F M Kamm
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 1101997 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | F M Kamm |
| NOMBRES | F M |
| APELLIDO | Kamm |
| FIRMA | KAMM F M |
| AFILIACIONES | Harvard University Press |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 51 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 137 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 52 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1990 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Response to commentary on “Allocation of scarce resources, disability, and parity”
Allocation of scarce resources, disability, and parity
Meaning in Lives Nearing Their End
In this paper, I consider the idea of meaning in life as I believe it has arisen in some discussions of ageing and death. I critically examine and compare the views of Atul Gawande and Ezekiel Emanuel, connecting their views to the idea of meaning in life. I further consider the relation of meaning in life to both the dignity of the person and the reasonableness of continuing or not continuing to live. In considering these issues, I evaluate and …
Almost Over
This book is a discussion of philosophical, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. It considers different views about whether and why death is bad for the person who dies, and whether these views bear on why it would be bad if there were no more persons at all. The book looks at how the general public is being asked to think about end-of-life issues by examining some questionnaires and conversation guides that have been dev…
Almost Over
The Trolley Problem Mysteries
Suppose you can stop a trolley from killing five people, but only by turning it onto a side track where it will kill one person. May you turn the trolley? What if the only way to rescue the five is to topple a bystander in front of the trolley so that his body stops it but he dies? May you use a device to stop the trolley that will kill a bystander as a side effect? The Trolley Problem challenges us to explain and justify our intuitive judgments …
Trolley Problem Mysteries
The Trolley Problem Mysteries' considers whether who turns the trolley and/or how it is turned (or otherwise stopped) affect the moral permissibility of acting and suggests general proposals for when we may and may not harm some people to help others
Bioethical Prescriptions
Rationing and the Disabled
This chapter first considers some of Peter Singer's views about rationing scarce health-care resources, in particular to the disabled. It then compares these views, along with those of Dan Brock, to some alternative proposals about rationing and the disabled. Finally, the chapter identifies some concerns raised by the proposals discussed in this chapter. Throughout, the discussion focuses on resources that are not under personal control and that …
Bioethical Prescriptions
Ethics for Enemies
This is a book of three philosophical chapters on aspects of terrorism, torture, and war. It relates issues in ethical theory to practical ethics. The chapter on torture considers views about what torture is and the various occasions on which it could occur in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. The discussion of terrorism examines whether it is the intenti…
Sen on Justice and Rights
Précis of Indicate Ethics
Substitution, Subordination, and Responsibility
Aggregation, Allocating Scarce Resources, and the Disabled
In this article, I first compare positions I have taken in the past and those taken by Peter Singer on how the allocation of life-saving resources should be affected by (1) the aggregation of expected quality of life, quantity of life, and need, (2) both within the life of a person (intrapersonal aggregation) and across persons (interpersonal aggregation). I then reexamine the specific issue of whether and why differences in expected years of lif…
Neuroscience and Moral Reasoning
Should You Save This Child? Gibbard on Intuitions, Contractualism, and Strains of Commitment
This chapter focuses on the nature and significance of intuitions, disagreements about the correct form of contractualist reasoning, and whether each person's acting for a shared goal is at once most rational and yet something that man can reasonably reject. It notes that the intuitive judgment is no less objectively true if awareness of the factors and reasoning that justify it comes after the judgment than if such awareness comes before. It dis…
Responses to Commentators on Intricate Ethics
Some of the commentators on Intricate Ethics (IE) complain of my method. One finds the main ideas ‘Kammouflaged’ because the relevant causal distinctions are so fine-grained and the cases that illustrate them so numerous (Richardson, p. 82). Some say that they do not have the intuitions about many cases that I have, that I concoct dubious and ad hoc distinctions and invest them with moral significance; I am Ptolemaic in that new crystalline spher…
Terrorism and Intending Evil
Owing, Justifying, and Rejecting
This final chapter deals with contractualism and its attempt to generate moral principles by taking seriously the perspectives of individuals rather than by maximizing the goodness of outcomes. It does this by analyzing Thomas Scanlon's contractualist theory of morality. It focuses primarily on Scanlon's views on wrongness, value, and the theory of contractualism and concludes that while Scanlon believes that he is giving an account of wrongness,…
The Doctrines of Double and Triple Effect and Why a Rational Agent Need Not Intend the Means to His End
Nonconsequentialism
Nonconsequentialism is a type of normative ethical theory that denies that the rightness or wrongness of our conduct is determined solely by the goodness or badness of the consequences of our acts or of the rules to which those acts conform. It does not deny that consequences can be a factor in determining the rightness of an act. It does insist that even when the consequences of two acts or act-types are the same, one might be wrong and the othe…
The Ethics of Killing
Book Review| April 01 2007 The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. xiii + 540 pp. Frances Kamm Frances Kamm Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2007) 116 (2): 273–280. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2006-039 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Pe…
Intricate Ethics
The author of this book is an ethical theorist working in philosophy today. She is known for her brand of analysis, largely in defense of a nonconsequentialist perspective-the view that some actions are right or wrong by virtue of something other than their consequences. This book questions the moral importance of some nonconsequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of other distinctions. The first section…
Rights, duties, and status
In Morality, Mortality, Volume II, Kamm continues to explore questions of life and death as illustrations of general issues in moral theory. Resuming her development of non- consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems, she explores the distinction between killing and letting die, between harming and not aiding, and between intending and foreseeing harm. Throughout this examination, she focues on the methodolo…
Intricate Ethics
The author of this book is an ethical theorist working in philosophy today. She is known for her brand of analysis, largely in defense of a nonconsequentialist perspective-the view that some actions are right or wrong by virtue of something other than their consequences. This book questions the moral importance of some nonconsequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of other distinctions. The first section…
Morality, Mortality Volume II
Morality, Mortality as a whole deals with certain aspects of ethical theory and with moral problems that arise primarily in contexts involving life‐and‐death decisions. The importance of the theoretical issues is not limited to their relevance to these decisions; however, they are, rather, issues at the heart of basic moral and political theory. This second volume on rights, duties, and status explores life and death as general issues in non‐cons…
Kamm on Fairness
Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Frances Kamm's Morality, Mortality, Volume ]1 deal with a classic problem. Suppose you are faced with the choice between saving the lives of five people on the one hand, and on the other hand the life of just one person who is not among the five. How should you choose? An obvious answer is that you should save the five, on the grounds that saving five lives does more good than saving one. But in his 'Should the numbers coun…
Precis of Morality, Mortality, Vol. 1
This precis will emphasize those parts of my book that my commentators have chosen to address, so I describe the first part most briefly. Its general topic is why death is bad and worse than pre-natal nonexistence. My basic aim is to consider supplements to the deprivation account according to which death is bad because it deprives us of additional goods of life. In order to heighten the contrast between death and pre-natal nonexistence, which al…
Neuroscience and Moral Reasoning
Aggregation and Two Moral Methods
I begin by reconsidering the arguments of John Taurek and Elizabeth Anscombe on whether the number of people we can help counts morally. I then consider arguments that numbers should count given by F. M. Kamm and Thomas Scanlon, and criticism of them by Michael Otsuka. I examine how different conceptions of the moral method known as pairwise comparison are at work in these different arguments and what the ideas of balancing and tie-breaking signi…
Terrorism and Intending Evil
Responsibility and Collaboration
Replies
Almost Over
This book is a discussion of philosophical, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. It considers different views about whether and why death is bad for the person who dies, and whether these views bear on why it would be bad if there were no more persons at all. The book looks at how the general public is being asked to think about end-of-life issues by examining some questionnaires and conversation guides that have been dev…
Responses to Commentators on Intricate Ethics
Some of the commentators on Intricate Ethics (IE) complain of my method. One finds the main ideas ‘Kammouflaged’ because the relevant causal distinctions are so fine-grained and the cases that illustrate them so numerous (Richardson, p. 82). Some say that they do not have the intuitions about many cases that I have, that I concoct dubious and ad hoc distinctions and invest them with moral significance; I am Ptolemaic in that new crystalline spher…
The Philosopher as Insider and Outsider
Philosophers may play the role of insider, e.g., serving as advisor to government commissions, or of outsider, commenting on the work of such commissions. Each role may raise dilemmas. It is argued that as insider the philosopher's primary duties should be to clarify and inform, as well as philosophize with the commissioners, and help them stay on a course in which moral considerations are given their proper weight. Fulfilling these duties means …
Creation and Abortion
This book presents a new argument attacking the view that if the foetus has the moral standing of a person it has a right to life and abortion is impermissible. Most discussion of abortion has assumed that this premise is correct, and so has focused on the question of the personhood of the foetus. Frances Kamm, however, argues that abortion can be moral even if the foetus is indeed a person
When Killing Is Justified
Grouping and the Imposition of Loss
In this article, I critically examine Peter Unger's arguments for the claim that there is a duty to cause physical harm to oneself and others in order to save lives. This includes discussion of his view that when the method of cases involves several rather than merely two options our intuitive judgements support his radical thesis. In conclusion, I consider his attempt to reconcile his claims with common sense moral judgements
Morality, Mortality, Vol. 2
Replies
Kamm's Moral Methods
Kamm on Fairness
Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Frances Kamm's Morality, Mortality, Volume ]1 deal with a classic problem. Suppose you are faced with the choice between saving the lives of five people on the one hand, and on the other hand the life of just one person who is not among the five. How should you choose? An obvious answer is that you should save the five, on the grounds that saving five lives does more good than saving one. But in his 'Should the numbers coun…
Precis of Morality, Mortality, Vol. 1
This precis will emphasize those parts of my book that my commentators have chosen to address, so I describe the first part most briefly. Its general topic is why death is bad and worse than pre-natal nonexistence. My basic aim is to consider supplements to the deprivation account according to which death is bad because it deprives us of additional goods of life. In order to heighten the contrast between death and pre-natal nonexistence, which al…
Aggregating Costs and Benefits
Living High and Letting Die
By contributing a few hundred dollars to a charity like UNICEF, a prosperous person can ensure that fewer poor children die, and that more will live reasonably long, worthwhile lives. Even when knowing this, however, most people send nothing, and almost all of the rest send little. What is the moral status of this behavior? To such common cases of letting die, our untutored response is that, while it is not very good, neither is the conduct wrong…
Responsibility and Collaboration
Prerogatives and Restrictions
The first three chapters of Part III of the book (Chs 8–10) examine the question of whether it is morally permissible to treat people in ways ruled out by the Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH; this was introduced in Ch. 7 and provides an account of certain restrictions/constraints on killing) only for the sake of minimizing violations of the PPH itself, or whether there is a constraint on doing this. Ch. 8 first examines the arguments Samuel Sc…
Harming Some to Save Others
Continues the consideration of when it is and is not permissible to kill some to save others, by presenting a new proposal (related to an earlier one made by the author) for a Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH) for dealing with the Trolley Case and related cases. One upshot of this proposal is to show that many redirection‐of‐threat cases are not sui generis but one of a class of cases in which greater good (or its structurally equivalent compon…
Agreements
If it is in one way in people's interest that there be constraints on killing (because it gives them a more sublime and elevated status), is it still possible for them to agree ex ante to alienate those rights for the sake of other interests they have? Can we do away with constraints protecting an individual not because it is for the greater good of others, but because ex ante it is in his own interest for there to be no constraints? This is the …
Constraining Rights and the Value of Status
Examine the question of whether it is morally permissible to treat people in ways ruled out by the Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH; this was introduced in Ch. 7 and provides an account of certain restrictions/constraints on killing) only for the sake of minimizing violations of the PPH itself, or whether there is a constraint on doing this. Having considered alternative grounds for a constraint in Ch. 9, Ch. 10 fleshes out a victim‐focussed, a…
Supererogation, Obligation, and Intransitivity
Returns to a problem first raised in Ch. 8, namely, reconciling the existence of prerogatives not to maximize overall good (allowing for some such acts to be supererogatory) with restrictions on the pursuit of one's personal good. This problem becomes especially pressing since, despite the earlier emphasis on the existence of restrictions to pursuing the greater good, it is sometimes the case that greater good may permissibly take precedence over…
Harming, not Aiding, and Positive Rights
Considers what would follow if the General Equivalence Thesis (GE) of the moral equivalence of harming and not aiding (in cases in which less than life is at stake) were true. The possible existence of positive rights (or duties minus correlative rights) is considered, and an argument against positive rights by Judith Thomson is examined. Arguments are considered that attempt to derive positive rights or duties from the existence of negative righ…
Killing and Letting Die
Considers a new use for non‐standardly equalized cases of killing and letting die, comparing cross‐definitionally equalized killing and non‐cross‐definitionally equalized killing cases to collect evidence for the truth or falsity of Thesis E (Thesis of the Moral Equivalence of Killing and Letting Die). In addition, a comparison is made of cross‐definitionally equalized killing and letting‐die cases to test for the moral significance of what is ca…
Killing and Letting Die
Begins by considering the methodology of comparable cases used to test for the Thesis of the Moral Equivalence of Killing and Letting Die (Thesis E). Consideration is given to how to create cases that are properly equalized for all factors besides killing and letting die, analysing how this is done standardly, and also how it might be suggested that it should be done non‐standardly by equalizing cases cross‐definitionally as well as contextually.…
Objections and Conceptions of Moral Equivalence
The first section of Ch. 3 is concerned with objections and alternatives to the arguments and analyses presented in the first two chapters on the moral equivalence of killing and letting die. Two issues are dealt with first: the issue of self‐ownership and the negative/positive rights distinction, and the issue of per se moral differences only sometimes making a difference in kill and let‐die cases depending on contexts. The relation that there m…
Killing and Letting Die in Standardly Equalized Cases
Presents four different tests to use on standardly equalized kill and let‐die cases to determine the truth of Thesis E (Thesis of the Moral Equivalence of Killing and Letting Die). The first is the Post‐Efforts Test, (which is contrasted with the defeasibility test); results obtained from this test are considered on varied cases, including cases where there are no wrong acts (this is related to issues of strict liability and agent regret); object…
The Trolley Problem
Part I considered how to determine whether there is a moral difference between killing and letting die per se, but in the two chapters of Part II, the consideration is when it is and when it is not permissible to kill some to save others. Ch. 6 first examines in some detail the arguments John Harris has made for a survival lottery (where we may select from among healthy people the one who will die to save another or who will share a fair risk of …
Constraints and You
Examines the question of whether it is morally permissible to treat people in ways ruled out by the Principle of Permissible Harm (PPH; this was introduced in Ch. 7 and provides an account of certain restrictions/constraints on killing) only for the sake of minimizing violations of the PPH itself, or whether there is a constraint on doing this. Ch. 9 examines further one approach to the Selection Problem introduced in Ch. 8 that arises in justify…
Morality, Mortality Volume II
Morality, Mortality as a whole deals with certain aspects of ethical theory and with moral problems that arise primarily in contexts involving life‐and‐death decisions. The importance of the theoretical issues is not limited to their relevance to these decisions; however, they are, rather, issues at the heart of basic moral and political theory. This second volume on rights, duties, and status explores life and death as general issues in non‐cons…
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