Showing papers in "Ethics in 2006"

Out of Control

Abstract: Incompatibilists affirm, while compatibilists deny, that the truth of determinism would mean that we lack control over, and so are not responsible for, any of our actions. Though defined as opposites, compatibilism and incompatibilism both treat determinism as the main threat to our having enough control over our actions to be morally responsible for them. Here, by contrast, I want to call attention to another, less exotic threat to our having that much control. There are, I will argue, many everyday contexts in which we hold agents responsible for their acts even though considerations unrelated to determinism strongly suggest that they cannot help performing them. These contexts may not prevent us from specifying a conception of control that preserves our standard judgments of responsibility, but they do make that task even more difficult than is generally appreciated.

The reversal test: eliminating status quo bias in applied ethics.

Abstract: Suppose that we develop a medically safe and affordable means of enhancing human intelligence. For concreteness, we shall assume that the technology is genetic engineering (either somatic or germ line), although the argument we will present does not depend on the technological implementation. For simplicity, we shall speak of enhancing “intelligence” or “cognitive capacity,” but we do not presuppose that intelligence is best conceived of as a unitary attribute. Our considerations could be applied to specific cognitive abilities such as verbal fluency, memory, abstract reasoning, social intelligence, spatial cognition, numerical ability, or musical talent. It will emerge that the form of argument that we use can be applied much more generally to help assess other kinds of enhancement technologies as well as other kinds of reform. However, to give a detailed illustration of how the argument form works, we will focus on the prospect of cognitive enhancement. Many ethical questions could be asked with regard to this prospect, but we shall address only one: do we have reason to believe that the long-term consequences of human cognitive enhancement would be, on balance, good? This may not be the only morally relevant question—

Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family*

Abstract: Fundamental to the many varieties of liberalism is some version of the idea that individuals have rights to control over their own lives, rights that may not be overridden except, perhaps, when they conflict with those of others, or to avert very great disasters. Variants of liberalism differ on exactly what these rights are and under what conditions they can properly be overridden. But the basic idea is undisputed. Most liberals have made at least one exception. Children, especially when they are very young, do not have rights to control over their own lives. Some adult, or some combination of adults, may properly control their lives. Usually, in societies in which liberal ideals are prominent in the public culture, the adults authorized to exert control are the children’s parents, either biological or adoptive. These adults do not have the power of life and death over the children—other adults hold them in check in various ways—but they are the primary bearers of authority over and responsibility for the children.

Epistemic Partiality in Friendship

Abstract: Analytic moral philosophers have been taking a renewed interest in friendship in recent years. They have been especially liable to consider friendship in connection with debates over partiality and impartiality in ethics. Many important styles of ethical theory hold up impartiality and equal treatment—under one or another interpretation—as central moral concepts and ideals. Yet friendship and other close relations between persons seem to involve partiality and differential treatment. We care more about what befalls our friends than about what happens to strangers, and we are more motivated to advance our friends’ interests than those of strangers. We seem even to have special responsibilities toward our friends which we don’t have toward strangers. If friendship necessarily involves such partiality, then there is a tension, at least, between the constitutive elements and dispositions of friendship and those of morality: they seem to pull in opposite directions. Contemporary moral theorists have responded to this tension in a variety of ways. Some have sought to bring the apparent partiality of friendship under the wing of a more fundamental impartiality, thus reconciling friendship and the moral. Others have insisted on the primacy of friendship, and partiality, over impartial moral conceptions—

Equality, priority, and positional goods

Abstract: The question of whether those who think of themselves as egalitarians really do, or should, value equality has received considerable attention in recent years. Alternative principles have been offered as better capturing those distributive intuitions formerly known as ‘egalitarian’. Some endorse sufficiency—comparisons do not matter; what is important is that all have enough. Others favor giving priority to the worse off. The

The discursive dilemma and public reason

Abstract: Collective decisions are ubiquitous in complex democratic societies. Elections, referenda, decisions in legislatures, committees, multimember courts, expert panels, and boards of companies or other organizations are all examples. In such decisions, disagreement is equally ubiquitous. People disagree with each other on many levels. They disagree not only on what choices should be made but also on why those choices should be made. Political theorists have offered different accounts of how collective decisions should be made under conditions of pluralism and when such decisions are legitimate. Obviously, different decision problems may require different decision procedures or different criteria of legitimacy. But, even for a given decision problem, rival accounts of how to solve the problem, which differ on several dimensions, are usually on offer. In this article, I focus on one such dimension: the importance assigned not only to the choices made (the “what” question) but also to the reasons underlying those choices (the “why” question). This dimension can be seen as a spectrum between two extremes: the minimal liberal account at one end and the comprehensive deliberative account at the other. The minimal liberal account emphasizes the “what” question, the comprehensive deliberative account the “why” question. The minimal liberal account holds that collective decisions should be made only on

‘Race': Normative, Not Metaphysical or Semantic

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a flurry of work on the metaphysics of race. While it is now widely accepted that races do not share robust, biobehavioral essences, opinions differ over what, if anything, race is. Recent work has been divided between three apparently quite different answers. A variety of theorists argue for racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all. A second group defends racial constructionism,

Ecumenical Expressivism: Finessing Frege*

Abstract: Metaethical expressivism has many virtues. It can explain the depth of moral disagreement, fits easily into a naturalistic world view, and can explain how moral judgment guides action. Moreover, so-called quasirealist forms of expressivism can accommodate many of the realistsounding things we say. However, expressivism seems to have trouble making sense of utterances in which moral predicates occur in unasserted contexts. While we might be able to make sense of “torture is wrong” roughly along the lines of “Boo for torture!” it is hard to see how an account of this sort could deal with utterances like “If torture is wrong then Camp X-Ray should be abolished.” A speaker can accept the latter without disapproving of torture or Camp X-Ray. Moreover, any extension of expressivism to deal with such utterances must accommodate the validity of arguments in which they are premises. Since this problem comes to us through the work of P. T. Geach and is analogous to a problem Frege once posed for certain theories of negation, it is usually referred to as the “Frege-Geach problem.” In this article I articulate a new version of expressivism called “Ecumenical Expressivism,” which can avoid the Frege-Geach problem altogether. A crucial idea is that expressivism can and should embrace the thesis that moral utterances express both desires and beliefs. Before turning to the FregeGeach problem, we must first do some philosophical spadework to uncover the logical space Ecumenical Expressivism occupies.

The Value of Autonomy and Autonomy of the Will

Abstract: It is a commonplace that ‘autonomy’ has several different senses in contemporary moral and political discussion. The term’s original meaning was political: a right assumed by states to administer their own affairs. It was not until the nineteenth century that ‘autonomy’ came (in English) to refer also to the conduct of individuals, and even then there were, as now, different meanings. Odd as it may seem from our perspective, one that was in play from the beginning was Kant’s notion of “autonomy of the will,” as Kant defined it, “the property of the will by which it is a law to itself independently of any property of the objects of volition” (4:440). That’s a mouthful, to say the least. And interpreting

Rejecting Ethical Deflationism

Abstract: One of the perennial challenges of ethical theory has been to provide an answer to a number of views that appear to undermine the importance of ethical questions. We may refer to such views collectively as “deflationary ethical theories.” These include theories, such as nihilism, according to which no action is better than any other, as well as relativistic theories according to which no ethical theory is better than any other. In this article I present a new response to such deflationary ethical views. Drawing a distinction between acceptance and rejection, on the one hand, and belief and disbelief, on the other, I argue that we have strong reason to reject these theories, even if we do not have reason to disbelieve them. In Section I, I clarify the question of what ethical theory we should accept, and I argue for the central importance of this question. In Section II, I discuss what I call “absolutely deflationary” ethical theories. These are theories according to which it matters not at all what we do or not at all what ethical theory we accept. I argue that it is generally rational to reject any theory of this kind. In Section III, I discuss what I call “relatively deflationary” ethical theories. These are theories according to which it matters little what we do or what ethical theory we accept. I argue that we have strong pro tanto reason to reject theories of this kind. And then, in Sections IV and V, I reply to some common objections to my arguments. Throughout, I will be arguing not that deflationary ethical theories are false but only that we should reject them from the practical point of view as a basis for guiding our actions.

Moral Generalism: Enjoy in Moderation

Abstract: One important strand in moral particularism concerns moral practice. Moral reasoning, it maintains, ought not to rely on moral principles because such reliance distorts moral judgment and so provides poor moral guidance. Another important strand concerns the structure of the moral domain. The traditional generalist conception of moral theory goes wrong, particularists maintain, in seeing moral theorizing as a project of articulating and defending substantive principles concerning the rightness and wrongness of actions, the value of states of affairs, the fairness of social arrangements, and so on. Depending on which particularist you talk to, this is either because there are no true moral principles, or because there is no good reason to think there are any, or because, even if there are true moral principles, actions and other objects of moral assessment don’t depend for their moral status on there being any. In this article I challenge the second strand in particularism

Does consequentialism make too many demands, or none at all?

Abstract: Consequentialism has, since its inception, faced persistent challenges of excess: it is, critics charge, too demanding, too confining, and too alienating to offer a plausible alternative moral theory. Defenders typically concede that consequentialist moral theory is indeed extremely demanding, confining, and alienating, but they deploy a range of defenses against such charges. Some look for partners in guilt, arguing, for example, that typical alternatives are no less extreme in relevant respects. Others, while conceding that the theory is extreme, argue that it is less extreme than might be thought; indeed, that it is not implausibly extreme. Still others bite the bullet, allowing that the theory is counterintuitively extreme along some or all of these dimensions but maintaining that we are nonetheless driven to embrace these counterintuitive results by theoretical reflection.

Kantian Rigorism and Mitigating Circumstances

Abstract: A task facing any moral theory is to account for both the rigidity and the flexibility of moral rules. It is natural to think of moral rules as being both uncompromising across some range of core cases and open to modification or exception at the margins. Utilitarianism and Kantianism face complementary challenges when it comes to justifying this intuition. Utilitarianism threatens too much flexibility; critics argue that the theory would require us to break our promises, tell lies, and condemn the innocent whenever doing so happens to be expedient. Kantianism, by contrast, seems too rigid. When a murderer comes to the door asking the whereabouts of his intended victim, it seems morally myopic to refrain from lying to him out of a sense of duty. In general, utilitarianism appears to be more attractive than Kantianism in cases that are in some sense marginal or exceptional, cases where we are inclined to depart from our ordinary standards in the face of mitigating circumstances. But Kantianism seems more attractive in what we might call core cases, cases where we are inclined to keep our promises or tell the truth “on principle,” independent of any

Compatibilism and Contractualism: The Possibility of Moral Responsibility*

Abstract: Imagine a race of worms. These creatures would love to live together as a moral community but they do not. For, much as they would love this, they are simply too spineless, too selfish, and too weak to bring this demanding task off. Still they can dream, and so they do. They like to fantasize about a world where they are less spineless, less selfish, and less weak, and they talk and argue together about what, in such a world, they would do. They love to argue about what principles they would govern their lives together by if only they were in better shape. In doing this they are going through the motions of codeliberation rather than engaging in it for real. Echoing an ancient analogy, they are like a city that is addicted to the designing of systems of law but whose people are incapable of anything but anarchy. When one of these wormpeople fails to live up to the principles they agree they should (in the perhaps attenuated sense in which they can say this) live by, they are not called to account for what they do. They are subject to no criticism and no blame—such a failure is no less than is to be expected of them. Because their morality is merely an idle fantasy, it needs no executive branch.

Paradoxes of Abortion and Prenatal Injury

Abstract: Many people who believe that abortion may often be justified by appeal to the pregnant woman’s interests also believe that a woman’s infliction of significant but nonlethal injury on her fetus can seldom be justified by appeal to her interests. Yet the second of these beliefs can seem to cast doubt on the first. For the view that the infliction of prenatal injury is seriously morally objectionable may seem to presuppose a view about the status of the fetus that challenges the permissibility of abortion. The fear of being interpreted as implicitly endorsing such a view has thus led some defenders of abortion to be reluctant for tactical reasons to condemn the infliction of prenatal injury. In this they are encouraged by those who exploit the issue of prenatal injury in their campaign against abortion. When, for example, the House and Senate in 2004 passed legislation recognizing two victims of an assault against a pregnant woman, many viewed this as a tactic in a larger strategy to restrict access to abortion. This tactic is potentially effective. For people may find it compelling to infer that, if injuring a fetus is seriously objectionable, abortion must be even more objectionable, since killing is normally more seriously objectionable than merely injuring. That it is common for people to believe—at least initially—that prenatal injury is worse than abortion may be obscured by the way prenatal injury has been treated in the law. Legislation that would hold pregnant women criminally liable for culpably inflicted prenatal injury

Supreme Emergencies Revisited

Abstract: Apart from realists who believe that inter arma silent leges, and save for scoundrels who have no respect for human life, everybody agrees that there are moral constraints on what may be done in wartime. Yet, when the threat from the enemy is grave enough, even decent people concede that some, if not all, of the rules of war can be broken. Following the terminology suggested by Michael Walzer in Just and Unjust Wars, such cases are commonly referred to as cases of “supreme emergency.” Walzer’s well-known example of such an emergency is the situation of the United Kingdom in the days of the Blitz during World War II, when the bombing of German cities seemed to be the only available way to stop, or at least to slow down, the Nazi aggression. On Walzer’s view, since in those days (though not later in the war) the situation was one of supreme emergency, Churchill was morally justified in ordering such bombing in spite of the fact that it involved a direct and intentional attack on the innocent. I shall call permissions to break accepted rules of war—especially to kill the innocent—“Special Permissions” (SPs). I shall employ the expression “supreme emergencies” to refer to situations which meet the following three conditions: (a) some group faces the

The limits of sentimentalism

Abstract: What is the meaning of evaluative terms? What role should affective responses, such as our emotions, play in a philosophical analysis of these terms? In this article, I challenge the claim that the emotions are crucial to the meaning of evaluative terms. My main target is a sophisticated revival of the sentimentalist tradition. Prominent metaethicists such as Simon Blackburn, Allan Gibbard, John McDowell, and David Wiggins have insisted that the meaning of many of our most important evaluative terms is to be explained in terms of the appropriateness of certain human emotions. Unlike traditional sentimentalists, sophisticated sentimentalists don’t think that the main linguistic function of evaluative terms is simply to express emotional responses. Instead, they contend that to predicate an evaluative term to an object is to judge that a particular emotion is justified toward that object. Sophisticated sentimentalists believe that once we enrich the sentimentalist framework with a normative element—the idea of the justification or appropriateness of an emotional response—the framework will have the resources to do justice to the more cognitive and reflective aspects of our evaluative thinking and thus to escape the main criticisms traditionally leveled against it. I will raise a fundamental difficulty for the sophisticated sentimentalists’ attempt to provide a credible account of the meaning of our most important evaluative terms. A more careful examination of the relations between the affective and the reflective elements characteristic of our evaluative thinking will suggest that the emotions play a less central role in an account of the meaning of evaluative terms than sentimentalists have assumed.

The rationality of complying with rules: Paradox resolved

Abstract: We rationally impose rules on ourselves when the collective outcome of doing so is better than the outcome in which all act on independent judgment. Some rules, those which solve pure coordination problems, help us to achieve both individually and collectively optimal outcomes. The rule to drive on the right produces an outcome that is both a Nash equilibrium (no one can do better, given the actions of others) and a coordination equilibrium (no one does better by others acting differently). Such rules generate no interesting problem of compliance, although, given the extreme circumstances in which deviation is justified, there may be other borderline cases in which justification for deviance is controversial. More interesting problems arise for rules that represent second-best strategies. These produce outcomes that are solutions to many-person prisoners’ dilemmas. Here each can do better for herself by deviating from the rule, but the outcome that results from many or all doing so is worse than that which results from all following the rule. The best conceivable outcome in such cases is usually that in which a certain percentage of agents deviates from the rule, but, when typically that outcome is not practically available, the compliance of all with the rule is the best that can be collectively achieved. In the standard textbook prisoners’ dilemma case, each does better in terms of personal self-interest by deviating from the rule (defecting), but all do worse when all deviate than when none do (all cooperate). Deviation or defection is the dominant strategy, but it is Pareto inferior to outcomes in which many or all follow the rule or cooperate. Con-

Martha Nussbaum on the Emotions

Abstract: When Martha Nussbaum’s Hiding from Humanity was newly published, it appeared on the “employee recommendations” shelf of the Madison West Borders Books store—probably the only book of serious philosophy ever to be so honored. One thing that has to be kept in mind as one reviews or rates these two books by Nussbaum is that they are really aimed at a wider audience than academic philosophers and their students. This is part of the value of Hiding from Humanity as well as Nussbaum’s earlier Upheavals of Thought (hereafter identified in parentheses as UT and HH). The two books are undeniably “good reads,” and I heartily recommend them as such. Here, I will focus on aspects of both books that will be of interest to readers of this journal: the account of emotion that Nussbaum presents in them and some of the ways she applies it to moral, political, and legal issues. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of interest in both books that I will not be able to discuss or will be able to acknowledge with no more than a wave of the hand. One thing that makes these books interesting, at least to me, is the way in which they address an issue that is indirectly raised by some of Nussbaum’s earlier work. In earlier writings, Nussbaum has defended a certain way in which literature appeals to one’s emotions—namely, the fact that some literature causes us to feel sympathy for realistically depicted characters—on the grounds that this tends to have a morally improving effect on the way the reader thinks about the world. This seems to amount to a defense of what one might call “emotional” thinking, in which emotions play the role of premises in an inference. This,

Punishment and Desert: A Reply to Dolinko*

Abstract: In “Some Thoughts about Retributivism,” David Dolinko explores (among other issues) the thesis he calls “modest retributivism,” “the claim that, although our goal in punishing—our rational justification— may well be the deterrence of potential lawbreakers or the protection of law-abiding citizens, what morally justifies punishing wrongdoers [lawbreakers] is that they deserve the treatment we mete out to them.” Dolinko finds modest retributivism implausible, saying:

Book ReviewsTed Lockhart, .Moral Uncertainty and Its Consequences.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. 232. $55.00 (cloth).

Abstract: eudaimonia there to be referring to praxis. But in fact, such an interpretation of the text (which we also find in other interpreters, particularly in Kraut) is very unnatural for the context: the expression ‘theôria tis’ is simply a repetition of the same expression found a few lines below where Aristotle says that “perfect happiness” is “a kind of contemplative activity” (theôrêtikê tis energeia [1178b7–8]), whose “kind” is then explained: the perfectly happy life for human beings can only be an “approximation” (homoiôma) of the perfectly happy life (bios makarios [1178b26–27]) of the gods, since we human beings cannot contemplate continuously. In other words, the mere “approximation” Aristotle recognizes explicitly is that of our imperfect contemplative life in comparison to the gods’. A third kind of query may be about the audience of Aristotle’s treatise. In reading Lear’s book, we get the increasing impression that philosophers, and philosophers alone, form his audience: they alone can understand why and how praxis is worthy whereas courageous soldiers or generous public donors remain unaware of these reasons. That statement (which is repeatedly assessed by Lear) is essential to her demonstration since she thinks that one, and only one, good makes life valuable, and she accepts the traditional reading according to which Aristotle presents the two possible happy lives as competitors for the title of “happy life,” and not as “aspects” of a single (inclusive) happy life, and thus that a soldier, or a politician, is not a philosopher. Yet at the beginning, in a footnote (8, n. 2), Lear honestly recognizes, agreeing in part with Richard Bodéüs’s thesis, that future statesmen also share in it, since Aristotle emphasizes the political dimension of his treatise, which is explicitly called a “political science,” or “enquiry.” How then are we to reconcile these with the idea that the aim of Aristotle’s treatise is to discover what is exactly our ultimate end which should make us able to take it as our target, as archers do (cf. the famous statement at 1194a22–24), if “we” are those future politicians? One would have a very strange political leader, who is now “philosophically” educated, who understands why his actions are worthy, but who also sees why his life is only a second-best choice: if he is not foolish, wouldn’t he then choose to do philosophy rather than pursue a political career? But in that case wouldn’t we be obliged to suppose that Aristotle’s very final aim was a kind of “Aufhebung” of “political science,” that is, his own treatise? These few questions and criticisms were only aimed at opening the debate that such an original and provocative book deserves. It is a very important study, fresh and creative, and clearly argued, which all Aristotelian scholars, as well as scholars interested in the history of ethics, should read and meditate on.

Book ReviewsJoshua Gert, .Brute Rationality.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 243. $75.00 (cloth).

Abstract: Joshua Gert’s Brute Rationality defends the following thesis: there are two types of reason in the practical domain—“requiring” and “justifying” reasons, respectively. Roughly, a requiring reason is such that if an agent fails to act as it directs, then that agent is practically irrational. By contrast, a justifying reason is such that it renders actions practically rational that would otherwise be irrational. For example, a consideration that directs you not to harm yourself severely when such harm is readily avoidable and serves no good whatsoever is, intuitively, a requiring reason. To ignore such a consideration is irrational. However, a consideration that favors allowing yourself to be harmed severely in order to aid a dying innocent is a justifying reason. You are not required to allow such harm to come your way, but it is rationally permissible to do so given the goods that are at stake. No one could rightly accuse you of being irrational in so behaving. Gert argues that, while this distinction between types of reason is grounded in ordinary thinking, it “has been completely overlooked by virtually every contemporary ethical theorist” (16). Consequently, philosophers have not appreciated its theoretical significance. And its theoretical significance, if Gert is right, is considerable. For if there are both requiring and justifying reasons, Gert argues, we will be able to make significant headway on issues such as the dispute between internalists and externalists about normative reasons, the rationality of morality, supererogation, and a good deal more. The central thesis of Gert’s book, then, tells us that justifying reasons are such that they render actions rational that would otherwise be irrational. About this claim one wonders: how should we understand the type of rationality in play? And what is the relation between rationality thus understood and the notion of a practical reason? With regard to the first question, Gert maintains that we should understand the type of rationality in question to be a species of not “subjective,” but “objective,” rationality. And the best way to understand the latter notion, according to Gert, is via the concept of “regarding something as irrational.” Modified slightly, Gert’s official account of objective practical rationality falls into two parts and runs as follows:

Book ReviewsJoyce Jenkins, ;, Jennifer Whiting, ; and Christopher Williams, , eds.Persons and Passions: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier.Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Pp. 368. $53.00 (cloth).

Abstract: community, or any given individual within the community, at a moment in time, is as likely to have beliefs regarding responsibility tainted by bias or residual prejudices of an earlier time as any legal system would. (Also, as Nietzsche taught us, one can explore in interesting ways the historical groundings of the less justifiable aspects of conventional morality, just as one can make similar explorations regarding the law.) To be clear, the core of Cane’s argument by no means depends on a nonskeptical or apologetic approach to the law. One could accept that portions of law are unjust or irrational—the product of bias, politics, circumstance, or history—and still conclude that the law is a repository of social wisdom regarding responsibility and other complex concepts, wisdom not (as) accessible from other sources. Still, it will matter whether one approaches law with the view that an unusual or initially counterintuitive approach to responsibility there may be a valuable supplement or corrective to conventional moral thought or with the presumption that the legal approach is such a supplement or corrective. Even with these qualms, or alternative perspectives noted, the conclusion remains that Cane’s Responsibility in Law and Morality is a necessary reference both on responsibility and on the value of law to morality.

Book ReviewsDavid Boonin, .A Defense of Abortion.New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 350. $27.99 (paper).

Abstract: The thesis of the book is that abortion is morally permissible, and it argues for this thesis by refuting all arguments for the claim that abortion is not permissible, on grounds that the abortion critics themselves can accept. The arguments to be refuted form two main categories: rights-basedand non-rights-based critiques of the permissibility of abortion. Of these, the first takes up most of the first 280 pages of the book. Of the rights-based arguments there are two main sorts: arguments that claim that the human fetus or conceptus has a right to life, and objections to forms of the Good Samaritan argument that Judith Jarvis Thomson first offered in her famous article by the same name as this book. Boonin spends one chapter refuting the arguments of the first sort that claim that the fetus has a right to life approximately from conception on and then offers an argument in the next chapter that purports to show when the fetus gains a right to life in the course of its gestation. The longest chapter—150 pages worth—is devoted to a defense of the Good Samaritan argument, which argues that even if the fetus has a right to life, abortion is permissible. The book concludes with a chapter that refutes the various non-rights-based arguments that have been given mainly by nonphilosophers. Boonin surveys eight different argument strategies that purport to show that a very early human fetus, perhaps a mere conceptus, has the same right to life as you or me. These arguments include the “sanctity of human life argument,” the “slippery slope argument,” the “potentiality argument,” the “probability argument,” and the most widely cited such argument, Don Marquis’s “future-like-ours” argument. Since the future-like-ours argument is the most significant of these types of arguments, I illustrate Boonin’s method with his refutation of this argument. Marquis’s strategy is to argue that for a wide variety of cases for which we have the clear intuitions that the human being in that case has a right to life, there is only one possible account of why death is a harm, namely, because it deprives them in each case of a valuable “future like ours.” Using both the original paper and Marquis’s subsequent emendations of his argument to account for problematic cases, Boonin states Marquis’s future-like-ours principle as follows: “If an individual P has a future-like-ours F and if either (a) P now desires that F be preserved, or (b) P will later desire to continue having the experiences contained in F (if P is not killed), then P is an individual with the same right to life as you or I” (63). Boonin then locates two problems with this principle from the perspective of the abortion critic himself. Both problems concern the conception of desire. First, if the desires for a future like ours must be occurrent, then the comatose patient, let alone the early conceptus, cannot be said to have any such desires.

Book ReviewsAnne L Alstott, .No Exit: What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents.New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 254. $27.50 (cloth).

Abstract: Anne Alstott’s central question in this book is whether parents taking care of their children should be left alone to bear the costs that their parental obligations entail or whether nonparents should transfer resources to them in order to alleviate such burdens. The book’s first part begins with an account of the importance of continuity of care and how it justifies social expectations toward parents. As Alstott nicely emphasizes, contrary to what happens in, for example, marital or employment relationships, a key feature of the parent-child relationship is that parents are not allowed in principle to exit their parental status. For continuity in child care by at least one caretaker is first of all psychologically essential. A stable relationship is needed for the child to develop as an autonomous person. Moreover, the duration and intensity of this relationship also enables parents, with the deep knowledge they acquire about their children and the fact that they will remain in charge of them, to act as their best advocates. Yet, such nurturing and advocacy functions played by continuity of care also entail serious opportunity costs for parents, the evidence for, as well as the nature of, which are discussed in chapter 2. This burden is especially heavy on mothers, in terms of income, achievements, and more generally in terms of reduction in their opportunity set. In chapter 3, Alstott justifies the priority of continuity of care over the importance of parental freedom to pursue various goals. Society is thus justified in imposing on parents a No Exit obligation, preventing them from delegating at least some of their parental tasks. The burden it entails raises in turn the crucial question mentioned above: What (if anything) does society owe parents in this respect, and why? There are actually two sets of people one could turn to in order to alleviate such a parental burden, leading to two possible strategies: intergenerational reciprocity or solidarity among adults. As to the former, either parents could care for their children without anything in return, provided that their own parents did the same for them as children. Alternatively, our own children could have duties (in-kind or cash) to us when we grow old; after all, why not impose on children duties of care for their old parents, in the same vein as the parentchild ones defended above? Alstott answers by the negative, for reasons that are not entirely clear (see, e.g., 51, 221, as well as 69–71, discussing the obligations of parents regarding their seriously ill or disabled adult children). Yet, a childparent duty of care would, for example, allow adult children to qualify as proper advocates for their elderly parents. While this asymmetric treatment of parent-child and child-parent relationships would definitely be worth further philosophical investigation, Alstott as-