Wars and interventions bring to the fore certain ethical issues. For instance, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in  raised questions about the moral import of UN Security Council authorization (given that the Council did not authorize the action), and the means employed by interveners (given NATO’s use of cluster bombs and its targeting of dual-use facilities). In what follows, I consider the ...

Although few would disagree with the latter precept, the ethical and legal permissibility of the former is less obvious [2]. Dispensing with patient confidentiality under the rubric of ‘beneficence’ does not guarantee preferable end-of-life outcomes. Even if the emotional impact of this disclosure has minimal influence on surrogates’ decision making abilities, they are, ceteris paribus, left no...

We present a framework that provides a logic for science by generalizing the notion of logical (Tarskian) consequence. This framework will introduce hierarchies of logical consequences, the first level of each of which is identified with deduction. We argue for identification of the second level of the hierarchies with inductive inference. The notion of induction presented here has some resonan...

One potentially valuable use of cloning is to provide a source of tissues or organs for transplantation. The most important objection to this use of cloning is that a human clone would be the sort of entity that it would be seriously wrong to kill. I argue that entities of the sort that you and I essentially are do not begin to exist until around the seventh month of fetal gestation. Therefore ...

Moral judgments are elicited using dilemmas presenting hypothetical situations in which an agent must choose between letting several people die or sacrificing one person in order to save them. The evaluation of the action or inaction of a human agent is compared to those of two artificial agents – a humanoid robot and an automated system. Ratings of rightness, blamefulness and moral permissibil...

Most people think it is wrong to take organs from the dead if the potential donors had previously expressed a wish not to donate. Yet people respond differently to a thought experiment that seems analogous in terms of moral relevance to taking organs without consent. We argue that our reaction to the thought experiment is most representative of our deepest moral convictions. We realize not ever...