Samantha Brennan is a professor of philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. For an example of her work on women and inequality, see her “Feminist Ethics and Everyday Inequalities,” Hypatia 24, no. 1 (2009).

Click here to download the episode (30:45, 22.2 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

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Brennan mentions the work of Mary Rowe of MIT, where she is a professor and ombudsperson.

The story of Claudia Card’s experience at the Harvard library is discussed in Brennan’s Hypatia paper linked above, and was discussed by Card herself in her book The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Iris Young talks about oppression versus inequality in her essay “Five Faces of Oppression” in the book Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

For an example of the problems facing women in academic philosophy, see Sally Haslinger’s “Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy.” Louise Antony‘s paper on the same subject does not appear to be online, but she gave a presentation titled “Different Voices or Perfect Storm? Explaining the Dearth of Women in Philosophy” at a 2010 conference.

The Walzer Christian refers to is, of course, Michael Walzer, and his concept of spheres of justice are described at length in his eponymous book: Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

Finally, the author of the book advising women to educate up and marry down is Rhona Mahoney, and her book is Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

Episodes in Part II center on questions of the latter two phases of just war theory:  jus in bello and  jus post bellum. This episode features contributions by the following students.

1. Adam Kisting and Matheus Oliveira, on proportionality.

2. Diego Velasco, on the doctrine of double effect.

3. Joseph Kurts, on the use of drones.

4. Phil Shapiro and Eliot Lilien, on the permissibility of torture.

5. Krystal Gopaul, on the case of Pat Tillman.

6. Francesca Ficalora, on post-traumatic stress disorder.

7. Carlos Sosa, on jus post bellum.

Click here to download the episode (32:32, 23.5 MB, MP3), or click on the online media player below.

The students were asked to answer the question: what do today’s new wars—especially Iraq and Afghanistan—tell us about our traditions of just war theory? Episodes in Part I center on questions of the first phase of just war theory, jus ad bellum. Listen to the episode to hear their answers.

Part I features the following students.

1. Sam Colonna, on humanitarian intervention.

2. Adam Yefet, on jus ad bellum.

3. Raymond Holgado, on terrorism.

4. Jonathan Vazcones, on economic sanctions.

Click here to download the episode (32:32, 23.5 MB, MP3), or click on the online media player below.

Joy Gordon is Professor of Political Philosophy at Fairfield University and a Senior Fellow at Yale University’s Global Justice Program. Her book about the Iraq sanctions regime is Invisible War. Her work on sanctions has also appeared in Harper’s and Ethics & International Affairs.

Click here to download the episode (39:23, 19 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

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The UN Security Council resolutions establishing the sanctions regime are 661 (establishing the initial regime in August 1990) and 687 (extending it after the Gulf War ended). The full quote from 661 is as follows:

All States shall prevent: … The sale or supply by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels of any commodities or products, including weapons or any other military equipment, whether or not originating in their territories but not including supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs, to any person or body in Iraq or Kuwait or to any person or body for the purposes of any business carried on in or operated from Iraq or Kuwait, and any activities by their nationals or in their territories which promote or are calculated to promote such sale or supply of such commodities or products.

The figure of 500,000 Iraqi children dead due to sanctions is widely cited, but not without controversy. Gordon documents the debate in an extensive endnote in Invisible War (p. 255, n. 82).

Electricity is a major point of contention in present-day Iraq. A recent New York Times article describes the power shortages in Baghdad and elsewhere. Protests over electricity in Basra turned deadly in June, forcing the resignation of the electricity minister.

Gordon mentions “deontological” theories. For nonphilosophers, these are rule-based theories; Kant is their most famous proponent.

The website of the 661 Committee is, surprisingly, still online.

The term “P5″ refers to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States).

The postive study of sanctions Gordon refers to is Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, Barbara Oegg, eds., Economic Sanctions Reconsidered (Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute, 2007), currently in its third edition.

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, wrote about sanctions in “Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work,” International Security 22, no. 2 (1997).

Gordon refers to the potential deal between Iran, Brazil and Turkey. The deal would have “Iran send 1,200 kilogrammes … of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for 20 percent high-enriched uranium to be supplied by Russia and France at a later date.”

Today on Public Ethics Radio, we examine questions of knowledge management, intellectual property rights, and research ethics through the lens of Australia’s Aboriginal groups. Our guest is the social anthropologist Sarah Holcombe. Dr. Holcombe is a research fellow at the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University. Many of Dr. Holcombe’s writings are available on her website.

Click here to download the episode (31:38, 15.2 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

Resources

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. You can read the text and get background here. Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand were the only no votes. Australia’s opposition under the John Howard government is described in this article in the Australian.

Sarah refers to a number of Aboriginal terms that will be unfamiliar to many listeners. I’ll attempt to document those here.

Tjukurpa: often rendered in English as “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming,” this complex term covers law, morality, religion, and specific knowledge (and oral enactments of knowledge) of those concepts among indigenous groups in Australia. Sarah uses it in the latter sense. The Australian government gives a brief introduction; or you can check out the Wikipedia article on Dreaming as a starting place.

Sarah mentions the famous neem tree. This tree is native to India, and has been in use locally for centuries. In the 1990s, the American company W.R. Grace patented the tree’s use as a pesticide. The patent was fiercely contested, and eventually revoked, on the grounds that the patent was inappropriately privatizing the prior knowledge extant in oral and folk traditions. Read up on it here and here.

A similar struggle is ongoing over hoodia, a cactus-like plant native to the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. Well known to the indigenous San Bushmen, the plant is now patented for use as a weight-loss product. 60 Minutes relates the tale.

Bush potato.

Akudjura, or bush tomato.

Christian and Sarah both mention the notion of “benefit sharing.” This is a technical term within intellectual property law, referring to the (moral and legal) obligation to equitably share the benefits of biodiversity. Although the precise positive meaning is fiercely contested, the broad concept can be illustrated negatively. If a researcher patents a new medicine based on plants traditionally used an indigenous group, benefits would not be adequately shared if that group had neither access to that new medicine nor shared in the profits in any way. The governing law here is the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, though its provisions on benefit sharing are vague.

Sarah mentions the Northern Territory NRM Boards: NRM stands for Natural Resource Management. The project for them that Sarah mentions resulted in a report, “Guidelines for Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Management (including Archiving and Repatriation).”

Christian asks about the development of ethics protocols for researchers. These protocols are not publicly available, but listeners might be interested in the related community guide to ethics protocols for researchers, which are intended for the consumption of Aboriginal communities that may participate in researcher.

Acephalous societies are those that lack political hierarchies.

The Desert Knowledge CRC, or Cooperative Research Centre, is an Australian research center, which funds some of the research under discussion in this episode. Sarah was previously their Social Science Coordinator.

The International Society of Ethnobiology Code of Ethics is available here.

The “sophisicated land management organization” is Dhimurru. It is located in Australia’s Northern Territory, here.

The Land Rights Act is land reform legislation passed in the 1970s.

Walpiri Media is based in Yuendumu, Northern Territory, here.

John Bulun Bulun is the artist whose work was appropriated without his consent. Terri Jancke, an Australian indigenous intellectual property lawyer, has written extensively about the case.

The Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs.

The Aranda people.

Details on the Australian Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, and its review (the “Hawke Review”), here.

Mutitjulu is an Aboriginal community located near Uluru in the Northern Territory. As recounted in the episode, the town is at the center of the issues that sparked the Northern Territory Intervention. The intervention is an ongoing federal program officially aimed at stopping child abuse. Started by the Howard government in 2007, it was continued in modified form under Kevin Rudd. Much has been written about Mutitjulu, but the initial controversial report was from the Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s Lateline program.

In this episode of Public Ethics Radio, we explore issues of ownership and the body. These questions do not end with organ sales. What limits, for instance, should we put on the sale of bodily services like surrogacy? Should trade in these services be limited, in order to prevent the poor from being exploited by the rich? Should organ markets be legalized and regulated? We discuss these questions with Anne Phillips, Professor of Political Gender and Gender Theory at the London School of Economics.

Click here to download the episode (37:58, 18.2 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript. Music in this episode was provided by Liberty.

Resources

Details on surrogacy, mentioned in the introduction, are from Amelia Gettleman “India Nurses Business of Surrogate Motherhood,” New York Times, March 10, 2010; Abigail Howorth, “Surrogate Mothers: Wombs for Rent,” Marie Claire, August 2007; and Helmata Aithani, “Indian Surrogate Mothers in Demand for Pregnancy Outsourcing,” Xinhua, April 8, 2010.

Phillips mentions Stanford law professor Margaret Radin, who is well known for her work on property theory and commodification. Details on her research are available on her website.

John Harris and Charles Erin, both of the University of Manchester, described their propose to regulate organ sales within the European Union in “An Ethical Market in Human Organs,” British Medical Journal 29, no. 3 (2003), pp. 137–8.

Phillips refers to an argument about self-ownership and pregnancy. The argument is laid out by Margaret Davies, of Flinders University, and Ngaire Naffine, of the University of Adelaide, in their book, Are Persons Property? Legal Debates about Property and Personality (Ashgate, 2001).

To get a grip on these questions, Public Ethics Radio discussed immigration and citizenship policies with Christopher Heath Wellman. Wellman is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, and a Professorial Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, an Australian Research Council Special Research Centre. His views on immigration are also set out in his recent, “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” Ethics 119, no. 1 (2008): 109–141.

Click here to download the episode (34:45, 8.0 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript. Music in this episode was provided by Liberty.

Resources

The introductory data on life expectancy in Haiti and the Dominican Republic came from the 2007/2008 Human Development Report. For more on the problem of illegal migration in those countries, see the excellent report by James Ferguson of Minority Rights International, “Migration in the Caribbean: Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Beyond.”

The introduction also quotes the Canadian philosopher Joseph Carens on immigration policy as “feudal privilege.” The line is from his “Aliens and Citizens: The Case from Open Borders,” Review of Politics 42, no. 2 (1987): 251-273. For more on his work, see Carens’s “The Case for Amnesty: A Forum on Immigration,” Boston Review 34, no. 3 (2009), along with several responses.

Wellman notes that Elizabeth Anderson, among others, don’t believe that caring about equality entails negating the effects of luck. For more on Anderson’s views on equality and luck, see her “What is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics 109 (1999): 287-337.

Warren Buffett is a renowned investor—this year the second richest person in the world. In fairness to Buffett, in 2006 he announced that he would give the vast majority of his wealth to charity.

There is a fierce debate over the effectiveness of aid; that is, whether development and humanitarian assistance improves the lives of those to whom it is targeted. Dambisa Moyo and William Easterly have recently made prominent contributions to the argument that, roughly, aid does not help. Prominent proponents of the opposing view (that aid does help) include Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Collier. Sachs and Moyo recently got into a typically heated debate on the issue on the Huffington Post: Sachs’s post; Moyo’s reply; Sachs’s reply.

Wellman refers to an argument by David Miller about who benefits from open borders, the poorest of the poor or the relatively well-off. See David Miller “Immigration: the Case for Limits” in Andrew I Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman, eds., Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.)

Remittances, money sent from emigrants back to their home countries, do indeed represent a substantial transfer of wealth from affluent to developing countries. The World Bank provides some estimates: in 2008, roughly $300 billion was sent to developing countries.

Wellman refers to Gillian Brock‘s recent book. The full reference is: Gillian Brock, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Michael Walzer‘s classic treatment of immigration can be found in his Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983). The book was reviewed in the New York Review of Books by Ronald Dworkin; see that review and Walzer’s reply.

Michael Blake has written extensively on immigration. For one major example, available for free online, see Michael Blake, “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 30, no 3 (2001): 257-296.

In this episode of Public Ethics Radio, human-rights lawyer Hilary Charlesworth leads us through the challenging questions posed by the institutionalization of human rights.

Hilary Charlesworth is Professor of International Law and Human Rights in the Australian National University College of Law and Director of the Centre for International Governance and Justice at the ANU.

Click here to download the episode (41:10, 9.4 mb, MP3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

Resources

The Hamilton quote from the introduction is from Federalist no. 84.

Charlesworth mentions Australia’s National Human Rights Consultation. More details here.

If you’re interested, you can read the Australian constitution here. Wikipedia also has a nice, detailed article on it. The U.S. Bill of Rights consists of the first ten amendements to the U.S. constitution (Wikipedia). And the Canadian Charter is online here (Wikipedia).

Charlesworth mentions John Stanhope, the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory or ACT (where Canberra and the Australian National University are located) who introduced the ACT Human Rigths Act; he is still in office.

You can read the text of the British Human Rights Act here.

Charlesworth’s ANU research project on the Human Rights Act is ACTHRA, the ACT Human Rights Act Research Project.

Christian asked a question about “post-Trudeau Canada.” By this he refers to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was responsible for Canada’s adoption of the Canadian Charter in 1982.

The article describing a dialogue between the various branches of government due to the Canadian charter is available for free online. It is: Peter W. Hogg and Allison A. Bushell, “The Charter Dialogue between Courts and Legislatures (Or Perhaps the Charter of Rights Isn’t Such a Bad Thing After All),” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 35, no. 1 (1997): 75–124.

For the record, Charlesworth is correct that only eight amendments to the Australian constitution have been enacted. Details on the failed 1988 attempt to extend rights protection here.

See the New Zealand Human Rights Act here (Wikipedia), the International Convenant on Civil and Political Rights here (Wikipedia), and the European Convention on Human Rights here (Wikipedia).

Listeners unfamiliar with the notion of “wrongful life” might want to check out this helpful post over on the Genomics Law Report. Adam Doerr explains:

In a typical wrongful life case, a physician or geneticist fails to diagnose a severe genetic problem in a fetus. The problem is typically so severe that the parents allege that they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known of the problem. When the child—or a parent acting on the child’s behalf—brings a claim in court alleging that the physician or geneticist was negligent in failing to diagnose the problem, it is referred to as a “wrongful life” claim.

Charlesworth mentions a recent case where Australian legislators didn’t vote along party lines. You can read one Liberal legislator’s thoughts on the issue in a speech a gave to Parliament.

Here is the backstory on Al-Kateb v. Godwin. Read the justices’ reasoning here.

And finally, you can find out more about the European Court of Human Rights on its website.

Today on Public Ethics Radio, we discuss the role that civilian casualties play in assessing the justice of war.

For a war to be just, it must satisfy what is known as the proportionality principle. In a disproportionate war, the harms caused by going to war are so evil that they outweigh the benefits of an otherwise worthy goal. Considerations of proportionality are also relevant to the assessment of particular tactics undertaken in an ongoing war.

To help us understand how this weighing of harms and benefits works, we spoke to the distinguished just war scholar Jeff McMahan. McMahan is a Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has published widely on just war theory and defensive violence, and many of his articles are available through his website. His recent views on proportionality are discussed in, among others, his essay, “Just Cause for War.”

Click here to download the episode (28:17, 12.9 mb, mp3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

Resources

The ad I mentioned at the top of the show, showing missiles attacking New York, was taken out by the Anti-Defamation League. Their campaign is online, here.

Casualty figures

• 4 Israelis killed by rocket and mortar attacks prior to 12/27/2008: The Israel Project, List of Deaths Caused by Qassam Rockets and Mortar Fire.
• ~1300 Palestinians killed since 12/27/2008: AP, First War Tally (scroll down for a second, higher, estimate from the Health Ministry).

As Christian noted, Alan Dershowitz called the Israeli assault “perfectly proportionate” in the Wall Street Journal.

Christian also mentions that proportionality has a long philosophical history. It’s much too long to even attempt a summary here, but interested readers might find Brian Orend’s entry on war in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy a useful starting point.

Many have made the claim that casualties caused by Israel shouldn’t be equated those caused by Hamas because the latter is intentionally targeting civilians and the former is not. For a good example from the present comment, see an interview with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni wherein she claims:

We are trying to avoid civil casualties, even though it’s not easy, while Hamas is targeting our civilians as a target. … I have to say that I can’t understand what is the nature of proportionality which is needed. I mean, they targeted last week a school in Beersheba, in Israel. Do you think that the proportionate action is to target a school? We are not going to do this. They are targeting civilians. We are not going to do this.

Christian noted Jeff’s belief that proportionality is related to (more accurately, premised on) just cause. This view is explored in Jeff’s excellent “Just Cause for War,” Ethics & International Affairs 19, no. 3 (2005). Jeff claims that “not very many” Israelis have been killed by rockets (and presumably mortars) fired by Hamas and Hezbollah. The precise numbers are almost certainly up for debate, but the following should give you a rough idea. The Israel Project puts the number of deaths from rockets and mortars at 23 since 2001. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs also maintains a list of all “victims of Palestinian violence and terrorism since September 2000.” And for an overview of Hamas rocket activity in general, see this page from GlobalSecurity.org (wherein they claim 3,278 rockets and mortar shells landed in Israeli territory in 2008).

And finally, at the very end, Jeff mentions the precautionary principles. These principles, generally speaking, tell us how to deal with uncertainty. Applied to just war theory, they refer to the principles, proportionality included, that urge restraint in the face of an otherwise just cause.

Certainly these numbers strike us immediately as indicative of low well being. But, as we are informed by Robert Goodin and Lina Eriksson, income figures don’t tell the whole story. Missing from this picture is the degree of control an individual has over how her time is spent.

At the federal minimum wage level of $7.25, the single individual in the first family has to work about 28 hours a week (ignoring taxes) to rise above the poverty threshold. Let’s be kind to the father of two and say he makes enough ($11.42) to work the same number of hours as the first family (of one) and still meet the second family’s higher poverty threshold.

Now the problem with using income as the sole measure of well-being is apparent: despite having equal income, the second parent still has enormous demands on his time in the form of childcare. Knowing that he has escaped monetary poverty isn’t sufficient to inform us of the full extent of his, and his children’s, well-being. For that, we need to know about the role time, and the demands on it, play in his life.

Goodin and Eriksson, along with their coauthors James Rice and Antti Parpo, explore the role of time use in well being in their new book, Discretionary Time.

Bob Goodin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Research School of the Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Lina Eriksson is Research Associate, also at the ANU’s RSSS.

Click here to download the episode (31:38, 21.7 mb, mp3), or click on the online media player below. You can also download the transcript.

Resources

To start, we should again acknowledge the work of James Rice and Antti Parpo, the coauthors of Discretionary Time to whom we did not have the pleasure of speaking. Rice is currently completing a PhD in the Australian Demographic & Social Research Institute at the ANU. Parpo is administrator of Social & Health Services in the district of Somero, Finland.

Bob refers to World Bank poverty measures. There are actually two famous World Bank poverty lines, generally referred to as the $1/day and $2/day standards, though their actual value is pegged to the value of the U.S. dollar in a certain year (2005) and then converted in purchasing power parity terms for a given country. You can find basic details on those on the World Bank’s website (see especially Chen and Ravallion’s paper on that site). But of course these have been sharply criticized, particularly by Thomas Pogge and Sanjay Reddy. For Pogge’s latest on this issue, see his brief essay, “Where the Line Is Drawn.”

Christian and Lina engage in some discussion of corporate lawyer hours and salaries. The problems of becoming a medium-income lawyer, as opposed to a high-income (but presumably long-hour) lawyer, is well illustrated by this graph.

Christian asks Bob for some details on the results of the study conducted in the course of writing the book. In that study, the authors examined time-use surveys. Some of that data is available online. See the Multinational Time Use Study and the Luxembourg Income Study.

Lina brings up the issue of redistribution, which has re-entered mainstream political discourse lately by way of Joe the Plumber. For more on what redistribution means, you can read the entry on redistribution in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Disclaimer: Christian wrote that entry!)

Bob suggests that autonomy is held to be an important value by philosophers. Here’s the SEP’s entry on autonomy. (This one not by either of us.)