Applied Ethics

Applied ethics takes the general normative theories and asks what they deliver when the question is a real one: whether to end a pregnancy, whether to eat animals, whether to execute a murderer. The beginner tier builds the tools every case uses, including moral status, harm and consent, the doing and allowing distinction, and the shape of rights and duties. The intermediate tier works through the standard debates one at a time. The advanced tier turns to the problems that break the standard framework: the non-identity problem, the impossibility results in population ethics, whether numbers count, moral uncertainty, risk, and what a machine would have to be before it could be wronged.

Beginner

No prior exposure assumed. Every term is defined where it first appears.

From Theory to Cases
How consequentialist, deontological, and virtue-based reasoning each turn a moral question into a verdict
9 min
Moral Status
The question of which beings count, and the difference between owing duties to something and having duties about it
8 min
Needs firstFrom Theory to Cases
Harm, Benefit, and Consent
What makes a person worse off, when agreement changes what may be done to them, and where paternalism starts
10 min
Needs firstMoral Status
Doing, Allowing, and Double Effect
Whether killing is worse than letting die, and whether a harm you foresee differs from one you intend
11 min
Needs firstHarm, Benefit, and Consent
Rights, Duties, and Going Beyond Duty
Claims that others must respect, duties that specify no particular recipient, and acts that are good without being required
10 min
Needs firstDoing, Allowing, and Double Effect

Intermediate

Undergraduate level. Formal machinery, standard results, and the objections that stuck.

Principlism and Medical EthicsPlanned
The four-principle framework that clinical ethics actually runs on, and what it does when two of the principles conflict
16 min
AbortionPlanned
Thomson's violinist, Marquis's future-like-ours argument, and why the dispute splits between what the fetus is and what it may demand
20 min
Euthanasia and Assisted DyingPlanned
How autonomy arguments and slippery slope worries are pressed against each other once the acts and omissions line is in place
17 min
Animal EthicsPlanned
Singer's case from equal consideration of interests, Regan's case from inherent value, and the argument from marginal cases
16 min
The Death PenaltyPlanned
Where the capital case turns on desert, irreversible error, and whether proportionality has an upper limit
18 min
Lying and Promise-KeepingPlanned
The murderer at the door, Kant's absolutism about truthfulness, and Ross's answer that duties can be overridden without being cancelled
14 min
Famine, Affluence, and Global PovertyPlanned
Singer's drowning child, the demandingness objection, and whether easy rescue at a distance is charity or obligation
18 min
Free Speech and Its LimitsPlanned
Mill's harm principle applied to expression, and whether offence, incitement, or silencing can extend the limit
16 min
War and Just War TheoryPlanned
The conditions for going to war and for fighting well, and the traditional doctrine that soldiers on both sides fight as equals
22 min
Environmental EthicsPlanned
Whether ecosystems and species have value apart from any use we make of them, and what follows for how we treat them
18 min

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open.

Theories of Moral Status and Their ConflictsPlanned
Sentience, cognitive capacity, and relationship as rival criteria, and whether status comes in degrees or not at all
24 min
The Non-Identity ProblemPlanned
Parfit's result that an act can seem wrong while harming nobody, because a different act would have produced different people
22 min
Procreative Ethics and AntinatalismPlanned
Benatar's asymmetry between absent pain and absent pleasure, Savulescu's procreative beneficence, and the repugnant conclusion that squeezes both
24 min
Population Axiology and the Impossibility ResultsPlanned
Every way of ranking populations by size and welfare violates one of a small set of conditions that all look compulsory
28 min
Partial Aggregation and the Relevance ViewPlanned
Taurek's refusal to add the numbers up, and the views that let some claims compete while ruling others irrelevant
26 min
Decision Procedures Under Moral RiskPlanned
Maximising expected choiceworthiness as a decision rule, and the fanaticism that follows when one theory assigns unbounded stakes
26 min
The Ethics of RiskPlanned
Imposing a chance of harm on someone who is never in fact harmed, and whether contractualism should evaluate that before or after the outcome
26 min
Enhancement and Germline EditingPlanned
Whether the therapy and enhancement line can bear weight, what heritable editing does to consent, and the objection that selection expresses a judgment about existing lives
26 min
Allocating Scarce Medical ResourcesPlanned
What a quality-adjusted life year measures, why disability advocates object to it, and whether a lottery treats claimants more fairly than triage
26 min
Revisionist Just War TheoryPlanned
McMahan's argument that liability to attack depends on responsibility for an unjust threat, which denies combatants on the two sides equal standing
28 min
Climate Ethics and Collective HarmPlanned
Discounting future welfare, dividing responsibility for emissions already made, and the problem that no single act makes a detectable difference
26 min
AI Ethics and Moral PatiencyPlanned
Who answers for an automated decision, and what would have to be true of a system before it could be wronged rather than merely misused
24 min