Doing and Allowing Harm

Woollard, Fiona

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683642.001.0001

Cited by 86 publications

(34 citation statements)

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“…More complex examples such as trolley problems [1], in which strict utilitarianism suggests that costs to one group may be offset against benefits to another, cause much more controversy. Utilitarian reasoning is more controversial still when it comes to questions of existential risk and the future of life.…”

Section: Future Population Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Humanity faces many challenges, and it is not certain that technologically advanced economies will survive long enough to develop general purpose human level AI. 1 Even if we assume that relatively stable societies continue to support scientific and technological research and development, foresight in these areas is notoriously challenging. The history of controlled nuclear fusion research is one of many cautionary examples.…”

Section: Whole Brain Emulation: Possibilities and Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Replication ethics

Kent

2019

Futures

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Suppose some future technology enables the same consciously experienced human life to be repeated, identically or nearly so, N times, in series or in parallel. Is this roughly N times as valuable as enabling the same life once, because each life has value and values are additive? Or is it of roughly equal value as enabling the life once, because only one life is enabled, albeit in a physically unusual way? Does it matter whether the lives are contemporaneous or successive? We argue that these questions highlight a hitherto neglected facet of population ethics that may become relevant in the not necessarily far distant future.

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Section: Future Population Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Whole Brain Emulation: Possibilities and Caveatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Replication ethics

Kent

2019

Futures

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“…Of course, the notion of an intact sequence requires further analysis. I attempt to provide this elsewhere (Woollard 2015).…”

Section: Intermediate Cases and Enabling Harm As A Third Categorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Barry and Øverland on doing, allowing, and enabling harm

Woollard

2019

Ethics & Global Politics

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In Responding to Global Poverty: Harm, Responsibility, and Agency, Christian Barry and Gerhard Øverland address the two types of argument that have dominated discussion of the responsibilities of the affluent to respond to global poverty. The second type of argument appeals to 'contribution-based responsibilities': the affluent have a duty to do something about the plight of the global poor because they have contributed to that plight. Barry and Øverland rightly recognize that to assess contribution-based responsibility for global poverty, we need to understand what it is for an agent to contribute to harm rather than merely failing to prevent it. Barry and Øverland argue that we should replace the traditional bipartite distinction doing and allowing with a bipartite distinction between doing, allowing and enabling. I argue that their discussion represents a significant contribution to this debate. However, more detail on their key ideas of 'relevant action' and 'complete causal process' is needed. Moreover, in cases involving the removal of barriers, the non-need based claims of those involved matter.

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“…As this is a large and difficult question and not one that I can properly answer here, I will give a brief sketch of an argument that I have given more fully elsewhere to defend a slightly different claim, the claim that a person's body belongs to her. 31 Belonging differs from ownership in that it covers cases where something is temporarily allocated to a person or allocated to a person for use but not for profit. Thus (a) belonging need not be permanent or include rights to permanently alter the resource and (b) derivative or second-order rights such as the rights to the fruits of the resource or the right to transfer ownership are not (even prima facie) implied by claims about belonging.…”

Section: Why Do I Have Conclusive Title To My Body?mentioning

confidence: 99%

I, Me, Mine: Body‐Ownership and the Generation Problem

Woollard

2016

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

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The Body Ownership Thesis states that each person owns her body. I address a prominent objection, the Generation Problem: the Body Ownership Thesis apparently implies that parents own their children: as we own the fruit of our property, if a parent owns her own body, she must own her child and her child's body. I argue that a person does not own the fruit of her property when that fruit is a person or the body of a person. Persons have conclusive title to their bodies, but only defeasible title to the fruits of their bodies.

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Doing and Allowing Harm

Cited by 86 publications

References 0 publications

Replication ethics

Replication ethics

Barry and Øverland on doing, allowing, and enabling harm

I, Me, Mine: Body‐Ownership and the Generation Problem

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