International Journal of Applied Philosophy

Massive consumption of fossil energy since the Industrial Revolution has contributed to carbon dioxide emissions and accumulation. That, in turn, has led to global climate change, which is mainly characterized by warming. The necessity of immediate climate action can be justified from both moral and self-interest perspectives. Achieving the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goal of getting the world to net-zero carbon by 2050 depends on undermining the libertarian and self-interested arguments that opponents have against trying to reach this goal. First, from an ethical perspective, these opponents wrongly set the free market against the welfare state and individual property rights against the redistribution of social wealth, ignoring the possibility that their own ideal of liberty might require a welfare system. Second, it is also possible to show that morality and self-interest go together here, requiring us to reduce carbon use right now.

Biocentrism environmental ethicists and animal rights defenders have been articulating ethical principles to extend moral standing to nonhuman beings. The natural propensities of living beings to pain and pleasure, being a subject of life, and having specific good and interest (as proposed by Singer, Regan, Tayler, and Goodpaster, respectively), have been taken as a reason to determine the moral status of the beings in question. This article makes the case that none of them can offer all-inclusive ideal for biocentrism to embrace all life forms as moral patients since they are either exclusive, hierarchical, or imprecise. To this end, I argue that it is possible to drive a unifying ideal from Schopenhauer’s metaphysics: the will to live. The will to live is a quality that all living beings share, regardless of their abilities and propensities. Both conscious and unconscious beings, sentient and non-sentient creatures, lower animals and plants are the embodi­ments or physical forms of the ultimate reality that is the will to live. Thus, biocentrism becomes more valid and effective in environmental preservation by incorporating the will to live into its ethical principle.

The ethics of cultivated meat is an emerging field of applied ethics. As the world’s population increases, stakeholders, scholars, and producers have begun to devise new strategies to meet growing food needs and to prevent food production from having a deleterious environmental impact. In this paper, I will focus on the main moral arguments against the production and consumption of cultivated meat. I will then frame some arguments to show that none of the objections to the production and consumption of cultivated meat is convincing.In the concluding remarks, I will suggest that cultivated meat should be considered as one strategy in a wide array of options to embrace a new food model. Deciding not to invest on this technology prevents us from benefiting from a useful means that could improve our living conditions.

As an account of food, associationism has shortcomings as an explana­tion of taste and eating. It maintains that only ideas are associated or related to one another and not perceptions. Perceptions, according to this theory, are independent of one another. Food presents a challenge for associationism because food has a cogni­tive dimension, i.e., judgments are made about its ingredients, presentation, order or sequence of tasting, and so on. Consequently, the scientific field of dynamics offers a viable alternative explanation with its focus on change or reactions which take place in baking and cooking. An understanding of food chemistry leads to a greater appreciation of what one tastes and eats. This approach and emphasis on food chemistry was first appreciated by Brillat-Savarin in his La Physiologie du Gout (1825), and contemporary reflections are made on his treatise.

I defend a modified rights-based unjust threat account for morally justified killing in self-defense. Rights-based moral justifications for killing in self-defense presume that human beings have a right to defend themselves from unjust threats. An unjust threat account of self-defense says that this right is derived from an agent’s moral obligation to not pose a deadly threat to the defender. The failure to keep this moral obligation creates the moral asymmetry necessary to justify a defender killing the unjust threat in self-defense. I argue that the other rights-based approaches explored here are unfair to the defender because they require her to prove moral fault in the threat. But then I suggest that the unjust threat account should be modified so that where the threat is non-culpable or only partially culpable, the defender should seek to share the cost and risk with the threat in order for both parties to survive.

Proportionality matters. Intuitively, proportionality sets the ceiling on the amount of defensive violence that is permissible. A plausible view is that what justifies proportionality also justifies other defensive-violence requirements—for example, discrimination and necessity—and shows why other purported requirements are mistaken—for example, imminence. I argue that if defensive-violence proportionality is a part of moral reality, then there is a systematic justification of it. If there is a systematic justification of proportionality, then there is an adequate equation for it. There is no adequate equation for proportionality. Hence, proportionality is not part of moral reality. As a result, non-consequentialism does not justify defensive violence. The last part of this paper briefly applies these findings to vaccine mandates.

Even a dog can tell if he was tripped over or kicked. Would entrepreneurs know? To slow down the progress of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, many states have taken restrictive measures, including the closing of private businesses. Are entrepreneurs therefore entitled to compensation? The answer is not obvious. In this paper, I suggest a solution which follows from a si mple test inspired by the famous trolley dilemma, asking whether the state used entrepreneurs as instruments (means) to slow down the pandemic. I argue that entrepreneurs were not “used” that way, which is why they possess no moral claim to compensation for the harm caused by the closure. However, I do argue for at least a moral claim of theirs to satisfaction. For the possible disruption of their relationship with other citizens, rather than for the monetary damage they were forced to bear.

Misinformation, disinformation, or fake news pose a new societal challenge. Through Kantian philosophy, we postulate this as an ethical challenge, one driven by social forces that shape social media’s use towards unethical knowledge production. However, automated or intelligent technologies can also be a solution in acting as a polygraph on social media platforms. We propose such technology could be ethical-by-design if we bring moral philosophy into a software architecture. Kant’s philosophical formalism is well-aligned with computing logic, especially blockchain applications. However, we must also remain highly vigilant to the conceptual complexities, the existing critiques on Kantian ethics and deontology, and the general approach of imbuing moral thinking into a machine-especially if based on only one, rather hard-lined philosophy. While the principled nature of Kant’s propositions make for a suitable architecture, it poses in itself critical ethical concerns and considerations.

Although separated by almost a decade, there are two relatively recent United States Supreme Court cases involving the first Amendment religion clauses and educational funding. Both cases involved public monies diverted for sectarian educational purposes. One case brought by a plaintiff challenging the diversion; the other by a plaintiff challenging the cession of the diversion. The comparison, contrast and evaluation of the two cases is the intended goal of this essay and is predicated upon the fact that while both cases essentially yield the same result, neither employs the same justifying foundational argument employed by the other. Finally, understanding these two cases may serve as a predicate to a third educational case now before the United States Supreme Court during the 2021 term.