This chapter discusses the relationship of moral theory to moral practice. It requires an investigation of the idea of a moral theory as well as an investigation of what might be meant by moral practice. Understood broadly, moral practice includes any attempt to determine what is morally permissible, forbidden, or obligatory in particular circumstances. The chapter investigates several models of what the relationship is or ought to be between theory and practice, so understood.

Edited by Christine A. James** Gerald Dworkin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of California, Davis. The Editors of the Philosophy of Humor Yearbook asked him to contribute some of his collection of humorous quotes and aphorisms about and by philosophers. For pedagogical value and easy reference when sharing philosophical humor with undergraduate students, here is his collection, arranged by sub-fields of philosophy.

See also the project sponsored by the ULB-UNIL privileged partnership "Les determinants sociologiques de l’offre et de la demande de chirurgie plastique genitale : reparatrice chez les femmes avec une MGF vs. cosmetique sur vulve intacte" (7/2018-6/2020). Online summary: https://www.unil.ch/international/en/home/menuguid/partenariats-privilegies/universite-libre-de-bruxelles/projets-2018/offre-et-demande-de-chirurgie-plastique.html

Entrapment is a defense to a criminal charge. The defendant asserts a claim that he ought not to be held legally liable for some criminal act. It is a defense which originally was a judicial creation although it has since been codified in a number of states including Illinois, New York and Alaska. The majority focuses on entrapment as a defense in the standard sense of the term, that is, as a factor affecting the culpability or innocence of the offender. If somebody is found innocent by virtue of entrapment then, on this view, it is similar to being found innocent by virtue of mistake of fact. The offender is not, or not as, culpable. As an excuse, entrapment is focused on the conduct of the defendant and his relative blameworthiness. Entrapment occurs when the government agents procure the commission of a criminal act by someone who, except for the solicitation, persuasion, or enticement, would not have committed the crime.

Any definition of a concept is subject to various criteria for a good definition in the context at hand. Unless we are simply stipulating how we shall be using the word – and even then questions will arise about why we picked that word to use for this stipulation – there will be some, usually implicit, ideas of what makes for a good definition. In addition to trivial ones – such as consistency – there will be a set of problems that the definition will be used to clarify or, if possible, resolve. There will be a set of constraints – weak or strong – on how the word is currently being used. There will be a context – perhaps one of personal ethics or perhaps one of current law – in which the concept finds a place. There will be some conceptual or normative issues that will be used to assess the usefulness or correctness of the definition.

In both theoretical and applied contexts, the concept of autonomy has assumed increasing importance in recent normative philosophical discussion. Given various problems to be clarified or resolved, the author characterises the concept by first setting out conditions of adequacy. The author then links the notion of autonomy to the identification and critical reflection of an agent upon his or her first-order motivations. It is only when a person identifies with the influences that motivate him or her, assimilates them to himself or herself, that he or she is autonomous. In addition, this process of identification must itself meet certain procedural constraints.

This is a review of Conly's book Against Autonomy. The topic of state paternalism has gained increasing attention with the increased efforts by states and municipalities to regulate the consumption of unhealthy foods. The philosophical community owes Mayor Bloomberg a debt for his one-man efforts to regulate the addition of trans-fats in New York City restaurants, to post calorie information and his latest -- recently overturned -- ban on the sale of soda in larger than 16 oz servings. I haven't done the search but my guess is that John Stuart Mill has not been quoted so often since the Wolfenden report recommended homosexuality be legalised. The subject of paternalism is not only of interest to applied philosophers for it deals with theoretical subjects such as the nature of autonomy and liberty, the good of persons, prudence, self-knowledge, the principles governing the use of coercion, the justification of state punishment, and the limits of what we may consent to.

Salvaging the Concept of Nudge 1 makes a number of good points about how the concept of a nudge should be understood, and a number of important distinctions in specifying more precisely the important idea of freedom of choice. As Saghai suggests, this is a first cut, and more work needs to be done in clarifying the issues so as to make the idea of a nudge a useful tool for policy purposes. In this Commentary, I want to explore some of the difficulties that remain in getting a clear understanding of the ideas used to clarify the idea of freedom of choice, in particular, the idea that some influences are easily resistible and some are not. In particular, I am interested in the use of various deceptive modes such as lying, failure to disclose and misleading utterances. I believe that there is an important ambiguity in thinking about these deceptive modes which throws some doubt on the adequacy of the idea of resistibility. The key definitions are the following: Substantial Non-control : A's influence to get B to α is substantially non-controlling when B could easily not α if she did not want to α. Easy resistibility : A's influence is easily resistible if B is able to effortlessly oppose the …

Simon Rippon believes that a certain argument is not sound.1 I agree. I do not agree with the role he assigns the argument in the debate about organ sales. Nor do I agree with the much stronger argument he puts forward that organ sales should be forbidden. The argument he believes unsound, which I shall use his terminology to refer to as the Laissez-Choisir or LC argument, has three premises. The one be believes false says, “If we take away what some regard as their best option, we thereby make them worse off, at least from their own perspective”. Applied to the case of a market for organs, this says that if we take away what the potential organ seller regards as his best option, that is, there being a market for his organs, we make him worse off as judged by him. The reason Rippon thinks this argument is false is that, as I have argued and have been cited by Rippon, adding an option can, in addition to merely adding a choice, have adverse effects on the agents, can harm the agent by his own lights. Thus, says Rippon, if the argument is unsound, then it does not follow that if we deny the agent the option to sell his organs, we must be acting paternalistically. The option we are taking away is one that the agent himself regards as harmful. This is correct as far as it goes, but it might leave the reader thinking that the premise is never true. This would be to overlook the fact that even if the additional option …

AbstractThis is an essay on the limits of the Criminal Law. In particular, it is about what principles, if any, determine whether it is legitimate for the state to criminalize certain conduct. Joel Feinberg in his great work on the moral limits of the criminal law argues that we need only two principles. One is a principle regulating harm to other people and the other is an offense principle regulating certain kinds of offensive conduct. I explore various aspects of his argument. In particular I concentrate on his use of the Volenti Principle: He who consents cannot be wrongfully harmed by conduct to which he has fully consented. Feinberg uses the principle to argue that certain kinds of consensual conduct cannot be forbidden unless we adopt some kind of legal moralism, i.e., conduct can be forbidden on the grounds that it is immoral even though the conduct harms no other person. I explore the possibility of avoiding legal moralism by limiting the use of the Volenti Principle.

I present a brief overview of the paternalistic policies that are currently promoted, and then suggest that one broad area has been overlooked: individuals' interest in behaving in a way that reflects their moral values. Paternalists want to promote individual welfare, generally construed subjectively: welfare is a function of that person's own goals. Most paternalists have focused on relatively material goals, including good health and financial success. If we examine the idea of subjective welfare more closely we will see that we have other goals as well: most people have moral values, and moral values that are not purely egoistic. People make mistakes in the pursuit of their moral goals that are in some cases very similar to the mistakes they make in the pursuit of material welfare, and similar interventions are permissible.

Gerald Dworkin has argued that it is inconsistent with the proper ends of medicine for a physician to participate in an execution by lethal injection. He does this by, proposing a principle by which we are to judge whether an action is consistent with the proper ends of medicine. I argue: (a) that this principle, if valid, does not show that it is inconsistent with the proper ends of medicine for a physician to participate in an execution by lethal injection; and (b) that this principle is not valid, and this is because it mistakenly views the promotion of patient autonomy as one of the proper ends of medicine. Rather, I propose, we should view respect for a patient's autonomy as a constraint on the Pursuit of the proper ends of medicine, rather than as one of the proper ends itself. With this revised understanding of the proper ends of medicine, we can conclude that it is inconsistent with the proper ends of medicine for a physician to participate in an execution by lethal injection.

Preface Frontispiece 1. Gaining autonomy and losing trust? 2. Autonomy, individuality and consent 3. 'Reproductive autonomy' and new technologies 4. Principled autonomy 5. Principled autonomy and genetic technologies 6. The quest for trustworthiness 7. Trust and the limits of consent 8. Trust and communication: the media and bioethics Bibliography Institutional bibliography Index.