Alexander Pruss's Blog

Consider one more pair of cases to challenge the standard view that there is no significant moral difference between withholding and withdra...

In order to give valid consent, the subjects in an experiment need to be informed about all the harms that the experimenter plans to impose...

Consider the consent argument for antinatalism (the view that human reproduction is morally wrong) that we shouldn’t impose great risks on p...

Suppose human beings are deterministic systems. Then quite likely there are many cases where the complex play of associations combined with...

To promise something, I need to communicate something to you. What is that thing that I need to communicate to you? To a first approximation...

A normative power is supposed to be a power to directly change normative reality. We can, of course, indirectly change normative reality by...

I think it’s wrong for us to kill innocent people. Some fellow deontologists, however, think this prohibition should be restricted to say th...

I have long argued that desire is not the same as consent: the fact that I want you to do something does not constitute consent to your doin...

On divine desire variants of divine command ethics, necessarily an action is right just in case it accords with God’s what God wants. But i...

There are two ways of thinking about the ethics of consent. On the first approach, there are complex prohibitions against non-consensual tr...

Some people think that a constituent (whole or partial) of consent is some sort of inner mental act of agreement with the thing one consents...

Suppse that I had a device that would cause a mild but sensible vibration in the nasal membranes of the person I pointed it at. Absent conse...

If someone asks me to ϕ , typically that informs me that they want me to ϕ . But the normative effect of the request cannot be reduced to th...

Suppose the state thought it had good reason to force me to undergo a medical procedure that I believed to be immoral. The state would have ...

Slavery is the ownership of one person by another. Since a person no more owns another than a thief owns the purloined goods, there has neve...

I once gave an argument against euthanasia where the controversial center of the argument could be summarized as follows: Euthanasia woul...

Consider the thesis that consent is the only norm of sexual activity. Of course, this does not imply the crazy claim that every consensual s...

Suppose that we have a minor parking infraction that, in justice, deserves about a $40 fine. Let’s suppose the infraction is so clear when i...

Alice and Bob are conscientious vegetarians. Alice gets Bob to promise her that if Alice ever considers ceasing to be vegetarian, Bob should...

The following seem to be true: It is never permissible for the state to force on a non-consenting innocent patient medical procedures very l...