Intricate Ethics
Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harms
Frances M. Kamm

A runaway trolley is barreling down the tracks, about to hit five people. You are in a position to flip a switch which would send the trolley onto a side track, where a single person will be hit. Is flipping the switch permissible? Most people think that it is.

Now you are on top of a bridge watching the runaway trolley head toward five people, and next to you stands an exceptionally large man. Should you throw him onto the tracks in order to stop the trolley and save the five people? Most think that this would be forbidden.

Each of these actions involves sacrificing one person in order to save five, but our moral intuitions tell us that one act is permissible and the other is not. People's responses to these cases have lately been much discussed by psychologists and even in the public media. In Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harms, Frances Kamm, a Kennedy School professor of philosophy and public policy, lays out her version of nonconsequentialism, the school of moral thought which says that certain acts are forbidden -- or required -- regardless of whether they bring about the best consequences. In order to determine which acts are forbidden, some philosophers begin with general moral principles and then apply those principles to specific cases. Kamm, on the other hand, believes that, "it is primarily through an individual's generating her own intuitive judgments and then trying to see what factors account for them and might justify them that we can make progress [in moral philosophy]."

Much of the book consists of Kamm offering up cleverly wrought morally problematic scenarios and examining her own intuitions. If dropping a bomb on a school during wartime is forbidden, are we similarly prohibited from dropping a bomb on a munitions plant, knowing that the aftershock will collapse the school's roof and kill the children inside? If it is impermissible to run over someone intentionally with an ambulance because you are rushing to save five people, is it also impermissible to drive the ambulance over land that you know will cause a deadly landslide?

Kamm explores these sorts of questions in remarkable detail. What emerges, she argues, is that our intuitions are extremely sensitive to the intricate aspects of the individual cases. Physical differences in the construction of bombs or trolley tracks can alter the way in which a particular harm is caused -- and such differences can affect our intuitions about whether an act is allowable. This needn't imply that our morality simply consists of a series of independent intuitions. For Kamm, the intuitions reveal moral principles which are more complex and subtle than we might have imagined.

Fanciful, unrealistic, and intentionally silly thought experiments occupy a good number of pages in this book. (We consider a scanner that reads people's minds, as well as a man with arms long enough to reach across India.) But those familiar with Kamm's earlier work will know that she often considers more familiar ethical issues pertaining to medical ethics, rights conflicts, and our duties toward those who are suffering in distant lands. Intricate Ethics contains Kamm's latest views on these topics, building on previously published material to develop comprehensively her nonconsequentialist view. -- PS

The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

In The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt and his coauthor, University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer, argue that the extraordinary political influence of a loose confederation of pro-Israel groups and individuals harms U.S. and Israeli interests alike.

"America’s problems in the Middle East wouldn't disappear if the lobby were less influential," says Walt, professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School, "but we would find it easier to deal with them."

The authors argue that the lobby's efforts have, among other things, impeded the establishment of a Palestinian state and encouraged war with Iraq. The nearly unconditional support the United States provides Israel “could not be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds," they write. Not surprisingly their thesis has provoked an energetic debate.

Walt calls himself and his coauthor strong supporters of Israel and their book argues that the United States should come to Israel's aid if its survival is ever in jeopardy. But it's time, he says, for the United States to treat Israel like any other country when it comes to financial and political support.

"I think it's obvious to many people that America's policies in the Middle East have gone badly awry," he says. "The good news is that in circumstances like that, situations are ripe for rethinking. What we're hoping the book will do is to encourage people to begin that process." -- LR

Governance and Information Technology
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer

As technologies advance, so do opportunities to communicate. How government communicates information to the public in the age of the Internet is the subject of a new book edited by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and David Lazer, both associate professors of public policy at the Kennedy School.

Governance and Information Technology offers perspectives on the interplay between technological change and evolving information flows within government; the implications of the blurring informational boundaries between government and society; and the issues in evaluating the impact of reengineering information flows.

"We put forward the notion," write the editors, "that examining the flows of information within the public sector and between the public sector and the citizens -- what we term information government -- provides a means to better understand the significant changes of governing and governance that occur, in part, facilitated by new technologies."

Chapters, each accompanied by a case illustration, cover such topics as global perspectives on electronic government; the drive for growth and equity; freedom of information; online political participation; information quality; and the governing of government information.

Understanding the informational dimension of government, the editors write, will "inform the implementation of technologies and policies to structure information flows that simultaneously increase the efficiency of government and the deliberative capacity of our institutions and citizens." — LR

photos, Tanit Sakakini: Kamm, Walt, Lazer