Peter Murphy

The Defect in Effective Skeptical Scenarios

What epistemic defect needs to show up in a skeptical scenario if it is to effectively target some belief? According to the false belief account, the targeted belief must be false in the skeptical scenario. According to the competing ignorance account, the targeted belief must fall short of being knowledge in the skeptical scenario. This paper argues for two claims. The first is that, contrary to what is often assumed, the ignorance account is superior to the false belief account. The second is that the ignorance account ultimately hobbles the skeptic. It does so for two reasons. First, when this account is joined with either a closure-based skeptical argument or a skeptical underdetermination argument, the best the skeptic can do is show that we don’t know that we know. And second, the ignorance account directly implies the maligned KK principle.

Teaching applied ethics to the righteous mind

What does current empirically informed moral psychology imply about the goals that can be realistically achieved in college-level applied ethics courses? This paper takes up this question from the vantage point of Jonathan Haidt’s Social Intuitionist Model of human moral judgment. I summarize Haidt’s model, and then consider a variety of pedagogical goals. I begin with two of the loftiest goals of ethics education, and argue that neither is within realistic reach if Haidt’s model is correct. I then look at three goals that can be achieved if his model is correct; but each of these goals, I argue, lacks significant value. I end by identifying three goals that are of significant value and also realistically attainable on Haidt’s model. These should be the focus of applied ethics pedagogy if Haidt’s model is correct.

Harm is not Enough

physicians working in prison systems who maintain exemplary, long-term relationships with prisoners. We could well imagine a prisoner turning to such a physician for assistance in lethal injection, under the impression that he was calling on his personal physician for aid. But the presence of a prior relationship would not, by itself, negate the ethical problems we see with physician participation—that the suffering was not the result of any disease, and that the prisoner’s options are so severely constrained as to make the idea of autonomy inapplicable. Gawande (2006) raises the possibility that the prison physician who feels dedicated to the well-being of the patient may raise the same defense that we do for physicianassisted dying in terminal illness—non-abandonment. We applaud this physician’s sense of dedication and duty. We also favor a biopsychosocial model of medical practice that takes a holistic view of the sorts of disease and suffering that the physician may feel committed to try to relieve (Engel 1980). Nonetheless, we still insist that a distinction be drawn between the physician’s implicit promise to accompany a patient throughout the entire course of a terminal or incurable illness, and the physician’s purported obligation to relieve suffering which is wholly attributable to a judicial decision taken by state authorities. Is our opposition to physician participation in lethal injection, while simultaneously accepting other forms of physician-assisted death, nothing but a disguised expression of opposition to capital punishment as social policy? We do not believe that any of the arguments we have offered previously—grounded as they are in a conception of professional integrity (Miller and Brody 1995)—hinge on the ethical soundness of capital punishment as a whole. Both Waisel (2007) and Lanier and Berge (2007) allude to the possibility that prison officials could readily dispense with physician assistance if they consulted with veterinarians to develop modes of lethal injection that could be administered confidently without the use of intravenous access because it is to secure and monitor such access that a medically trained individual is primarily needed. Nothing in the argument we have outlined previously would preclude such a measure, which in our view is far preferable to having state law or a court order a physician to violate existing codes of medical ethics in order to participate in an execution. Some believe that the great ethical watershed is the absolute prohibition against a physician ever killing or causing the death of a patient. Once we have crossed over that great divide, the details are relatively unimportant. We disagree. We believe that physicians and ethicists have raised valid arguments to show that an absolute prohibition against physician-assisted dying cannot be sustained. At the same time, the powerful arguments against physician involvement in death must give us great pause. The professional integrity of the physician must be grounded in the basic fact of the patient’s deep vulnerability, and the overriding importance of maintaining patient and public trust (May 1983; Miller and Brody 1995). Trust and concern for vulnerability require that many conditions must be satisfied before physician-assisted death can be contemplated. We argue that the capital punishment situation fails to meet most of the required conditions.

Would donation undercut the morality of execution

Westall, G. P., P. Komesaroff, M. W. Gorton, and G. I. Snell. 2008. Ethics of organ donation and transplantation involving prisoners: The debate extends beyond our borders. Internal Medicine Journal 38: 56–59. Youngner, S. J., and R. M. Arnold. 1993. Ethical, psychological, and public policy implications of procuring organs from non-heartbeating cadaver donors. Journal of the American Medical Association 269(21): 2769–2774.

Skeptical Effectiveness: A Reply to Buford and Brueckner

In an earlier paper, I presented a novel objection to closure-based skeptical arguments. There I argued that the best account of what makes skeptical scenarios effective cripples the closure-based skeptical arguments that use those scenarios. On behalf of the skeptic, Christopher Buford and Anthony Brueckner have replied to my objection. Here I review my original argument, criticize their replies, and highlight two important issues for further investigation.

Help the Patient, But Be Complicit With Homophobic Social Norms? Four Issues

Under what conditions, if any, would it be morally permissible to provide high-tech gay conversion therapy to patients who are in the grips of homophobic social norms? For example, might it be morally permissible for a physician or therapist to provide this kind of therapy to a Haredim Jew who has intense same sex attractions but wishes to be a fully conforming member of his religious community? In their target article, Earp, Sandberg, and Savulsecu (2014) maintain that in some instances this would be permissible. I begin with two potential problems for their view. Then I go on to identify four important issues that need to be worked through to achieve a satisfactory account of these cases. Earp and his colleagues offer six conditions on the permissibility of providing high-tech gay conversion therapy in these cases. Four conditions concern the treatment: It must be safe, effective, genuinely voluntary, and shown to relieve profound patient suffering. The focus of another condition is the patient: That person must be unable, or unwilling, to abandon the homophobic norms or religious beliefs that play a key role in causing her suffering. And the final condition focuses on the person who provides the therapy: That person must engage in efforts to fight homophobic social norms. In articulating these conditions, the authors use weak and guarded language. When all of these conditions are met, the use of high-tech gay conversion therapy “could be considered morally permissible under certain circumstances” (9). This is tantamount to admitting that the account is incomplete. What additional circumstances need to be in place for such therapies to be morally permissible? Until we get the full account, we have no guidance and nothing to evaluate. Second, do any other courses of action have to be exhausted before it would be permissible to resort to gay conversion therapy? One intriguing candidate, documented in Haldeman (2004) and Swartz (2011), involves retaining, often with the help of a therapist, both one’s same-sex orientation and one’s religious commitments. Retaining the second of these often requires staying in the closet, making this a contentious approach. But for those who can negotiate the tension between their same-sex orientation and their