An Anglican theologian contends that the claim to absolute protection for the human embryo from the moment of conception is a recent one in the Roman Catholic moral tradition. Citing pre-classical, classical, biblical, and post-biblical Roman Catholic sources, Dunstan argues that these traditions attempted to grade the protection provided to the nascent human being according to the stages of i...

IN THIS PAPER we wish to review contemporary biological data about the early human embryo in relation to philosophical and theological claims made of it. We are seeking to discover more precisely what degree of moral weight it can reasonably bear. While other ethical conclusions might well be drawn from the results of such a reflective investigation, we limit ourselves to a few moral considerat...

The possibility of human reproductive cloning has led some bioethicists to suggest that potentiality-based arguments for fetal moral status become untenable, as such arguments would be committed to making the implausible claim that any adult somatic cell is itself a potential person. In this article I defend potentiality-based arguments for fetal moral status against such a reductio. Starting f...

Ethicists have commonly appealed to science to bolster their arguments for elevating the moral status of nonhuman animals. I describe a framework within which I take many ethicists to be making such appeals. I focus on an apparent gap in this framework between those properties of animals that are part of the scientific consensus, and those to which ethicists typically appeal in their arguments....

We use a large and unique administrative dataset from Italy, covering the period 2009-2014, to investigate opportunistic behavior (moral hazard) and the effectiveness of monitoring policies related to insurance against illness-related income losses. The analysis is based on the outcome of mandatory medical visits aimed at verifying the health status of employees during sickness spells. We find ...

In this paper, I argue that it is quite useful, both theoretically and empirically, to adopt a sociocultural approach to the study of moral development. This entails viewing ‘moral functioning’ as a form of mediated action, and moral development as the process by which persons gradually appropriate a variety of ‘moral mediational means’. Mediated action entails two central elements: an ‘agent’,...

Hugh Lafollette’s theoretical justification of parental licensing hinges upon consideration of the harms associated with raising children. If we understand Lafollette’s stance as one in which the moral status of children is equal to that of other human beings, we must consider what such a commitment might require of social institutions such as the family. Unlike other licensing programs, I argu...

The moral status of the human embryo has gained much attention in debates over the acceptability, or otherwise, of human embryonic stem cell research. Far less attention has been paid to the suppliers of those embryos: people who have undergone IVF treatment to produce embryos to assist them to have a baby. It is sociologically and ethically important to understand their views and experiences o...

There is now considerable evidence that emotion plays an important role in negotiation. Emotions, such as anger and happiness, affect concession-making, not only in human vs. human negotiations but also in human vs. agent negotiations. Recent research has demonstrated the impact of emotional expressions in morally-charged negotiations. Thus, taking people’s moral concerns into account is crucia...

Ethicists have commonly appealed to science to bolster their arguments for elevating the moral status of nonhuman animals. I describe a framework within which I take many ethicists to be making such appeals. I focus on an apparent gap in this framework between those properties of animals that are part of the scientific consensus, and those to which ethicists typically appeal in their arguments....