Papers by Elijah (Eli) Weber
Between the Species: An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals, 2010
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2015
Clare Palmer has recently argued that most humans have special obligations to assist domesticated... more Clare Palmer has recently argued that most humans have special obligations to assist domesticated animals, because domestication creates vulnerable, dependent individuals, and most humans benefit from the institution of domestication. I argue that Palmer has given us no grounds for accepting this claim, and that one of the key premises in her argument for this claim is false. Next, I argue that voluntarism, which is the view that one acquires special obligations only by consenting to those obligations in some way, offers a plausible explanation of the sorts of cases that motivate Palmer’s analysis. I conclude that voluntarism allows us to explain the prevalent intuition that special obligations to assist often obtain for domesticated animals, but rarely obtain for wild animals.
Between the Species: An Online Journal for the Study of Philosophy and Animals, 2008
The prevalence of antibiotic resistant microbes has led to a call for new antibiotics development... more The prevalence of antibiotic resistant microbes has led to a call for new antibiotics development. Due to the irresponsible practices of the medical community in prescribing antibiotics, much of the demand for new antibiotics is suspect. I argue that the social contract, which properly includes human relationships with laboratory animals, requires a conservative attitude toward new antibiotics development. This attitude places limits on the justificatory role of demand in determining whether a particular research project meets the conditions for morally justified research, as defined by Rollin's utilitarian principle. Identifying the Scope of the Problem Antibiotic resistant microbes are a major public health concern, and medical practitioners are currently calling for newer and more potent antibiotics, despite the scientific challenges of developing these products and the low rate of return for pharmaceutical companies. Many factors lead to the existence of antibiotic resistant microbes, and there is significant empirical data suggesting that human prescribing practices are a major contributor to this phenomenon. Laboratory animals endure great suffering and death in order for antibiotic drugs to reach the market, and it seems that the pursuit of new pharmaceutical products without comparable or even greater emphasis on changing dysfunctional human activities is a violation of the social contract with animals. This CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
Teaching Philosophy, 2014
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2011
John Searle claims that social-scientific laws are impossible because social phenomena are physic... more John Searle claims that social-scientific laws are impossible because social phenomena are physically open-ended. William Butchard and Robert D’Amico have recently argued that, by Searle’s own lights, money is a social phenomena that is physically closed. However, Butchard and D’Amico rely on a limited set of data in order to draw this conclusion, and fail to appreciate the implications of Searle’s theory of social ontology with regard to the physical open-endedness of money. Money is not physically open-ended in the strong sense that Butchard and D’Amico require, and their argument for the possibility of social-scientific laws fails as a result.
Bioethics, 2015
Moral distress is now being recognized as a frequent experience for many health care providers, a... more Moral distress is now being recognized as a frequent experience for many health care providers, and there's good evidence that it has a negative impact on the health care work environment. However, contemporary discussions of moral distress have several problems. First, they tend to rely on inadequate characterizations of moral distress. As a result, subsequent investigations regarding the frequency and consequences of moral distress often proceed without a clear understanding of the phenomenon being discussed, and thereby risk substantially misrepresenting the nature, frequency, and possible consequences of moral distress. These discussions also minimize the intrinsically harmful aspects of moral distress. This is a serious omission. Moral distress doesn't just have a negative impact on the health care work environment; it also directly harms the one who experiences it. In this paper, I claim that these problems can be addressed by first clarifying our understanding of moral distress, and then identifying what makes moral distress intrinsically harmful. I begin by identifying three common mistakes that characterizations of moral distress tend to make, and explaining why these mistakes are problematic. Next, I offer an account of moral distress that avoids these mistakes. Then, I defend the claim that moral distress is intrinsically harmful to the subject who experiences it. I conclude by explaining how acknowledging this aspect of moral distress should reshape our discussions about how best to deal with this phenomenon.
Hastings Center Report
Abstract Harrowing stories reported in the media describe Covid‐19 ravaging through families. Thi... more Abstract Harrowing stories reported in the media describe Covid‐19 ravaging through families. This essay reports professional experiences of this phenomenon, family clustering, as encountered during the pandemic's spread across Southern California. We identify three ethical challenges following from it: Family clustering impedes shared decision‐making by reducing available surrogate decision‐makers for incapacitated patients, increases the emotional burdens of surrogate decision‐makers, and exacerbates health disparities for and the suffering of people of color at increased likelihood of experiencing family clustering. We propose that, in response to these challenges, efforts in advance care planning be expanded, emotional support offered to surrogates and family members be increased, more robust state guidance be issued on ethical decision‐making for unrepresented patients, ethics consultation be increased in the setting of conflict following from family clustering dynamics, and health care professionals pay more attention to systemic and personal racial biases and inequities that affect patient care and the surrogate experience.
Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics
This case study considers the clinical ethics issues of medical appropriateness and quality of li... more This case study considers the clinical ethics issues of medical appropriateness and quality of life for patients who are critically ill. The case involves a terminally ill cancer patient with a profoundly diminished quality of life and an extremely poor prognosis; his spouse desires to bring him home, where she will arrange to keep him alive for as long as possible via life-sustaining interventions. The analysis engages with the complicated notion of medical appropriateness, both in general and as it pertains to life-sustaining interventions in a critical care setting, and considers the ethical implications of the various ways in which one might understand this concept. It also addresses the significance of quality-of-life determinations, emphasizing the role of individualized values in determining the importance of quality of life for clinical decision-making. The discussion concludes with a description of the two strategies employed by the ethics team in helping to alleviate the medical team's concerns about this case.
Bioethics
Moral distress is now being recognized as a frequent experience for many health care providers, a... more Moral distress is now being recognized as a frequent experience for many health care providers, and there's good evidence that it has a negative impact on the health care work environment. However, contemporary discussions of moral distress have several problems. First, they tend to rely on inadequate characterizations of moral distress. As a result, subsequent investigations regarding the frequency and consequences of moral distress often proceed without a clear understanding of the phenomenon being discussed, and thereby risk substantially misrepresenting the nature, frequency, and possible consequences of moral distress. These discussions also minimize the intrinsically harmful aspects of moral distress. This is a serious omission. Moral distress doesn't just have a negative impact on the health care work environment; it also directly harms the one who experiences it.
In this paper, I claim that these problems can be addressed by first clarifying our understanding of moral distress, and then identifying what makes moral distress intrinsically harmful. I begin by identifying three common mistakes that characterizations of moral distress tend to make, and explaining why these mistakes are problematic. Next, I offer an account of moral distress that avoids these mistakes. Then, I defend the claim that moral distress is intrinsically harmful to the subject who experiences it. I conclude by explaining how acknowledging this aspect of moral distress should reshape our discussions about how best to deal with this phenomenon.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Vol. 28 No. 4, 2015
Clare Palmer has recently argued that most humans have special obligations to assist domesticated... more Clare Palmer has recently argued that most humans have special obligations to assist domesticated animals, because domestication creates vulnerable, dependent individuals, and most humans benefit from the institution of domestication. I argue that Palmer has given us no grounds for accepting this claim, and that one of the key premises in her argument for this claim is false. Next, I argue that voluntarism, which is the view that one acquires special obligations only by consenting to those obligations in some way, offers a plausible explanation of the sorts of cases that motivate Palmer’s analysis. I conclude that voluntarism allows us to explain the prevalent intuition that special obligations to assist often obtain for domesticated animals, but rarely obtain for wild animals.
History of Philosophy Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3, 2012
Jean Hampton has argued that there is an inconsistency between Hobbes’s insistence that peac... more Jean Hampton has argued that there is an inconsistency between Hobbes’s insistence that peace can only be secured by an absolute sovereign, and his claim that subjects in the Commonwealth retain a self-preservation right which justifies rebelling against the sovereign when it is in their interest to do so (Hobbes 1991, p121-129, 145-154). Because subjects can legitimately rebel whenever this action is in their interest, claims Hampton, the power in the Commonwealth is effectively in their hands, rather than the hands of the sovereign (Hampton 1986 and Hampton 1999). I argue that the problem which motivates Hampton is resolvable within a readily defensible interpretation of Hobbes’s own political theory. While a sufficient degree of rebellion on the part of the subjects is sufficient to depose the sovereign, as Hampton claims, this does not place ultimate authority in the Commonwealth in the hands of the subjects. That the sovereign is no longer in power is an apparent fact about the world, rather than a matter about which anyone decides, either individually or collectively. Since no one has authority over whether the sovereign should continue to rule, the subject’s self-preservation right, and their exercise of that right in the form of justified rebellion, does not undermine the sovereign’s absolute authority.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences Vol. 42 No. 1, 2012
John Searle claims that social-scientific laws are impossible because social phenomena are physic... more John Searle claims that social-scientific laws are impossible because social phenomena are physically open-ended. William Butchard and Robert D’Amico have recently argued that, by Searle’s own lights, money is a social phenomena that is physically closed. However, Butchard and D’Amico rely on a limited set of data in order to draw this conclusion, and fail to appreciate the implications of Searle’s theory of social ontology with regard to the physical open-endedness of money. Money is not physically open-ended in the strong sense that Butchard and D’Amico require, and their argument for the possibility of social-scientific laws fails as a result.
Between the Species Vol. 13 No. 10, 2010
In Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, L.W. Sumner defends two significant constraints on one’s theor... more In Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics, L.W. Sumner defends two significant constraints on one’s theory of welfare: formality and generality. An adequate theory of welfare, claims Sumner, must give a constitutive account of the “good-for” relation. This constitutive account must be sufficiently general that any entity whose status as a welfare subject is uncontroversial falls within its scope. This paper will argue that Sumner’s proposed constraints are particularly significant to utilitarian arguments for the equal moral considerability of non-human animals. In the absence of these constraints, the inconsistency that is alleged to follow from denying moral considerability to non-human animals, while affirming it for humans, fails to obtain. I will focus on Peter Singer’s argument for the equal moral considerability of non-human animals, in order to support the conclusion that questions about the formality and generality of welfare are significant areas of further research for philosophers of animal welfare.
Between the Species Vol. 13 No. 8, 2008
The prevalence of antibiotic resistant microbes has led to a call for new antibiotics development... more The prevalence of antibiotic resistant microbes has led to a call for new antibiotics development. Due to the irresponsible practices of the medical community in prescribing antibiotics, much of the demand for new antibiotics is suspect. I argue that the social contract, which properly includes human relationships with laboratory animals, requires a conservative attitude toward new antibiotics development. This attitude places limits on the justificatory role of demand in determining whether a particular research project meets the conditions for morally justified research, as defined by Rollin’s utilitarian principle.
Book Reviews by Elijah (Eli) Weber
Metapsychology Online Reviews, Jul 15, 2014
Many philosophers will recognize David Edmonds as one of the voices of Philosophy Bites, a popula... more Many philosophers will recognize David Edmonds as one of the voices of Philosophy Bites, a popular podcast that engages with a variety of different philosophical topics. However, Edmonds is also an expert in the sub-field that has come to be known as "trolleyology." This somewhat derisive term refers to an interdisciplinary field of study that seeks to utilize intuitive responses to various moral dilemmas to identify substantive moral principles and draw conclusions about human moral psychology. Edmonds does an outstanding job of introducing the reader to the historical emergence and subsequent development of trolleyology, explaining its significance for both moral philosophy and moral psychology, and responding to a number of substantive criticisms of the field. Edmonds's expertise is clearly on display throughout the text, and he largely succeeds in producing a work that is informative and sophisticated without being overly technical.
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Papers by Elijah (Eli) Weber
In this paper, I claim that these problems can be addressed by first clarifying our understanding of moral distress, and then identifying what makes moral distress intrinsically harmful. I begin by identifying three common mistakes that characterizations of moral distress tend to make, and explaining why these mistakes are problematic. Next, I offer an account of moral distress that avoids these mistakes. Then, I defend the claim that moral distress is intrinsically harmful to the subject who experiences it. I conclude by explaining how acknowledging this aspect of moral distress should reshape our discussions about how best to deal with this phenomenon.
Book Reviews by Elijah (Eli) Weber
In this paper, I claim that these problems can be addressed by first clarifying our understanding of moral distress, and then identifying what makes moral distress intrinsically harmful. I begin by identifying three common mistakes that characterizations of moral distress tend to make, and explaining why these mistakes are problematic. Next, I offer an account of moral distress that avoids these mistakes. Then, I defend the claim that moral distress is intrinsically harmful to the subject who experiences it. I conclude by explaining how acknowledging this aspect of moral distress should reshape our discussions about how best to deal with this phenomenon.