Intricate Ethics Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm

F.M. Kamm is one of the leading ethical theorists working in philosophy today. She has become well known for her brand of exacting analysis, largely in defense of a non-consequentialist perspective - the view that some actions are right or wrong by virtue of something other than their consequences. In Intricate Ethics, Kamm questions the moral importance of some non-consequentialist distinctions and then introduces, and argues for the moral importance of, other distinctions. The first section provides a general introduction to non-consequentialist ethical theory followed by more detailed discussion of distinctions relevant to instrumental rationality and to the famous "Trolley Problem"; the second deals with the notions of moral status and rights; the third takes up the notions of responsibility and complicity, and discusses new issues in non-consequentialist theory including the "problem of distance." Finally, adding to the first section's discussions of the views of Warren Quinn and Peter Unger, the fourth section analyzes the views of others in the non-consequentialist and consequentialist camps such as Peter Singer, Daniel Kahnemann, Bernard Gert, and Thomas Scanlon.

1 - Nonconsequentialism
2 - Aggregation and Two Moral Methods;
3 - Intention, Harm, and the Possibility of a Unified Theory;
4 - The Doctrines of Double and Triple Effect and Why a Rational Agent Need Not Intend the Means to His End;
5 - Toward the Essence of Nonconsequentialist Constraints on Harming: Modality, Productive Purity, and the Greater Good Working Itself Out;
6 - Harming People in Peter Ungers Living High and Letting Die
7 - Moral Status;
8 - Rights beyond Interests;
9 - Conflicts of Rights: A Typology
10 - Responsibility and Collaboration;
11 - Does Distance Matter Morally to the Duty to Rescue?;
12 - The New Problem of Distance in Morality
13 - Peter Singers Ethical Theory;
14 - Moral Intuitions, Cognitive Psychology, and the Harming/Not-Aiding Distinction;
15 - Harms, Losses, and Evils in Gerts Moral Theory;
16 - Owing, Justifying, and Rejecting

F. M. Kamm is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Harvard University. She is the author of Creation and Abortion( 1992); Morality, Mortality, Vol. 1: Death and Whom to Save From It(1993); and Morality, Mortality Vol.2: Rights, Duties, and Status (1996), all from Oxford University Press. Kamm also has published many articles on normative ethical theory and practical ethics. She has held ACLS, AAUW, NEH, and Guggenheim fellowships and has been a Fellow of the Program in Ethics and the Professions at the Kennedy School, the Center for Human Values at Princeton, the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford, and the National Institutes of Health. She is a member of the editorial boards of Philosophy & Public Affairs, Legal Theory, Bioethics, and Utilitas and was a consultant on ethics to the World Health Organization.