Human induced climate change poses a series of ethical challenges to the current political economy, although it has often be regarded by economists as only an ethical issue for those concerned about future generations. The central debate in economics has then concerned the rate at which future costs and benefits should be discounted. Indeed the full range of ethical aspects of climate change are rarely even discussed. Despite recent high profile and lengthy academic papers on the topic the ethical remains at best superficial within climate change economics. Recognising the necessary role of ethical judgment poses a problem for economists who conduct exercises in cost-benefit analysis and deductive climate modelling under the presumption of an objectivity that excludes values. Priority is frequently given to orthodox economic methodology, but that this entails a consequentialist utilitarian philosophy is forgotten while the terms of the debate and understanding is simultaneously restricted. We set out to raise the relevance of a broader range of ethical issues including: intergenerational ethics as the basis for the discount rate, interregional distribution of harm, equity and justice issues concerning the allocation of carbon budgets, incommensurability in the context of compensation, and the relationship of climate ethics to economic growth. We argue that the pervasiveness of strong uncertainty in climate science, incommensurability of values and nonutilitarian ethics are inherent features of the climate policy debate. That mainstream economics is ill-equipped to address these issues relegates it to the category of misplaced concreteness and its policy prescriptions are then highly misleading misrepresentations of what constitutes ethical action. (authors' abstract) / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

This licentiate thesis consists of three essays which all concern the ethics of imprisonment and what constitutes an ethically defensible treatment of criminal offenders. Paper 1 defends the claim that prisoners have a right to privacy. I argue that the right to privacy is important because of its connection to moral agency. For that reasons is the protection of inmates’ right to privacy also warranted by different established philosophical theories about the justification of legal punishment. I discuss the practical implications of this argument. Ultimately I argue the invasion of privacy should be minimized to the greatest extent possible without compromising other important values and rights to safety and security. In defending this position, I argue that respect for inmates’ privacy should be part of the objective of creating and upholding a secure environment to better effect in the long run. Paper 2 discusses whether the collateral harm of imprisonment to the close family members and children of prison inmates may give rise to special moral obligations towards them. Several collateral harms, including decreased psychological wellbeing, financial costs, loss of economic opportunities, and intrusion and control over their private lives, are identified. Two competing perspectives in moral philosophy are applied in order to assess whether the harms are permissible. The first is consequentialist and the second is deontological, and it is argued that both of them fails and therefore it is hard to defend the position that allowing for these harms would be morally permissible, even for the sake of the overall aims of incarceration. Instead, it is argued that these harms imply that imprisonment should only be used as a last resort. Where it is necessary, imprisonment should give rise to special moral obligations towards families of prisoners. Using the notion of residual obligation, these obligations are defended, categorized and clarified. Paper 3 evaluates electronic monitoring (EM) from an ethical perspective and discusses whether it could be a promising alternative to imprisonment as a criminal sanction for a series of criminal offenses. EM evaluated from an ethical perspective as six initial ethical challenges are addressed and discussed. It is argued that since EM is developing as a technology and a punitive means, it is urgent to discuss its ethical implications and incorporate moral values into its design and development. / <p>QC 20140519</p>

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In our world and our modern society, we have laws, ethics, morality, and religion that guide us, teaching us the basic principles of what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad. However, what would happen if all of these guides suddenly cease to exist? In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, this is exactly what happens. The novel’s two main characters, a father and his son, try to survive in a world that has turned into ravaged landscapes with people that will hunt others down, kill them and eat them. Through the story, the pair fight to survive, but also fight to maintain their ethical values and moral duties when everyone around them has abandoned those values.  This thesis will thereby demonstrate the possibility of ethics in a post-apocalyptic world and analyse this by reference to consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Moreover, it will show the ways that The Road can be used to teach right and wrong and good and bad in upper-secondary school.

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This study is a contribution to the bioethical debate about new and possibly emerging reproductive technologies. Its point of departure is the intuition, which many people seem to share, that using such technologies to select non-disease traits – like sex and emotional stability - in yet unborn children is morally problematic, at least more so than using the technologies to avoid giving birth to children with severe genetic diseases, or attempting to shape the non-disease traits of already existing children by environmental means, like education. The study employs philosophical analysis for the purpose of making this intuition intelligible and judging whether it is justified. Different ways in which the moral problems posed by reproductive technologies are often framed in bioethical debates are criticised as inadequate for this task. In particular, it is argued that the intuition cannot fully be made sense of in terms of harm to the children that such technologies help create. The study attempts to elaborate an alternative to that broadly consequentialist approach, by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, Hans Jonas’s ethics, and Aristotle’s practical philosophy, as it has been received and developed in the hermeneutical tradition. It is suggested that reproductive choices, unlike decisions for already born children, are characterised by a peculiar one-sidedness: the future child appears to the parents as something wholly theirs to decide about, not as a concrete other with whom they must interact in a responsive and attuned way. This is problematic because it means that such choices cannot call upon the particularised moral understanding only gained in interpersonal encounters. In particular, it makes them easily shaped by various tendencies, to which parents are always susceptible, to relate to children in instrumentalising ways, and at risk of reinforcing such tendencies. However, this does not mean that all uses of reproductive technologies are equally troubling. When selecting against severe disease the parents can rely on a widely shared illness experience to escape the dangers that one-sidedness involves. It is concluded that the intuition under discussion, thus explicated and in some ways qualified, makes sense morally. / Avhandlingen är ett bidrag till den bioetiska debatten om olika reproduktionstekniker som antingen nyligen blivit tillgängliga eller som kan komma att utvecklas i framtiden. Utgångspunkten är en intuition som många verkar dela, nämligen att användningen av sådana tekniker i syfte att välja icke-sjukdomsegenskaper – som kön och känslomässig stabilitet – hos framtida barn, är mer moraliskt problematiskt än både att forma sådana egenskaper hos redan existerande barn genom exempelvis utbildning och att använda teknikerna för att undvika att barn föds med svåra sjukdomar. Studien är ett försök att genom filosofisk analys begripliggöra denna intuition och avgöra om den är berättigad. Olika sätt på vilka man i den bioetiska debatten ofta gestaltar de moraliska problem som reproduktionstekniker ger upphov till kritiseras som otillräckliga för denna uppgift. I synnerhet framhålls att intuitionen inte helt kan förstås som en oro över att de barn som sådana tekniker sätter till världen kan komma till skada. Med avsikt att utveckla ett alternativ till detta konsekvensorienterade synsätt söker sig författaren till Martin Heideggers teknikfilosofi, Hans Jonas etik och Aristoteles praktiska filosofi, som den tolkats och utvecklats i den hermeneutiska traditionen. Med hjälp av dessa teorier betonas hur reproduktiva val, till skillnad från beslut gällande redan existerande barn, kännetecknas av en slags ensidighet. Det framtida barnet framstår för föräldrarna som föremål för beslut som är odelat deras, snarare än som en konkret andre som de måste interagera med på ett lyhört, noga avpassat sätt. Detta är problematiskt eftersom det innebär att sådana val inte kan ledsagas av det slags partikulära moraliska förståelse som bara uppnås i möten mellan människor. I synnerhet innebär det att valen lätt formas av, och i sin tur riskerar att underblåsa, olika för föräldraskapet karaktäristiska tendenser som ständigt riskerar förmå föräldrar att förhålla sig till sina barn på ett instrumentaliserande sätt. Men detta betyder inte att alla användningar av reproduktionstekniker är lika problematiska. Val som syftar till att undvika svåra sjukdomar kan undgå de faror som ensidigheten öppnar för genom att åberopa en gemensam mänsklig sjukdomserfarenhet. Avhandlingens slutsats är att intuitionen som diskuteras är berättigad, med vissa reservationer, om den förstås på detta sätt.

The thesis deals with ethical dilemmas that the author identified during the process of transformation of residency social care facilities. The aim of the work is to theoretically describe dilemmas identified and subsequently outline the procedure for their solution. The aim of the core part of the work, where is selected dilemma discussed using two ethical theories, is to point out the way these theories can help to solve the ethical dilemmas. The work is divided into five parts, the first of which defines the concepts, the process of transformation and the specifics of the target group of persons with mental disabilities. In the second part emphasises the role of the social worker in dealing with ethical dilemmas and the author generally deals with ethical problems and dilemmas from several points of view and addresses the question of responsibility of a social worker for the ethically-based decision in the specific situation of transformation. The third section describes the specific ethical dilemmas that have been identified during the transformation process, including identifying possible solutions. In the fourth part is the one selected ethical dilemma discussed with the aid of two ethical theories, deontology and consequentialism. In the final fifth part, the discussion, is thinking about benefits and the real possibilities of using ethical theories in social work practice and their meaningful link.

Ce travail a pour but de montrer quelles logiques de la finalité sont en jeu dans le travail du manager. Nous avons distingué deux façons d’aborder la finalité. La première, proche des notions d’objectif, d’intérêt, d’utilité, constitue le soubassement des façons d’aborder classiquement le travail du manager. Nous avons fait émerger, en nous appuyant sur la pensée d’Aristote, Thomas d’Aquin, et Spaemann, une conception alternative de la finalité, qui diffère de l’objectif et de l’intérêt en ce qu’elle n’est pas construite. Ce concept de finalité permet de voir autrement trois dimensions essentielles du travail du manager : le management par objectif, le faisceau d’exigences contradictoires dont le manager est le point focal, et le dilemme qui se pose à lui entre éthique et efficacité. Enfin, une enquête de terrain permet de montrer que cette logique alternative de la finalité, rattachée à l’éthique des vertus, trouve une certaine place dans le discours des managers de la FDJ, aux côtés du conséquentialisme, qui consacre l’acception utilitaire de la finalité, et du déontologisme qui évacue le recours à la finalité. / This thesis aim is to show which notion of purpose is at stake in the manager’s work. It differentiates two ways to address the concept of purpose. The first one, close to the notions of objective, interest, utility, forms the foundations of a classical vision of the manager’s work. However, a second one, based on Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Spaemann’s philosophies, arose. This alternative conception differs from objective and interest as it is not elaborated by the subject. It allows a different view on three essential dimensions of the manager’s work: the management by objectives, the body of contradictory requirements that built up on the manager and the dilemma between ethics and efficiency. Finally, a field survey showed that this alternative conception of purpose, linked to virtue-based ethics, has a certain place in the FDJ’s managers’ message, together with consequentialism, which expresses the utilitarian conception of purpose, and deontological ethics, which evacuates any purpose.

The presented master's thesis examines experiments on humans conducted in Nazi concentration camps during WWII and focuses on the conflict between the victims on one side and scientists on the other. In this conflict, which is centered around the fate of the data, both sides take a strong stand. The criteria for an ethical evaluation is to objectively articulate the main argumentation pillars from both sides and assess their validity in the contrast of two ethical theories which are virtue theory and the theory of consequentialism. To reach this objective, the thesis draws from available literal and audio-visual sources from the fields of history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology and bioethics. The paper is divided into three main parts. The first part is dedicated to terminology, technical execution, integrity, impact and logistics of the experiments. The second part analyzes victim testimonies and impact statements and arguments that had been put forward by the research community. The third part deals with the meaning of the term person's dignity/KAVOD, evaluates the argument points in the contrast of ethical theories, introduces the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance and deliberates the scientific community stance. Keywords Bioethics, cognitive dissonance, concentration camps,...

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