history and claim trans embodiment.
Steingart, Alma. A Group Theory of Group Theory: Collaborative Mathematics and the ‘Uninvention’ of a 1000-page Proof2012, Social Studies of Science, 42(2): 185-213.-
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Added by: Fenner Stanley TanswellAbstract:
Over a period of more than 30 years, more than 100 mathematicians worked on a project to classify mathematical objects known as finite simple groups. The Classification, when officially declared completed in 1981, ranged between 300 and 500 articles and ran somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 journal pages. Mathematicians have hailed the project as one of the greatest mathematical achievements of the 20th century, and it surpasses, both in scale and scope, any other mathematical proof of the 20th century. The history of the Classification points to the importance of face-to-face interaction and close teaching relationships in the production and transformation of theoretical knowledge. The techniques and methods that governed much of the work in finite simple group theory circulated via personal, often informal, communication, rather than in published proofs. Consequently, the printed proofs that would constitute the Classification Theorem functioned as a sort of shorthand for and formalization of proofs that had already been established during personal interactions among mathematicians. The proof of the Classification was at once both a material artifact and a crystallization of one community’s shared practices, values, histories, and expertise. However, beginning in the 1980s, the original proof of the Classification faced the threat of ‘uninvention’. The papers that constituted it could still be found scattered throughout the mathematical literature, but no one other than the dwindling community of group theorists would know how to find them or how to piece them together. Faced with this problem, finite group theorists resolved to produce a ‘second-generation proof’ to streamline and centralize the Classification. This project highlights that the proof and the community of finite simple groups theorists who produced it were co-constitutive–one formed and reformed by the other.Comment (from this Blueprint): Steingart is a sociologist who charts the history and sociology of the development of the extremely large and highly collaborative Classification Theorem. She shows that the proof involved a community deciding on shared values, standards of reliability, expertise, and ways of communicating. For example, the community became tolerant of so-called “local errors” so long as these did not put the main result at risk. Furthermore, Steingart discusses how the proof’s text is distributed across a wide number of places and requires expertise to navigate, leaving the proof in danger of uninvention if the experts retire from mathematics.
Stemplowska, Zofia. Rescuing Luck Egalitarianism2013, Journal of Social Philosophy 44(4): 402-419.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Introduction: There was once a luck egalitarian school of thought, according to which disadvantage arising due to bad luck was unjust—at the bar of egalitarian justice—while disadvantage arising due to choice was just, at least if the choice was exercised against the background of equal options. “Choice” in this context needed to be “genuine choice”—which, for some, meant “voluntary,” and for others, also “freely willed”—but if it was genuine, then it did not matter whether it was a silly mistake or a considered course of action: if it led to disadvantage, its presence was deemed sufficient to justify leaving the agent to bear the disadvantage. Let's call the view that choice leading to disadvantage is sufficient to justify the disadvantage, at least if choice was exercised against the background of equal options, the inflated view of choice. [...] The inflated view was so crude that in the face of criticism pointing out its crudeness, its supporters have adopted more sophisticated views, and no recent luck egalitarian has defended the crude version. These more sophisticated views recognize that the mere fact that an outcome has been chosen does not make the outcome just—not even by the standards of egalitarian justice alone. In what follows, I will argue that this dominant reading of early luck egalitarianism as committed to the inflated view is, at best, a one-sided interpretation of the iconic writings of the luck egalitarian literature advanced by its most famous proponents, namely Arneson, Cohen, and Dworkin. Their writings did not unambiguously point toward the inflated view; if the early texts were interpreted more charitably, we could have, perhaps, avoided associating luck egalitarianism with the inflated view, arriving immediately at the sophisticated versions of luck egalitarianism dominating the field today.Comment: Defends luck egalitarianism in general, and the originators of the view in particular, from the common criticism that it is committed to the 'inflated view of choice' which generates unpalatable conclusions because it leaves people who have made choices to bear all the consequences of those choices. Would make good further reading for anyone working on this topic.
Stemplowska, Zofia. What’s Ideal about Ideal Theory?2008, Social Theory and Practice 34(3): 319-340.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Introduction: One of the main tasks that occupies political theorists, and arouses intense debate among them, is the construction of theories—so-called ideal theories—that share a common characteristic: much of what they say offers no immediate or workable solutions to any of the problems our societies face. This feature is not one that theorists strive to achieve but nor can it be described as an accidental one: these theories are constructed in the full knowledge that, whatever else they may offer, much of what they say will not be immediately applicable to the urgent problems of policy and institutional design. Since this may seem puzzling, and has been subjected to severe criticism, the main task of this paper is to ask what is the point of ideal theory and to show the nature of its value. I will also argue that, while the debate over the point of ideal theory can be productive, it will only be so if we avoid treating ideal and nonideal theories as rival approaches to political theory.Comment: Does a good job of defending ideal theory from prominent criticisms and setting out an account of ideal and non-ideal theory in which they complement one another. Would work as a main text for a lecture or seminar developing the ideal/non-ideal theme, or as further reading for anyone writing about it.
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Steele, Katie Siobhan. The Scientist qua Policy Advisor Makes Value Judgments
2012, Philosophy of Science, 79(5): 893-904
Comment: A major contribution to the values in science debate, focusing in particular on the role of scientists as policy advisers. The text is accessible for advanced students and can be used as the central text for a session on values in science in a philosophy of science course, or a more specialised course on related topics.