The Northern Illinois Ethics Consortium
presents
Ethics in Contemporary Life

An Interdisciplinary Ethics Conference

(all sessions meet in Barsema Hall)

Thursday, September 26, 2002
6:00–7:00 p.m.
Conference Registration

7:00–9:00 p.m.

Dennis Barsema Auditorium

Chair: Gregory Carnes

Panelists:

B. Douglas Clinton
William Cummings
David Sinason
Pamela Smith
James Young

Friday Morning, September 27, 2002
8:00–9:00 a.m.

Barsema Hall Atrium

9:00–11:50 a.m.

Room 233

Chair: Brian Thornton, Communication

9:00–11:50 a.m.

Room 301

Chair: David Wade, Management

12:00–1:30 p.m.
Lunch

Friday Afternoon, September 27, 2002
2:00–4:00 p.m.

Room 301

Chair: William Tolhurst, Philosophy

4:00–4:30 p.m.
Coffee Break

4:30–6:30 p.m.

Dennis Barsema Auditorium

Chair: Mylan Engel, Jr., Philosophy

6:30–7:30 p.m.

Barsema Hall Atrium

Reception

7:30–9:00 p.m.

Chandelier Room, Adams Hall

Banquet

Catered by The House

1. Number of people for whom you are reserving banquet meals
2. Visa or MasterCard number & expiration date
3. Your name as it appears on the card
4. The address on the card, to which a receipt will be mailed
5. Your telephone number
6. For catering coordination, your preference for chicken or vegetarian entrée.
Seating is limited; prompt registration is advised.

Saturday Morning, September 28, 2002
9:00–11:50 a.m.

Room 301

Chair: James Hudson, Philosophy

12:00–1:30 p.m.
Lunch

Saturday Afternoon, September 28, 2002
2:00–4:50 p.m.

Room 301

Chair: Kathleen Valde, Communication

5:00–5:30 p.m.
Coffee Break

5:30–7:00 p.m.

Dennis Barsema Auditorium

Chair: Brian Thornton, Communication

Paper Abstracts

Kant’s retributivism is one of the dominant theoretical frameworks used to justify capital punishment. However, if we explore the implications of Kant’s position, we recognize his failure to make a fundamental distinction: granting the moral claim that a murderer deserves to die does not by itself imply that we ought to kill someone who has been convicted of murder. In this essay, I argue that the maxim by which I consent to the killing of those who have been convicted of murder violates the categorical imperative: if I were to will this maxim as a universal law, I could just as easily be put to death despite my acting perfectly in accordance with the law. The necessary fallibility of our criminal justice system as well as the precautions we are obligated to take against such mistakes in moral judgment jointly undermine the retributivist argument in favor of institutionalized capital punishment.

Keith Bauer, “E-Health and Distributive Justice”

The shortage of healthcare professionals in rural areas is a long-standing problem. This uneven distribution is ethically significant because rural areas have higher percentages of poverty, elderly people, people lacking health insurance coverage, and people with chronic diseases. From a distributive justice perspective, this means that one of the least fortunate populations faces the greatest burdens in gaining access to healthcare services. As a way of ameliorating these disparities, e-health initiatives are being devised to meet the healthcare needs of underserved populations. The internet has the potential to increase healthcare access to underserved populations, but e-health also raises its own distributive justice concerns.

Catalino V. Echiverri, Jr., “Practicing in a Lawyerly Deadlock: Lawyerly Civility Versus the Quest to Win”

In 1996, the Conference of Chief Justices responded to a decline in respect of those in the legal profession by commissioning a report to study the erosion of professionalism among American Lawyers and to gauge the effect on the American public. Completed in 1999 and complete with a cornucopia of recommendations, the perceived ethics of those in the legal profession is still low. One reason for the low standing lawyers have in the eyes of the non-lawyer public is because the public misunderstands the role of lawyers in society. Another is that the rise in lawyerly gamesmanship has overwhelmed the pursuit of pragmatic justice. Recommendations to counteract this problem include strict judicial oversight of conduct during the course of lawsuits, strict interpretation and enforcement of disciplinary rules, peer reporting of violations, and the implementation of an Applied Ethics course requirement in Law Schools taught by non-law professors.

Harvey S. James, Jr., “Finding Solutions to Ethical Problems in Agriculture”

This paper distinguishes between two types of ethical problems. A Type I ethical problem is one in which there is no consensus as to what is ethical. A Type II ethical problem is one in which there is a consensus as to what is ethical, but incentives exist for individuals to behave unethically. This paper shows that Type I ethical problems are resolved by making, challenging and reasoning through moral arguments, and Type II ethical problems are resolved by changing the institutional environment so that people do not have incentives to behave unethically. Applications to and examples from agricultural and environmental problems are provided.

Kathie L. Jenni, “The Power of the Visual: The Role of Images in Moral Motivation”

Humans are visual creatures, and this is reflected in our patterns of moral motivation and response. We are troubled by suffering that we learn of through prose and statistics; but our unease remains vague, sporadic, and practically inert. We respond in dramatically different ways to suffering we see. In this essay I examine the moral implications of this truth. I examine the nature of the moral insights(s) provided by the visual, the problematic nature of our disparate responses to facts that are seen and unseen, and moral responsibilities to enliven our imaginations when images are absent. I argue that images convince us of the reality of problems, improve our moral perception, and help us to absorb facts of which we were oblivious or (only) intellectually aware. They do this by enhancing our awareness of conscious and suffering individuals, thus awakening empathy and promoting compassion. With time, though, we forget disturbing images and the sense of moral urgency that they aroused. I dispute the claim that such forgetfulness is necessary for our psychic preservation, and outline an ideal of appropriate awareness that steers a course between callous forgetfulness and debilitating vision.

Tomis Kapitan, “The Terrorism of ‘Terrorism’”

Since the onset of the “war on terrorism,” increased attention has been given to the very concept of terrorism, to what it means to wage war on terrorism, and to whether “war” is the appropriate response to terrorist violence. This paper focuses on the latter, and argues that insofar as the ‘terrorist’ label is used as a political tool that dehumanizes particular groups and erases any incentive for understanding their grievances, then it ought to be dropped from moral discourse about political violence, for not only does is cause further terrorism but it may itself constitute an act of terrorism. I illustrate this thesis by showing how the rhetoric of ‘terrorism’ has not only obscured the underlying moral and political issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but has contributed to the increasing levels of hatred and atrocity in the Middle East.

Hon-Lam Li, “Animals and Utilitarianism”

In this paper, I first argue that consequentialist considerations are important moral considerations not only to utilitarians, but also to Kantians and virtue-ethicists in many types of situation. I then argue that utilitarianism cannot provide a way to make cross-species comparison of utility. Hedonistic utilitarianism is too narrow a theory for providing such comparisons, because many valuable things cannot be reduced into pleasure or happiness. Preference utilitarianism is also unhelpful, because many creatures which clearly have interests do not have the relevant preferences, whereas some of them do not have the capacity for having preferences at all. I then propose an entirely different way to look at the problem of cross-species comparison. I argue that we need to take into consideration two factors, namely, (1) different moral standings or intrinsic values possessed by humans and non-human animals, and (2) competing types of claims held by humans and non-human animals. I then show that in many cases no solution is readily available, because there is simply no available method to combine these two factors so that we can compare (a) the morally less important type of claim of a being of higher moral standing (such as the human need for tasting meat or for more reliable medicine), and (b) the morally weightier type of claim of a being of less moral standing (such as the animals’ need to be free from extreme pain and premature death).

Alfredo J. Mac Laughlin, “Patterns of Medicalization—A Philosophical Perspective on the Expansion of Modern Medicine”

‘Medicalization,’ as a tendency of modern medicine to expand beyond its reasonable limits and turn every aspect of life into a medical matter, has been denounced many times in the medical and ethical literature. While there may be legitimate reasons for this expansion—as well as rightful limits for it -, the debate on the legitimacy of this expansion is obscured by the many, diffused interests at play. In this paper I attempt to clear the area for the discussion, by providing a categorization of general patterns in which medicalization occurs. Following this, I reflect on the philosophical reasons of the difficulty to establish a clear perimeter for what is included and what is not in the legitimate medical consideration. This reflection will yield some basic criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of this expansion in its many different fronts.

Nathan Nobis, “Carl Cohen’s ‘Kind’ Arguments FOR Animal Rights and AGAINST Human Rights”

Carl Cohen’s arguments against animal rights are evaluated and shown to be unsound. His strategy is shown to entail the surprising and inconsistent conclusions that animals have rights, that humans do not, that animals don’t have rights and that humans do. His strategy also seems to imply that one can fail all tests and assignments in a class and yet easily pass (if one’s peers are passing) and that one can become a convicted criminal merely by setting foot in a prison. However, since Cohen’s stated moral principles imply that nearly all exploitive uses of animals are wrong anyway (and so he is, in a sense, an animal rights advocate), foes of animal rights are advised to seek philosophical consolations elsewhere.

Carrie Rohman, “The Animal Ethic Implicit in Poststructuralism: Post-Humanism Reckoning with the Animal Other”

Scholars in the humanities are currently faced with a kind of reckoning, a coming to terms with theories of alterity or difference. Poststructuralism, or anti-representationalist theory, has been invested for some time now in re-theorizing the Cartesian subject of consciousness—the self-present, autonomous Western “human”—in relation to its various “others.” These debates within cultural and literary theory have remained invested in discussions of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality. This paper suggests that the logic underlying such poststructuralist discussions of human difference implies an ethical obligation to the animal other. If we are to take the poststructuralist relation to otherness seriously, we must recognize the ethical relation between humanity and animality.

Postmodern humanism remains embedded within the tradition of Western metaphysics that privileges human consciousness and being through the abjection of the animal. Levinas, e.g., defines ethicality as a relation exclusive to the human. His notion of alterity and the “face to face” ignores the philosophical dynamics of the human relation to animality. This paper explores how recent poststructuralist thought has examined humanism and the ethical relation to animality. My discussion includes analyses of both Derrida’s recent work on the discourse of species and Butler’s work on sexed identity and the realm of the abject. I suggest that both critics redefine the ethical value of the human as animal through their attention to concepts such as vulnerability, passivity, mortality and the outside, but note that work on the species divide still relies heavily upon attention to cross-species sameness rather than difference.

Bruce Russell, “How Much Must We Give Up?”

How much effort and sacrifice are we required to make to help strangers in need? Some libertarians think that we do not even have an obligation to save a child from drowning in a shallow pond when we are the only person around. Others think that, other things being equal, we are required to take an innocent person’s life if that is the only way we can save two or more other innocent people. Peter Unger thinks it would be permissible, maybe even obligatory, to cut off someone’s foot without his consent if that was needed to save sixty, or even six. I argue against both extremes: we have an obligation to save the child in the shallow pond, but it is wrong to kill someone, or even to cut off someone’s foot, against his will to save others.

Ronald Sandler, “A Non-Extensionist Approach to Specifying Environmental Virtue”

Many environmental philosophers have taken an extensionist approach to specifying environmental virtue. They begin with a character disposition considered to be a virtue in interpersonal interactions or relationships and argue that the disposition ought, mutatis mutandis, to be operative in environmental interactions or relationships as well. Implicit in this approach is a conception of environmental virtue as constituted by the conventional interpersonal virtues appropriately situated in ecological context. In this paper I explore an alternative, non-extensionist, methodology for specifying environmental virtue and a correspondingly different conception of environmental virtue. On this conception environmental virtue is a distinct human virtue with the same normative status as the conventional interpersonal virtues. This conception promises to enable a more theoretically powerful version of environmental virtue ethics than does the conception implicit in extensionist accounts. This is significant for the prospect of environmental virtue ethics functioning as an alternative (rather than a supplement) to traditional approaches to environmental ethics.

Jason K. Swedene, “Are You in a Moral Dilemma?: What Disturbing Choices Say about Our Character”

I argue for an agent-based understanding of moral dilemmas. “Moral duress” is an essential component of moral dilemmas. The agent feels compelled to make a choice that is not morally optimal within the constructs of her morality. With my account, which I call the ‘agent-peculiarity of dilemmas,’ I seek to do two things. First, I aim to ground moral dilemmas in agency concepts, and thus take what has traditionally been considered a problem of act-options into the paradigm of agent-commitments. Secondly, I aim to articulate the extent to which we may praise or blame an agent based on one’s being in a moral dilemma.

Sharon Sytsma, “The Moral Authority of Symbolic Appeals in Biomedical Ethics”

Ethicists and others grappling with biomedical ethical issues often advocate or reject certain practices or actions on the basis of their symbolic significance. My project is to call attention to the ubiquity of symbolic appeals and to initiate an examination of the significance, authority, and limitations of symbolic appeals in biomedical ethics. I will argue that symbolic appeals are not only an essential feature of moral reasoning, but also that those appeals have a prima facie moral authority that ought to be factored into moral judgments. Having established the moral authority of symbolic appeals, it is recognized that their prima facie moral authority must be balanced by other moral concerns. Several suggestions are made for evaluating arguments depending on symbolic appeals.

Directions

Exit Interstate 88 at the Annie Glidden Road exit and proceed north. Lincoln Highway is the first intersection after the railroad underpass. The Best Western is a short distance to the west (left) on Lincoln Highway. To go to Barsema Hall continue north on Annie Glidden to Lucinda Avenue (traffic light); turn east (right). Turn left at Garden Road. Barsema Hall is the yellow brick building around .4 of a mile north on Garden.

On-street parking on Garden Road is practically impossible before 7:00 p.m. on weekdays, but is generally available on Saturday. Except for a relatively small faculty parking lot at Barsema Hall, the nearest parking lot is Lot 40 at the end of Kishwaukee Drive, the next street to the east of Garden Road. Parking in university lots requires a permit on weekdays before 7:00 p.m. but is unrestricted after 7:00 p.m. and on Saturday.